Your last paragraph ignores the existence of many privacy by design solutions such as Tor or i2p. Yeah, they can't protect against a global passive adversary - as any other low latency anonymity system in existence, but that's totally different from saying that there's no way to have privacy on the Internet.
Re:Do you need a VPN?
by Skunkleton on Monday October 30, 2017 @05:48PM
(#15589213)
Tor is a solution for specific use cases. It does not address privacy on the internet in a general way. For example, if I use tor to browse facebook, I am logged into facebook and still just as trackable as I would be if I wasnt using tor.
> Tor is a solution for specific use cases. It does not address privacy on the internet in a general way. For example, if I use tor to browse facebook, I am logged into facebook and still just as trackable as I would be if I wasnt using tor.
No, at least now facebook may not know your exact location (especially if you use their onion service: https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/ ) and they can't track your activity outside of facebook. Of course, it doesn't solve - nor can any other anonymity system - the fact that you transmitted personally identifiable information with facebook.
Re:Do you need a VPN?
by CiPHPerCoder on Monday October 30, 2017 @12:31PM
(#15586376)
A confusing, content-less, arbitrary recommendation against Linode with no clear justification or reasoning given anywhere in the tweet stack is obligatory? I'm confused. Are there any actual reasons not to use them?
His "recommendation" stems from a DDoS incident, and possibly, a hack.
The internet is not designed for privacy, and privacy does not benefit the majority of commercial stakeholders of the internet. This is probably why most privacy solutions feel like shoving a square peg through a round hole. My personal feeling is that we should combat commercial bulk surveillance through legislative means.