This is a problem for a lot of web services. Apparently where your IP is located determines where you bank and what language you speak. Apparently people like me don't exist, or rather, are a small enough market to be completely ignored (which was the upshot of my conversation with Spotify support when I asked them to send me invoices in a language I understood, please, since they know I use the English client but send me bills in German).
So to make my life easier, I use a VPN and pretend I'm in Australia/UK/Jersey/USA/Estonia/wherever makes most sense.
I'm happy to pay for that. So far PIA have been great. They even have a good-looking Linux client that works with Wireguard.
But if there's shadiness, then I'd like to be aware of it. I was genuinely asking where the shadiness is here.
The vast majority of VPN selling points are nothing but FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Security-wise, most (all?) websites you care about now use HTTPS which provides end-to-end encryption and are thus immune to malicious networks (public Wi-Fi isn't risky at all despite what some VPN ads say), and even if not, then the VPN isn't bulletproof either as it merely shifts the unencrypted traffic from your "local network -> server" to "VPN provider -> server" which might actually attrack more scrutiny from malicious actors as they've now got to only tap a single point and get lots of unencrypted traffic. Privacy-wise the biggest threats to your privacy are advertising companies and social networks, which will track you just as well if you're on a VPN based on cookies or browser fingerprinting (a VPN alone wouldn't protect you - I guess if you clear your cookies before switching to the VPN and never allow cookies to cross-over between VPN/non-VPN you might have a chance, but surprisingly this is never mentioned in any of their ads).
Not OMG SHADY! but definitely gives me cause for concern. As one comment said: "Trust and ethics are important."
I’d even say they’re probably making direct profit from the $2.69 a month plan too. Essentially all VPN providers do is resell bandwidth, just at an insane upcharge in the name of “privacy”.
You got away with it because those 10 people are trustworthy and didn't use the VPN for malicious activities (or they managed to fly under the radar).
Now try actually advertise that VPN like the big VPN providers do and see how you fare. You'll get your droplet and entire DigitalOcean account shut down in no time, and the administrative overhead of having to deal with all the abuse reports and support queries will make it unsustainable.
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> The insane 3 year or 2 year deals are obviously subsidized by continuous sign ups, meaning constant in your face ad placement is necessary.
So essentially it's a pyramid scheme then.
I'm sure there are backhaul providers that will turn a blind eye to constant abuse reports. And since we agree that these companies are shady I can't imagine they have too big of a team that handles these. They probably forward them to users and call it a day. Too many in a short period of time? Close the account.
> So essentially it's a pyramid scheme then.
Of course this is speculation, but it makes logical sense to me. Imagine how many people will sign up for the 2/3 year, use it a lot for the first few months and then just drop off? PIA gets a large payment upfront, on an already high margin business, allowing them to spend insane money on advertisements or YouTube placements, netting them more customers who sign up for the year bundles. Rinse and repeat.
That’s not shady to you, especially for a company that sells privacy?
/s
The threat I'm protecting against isn't the state reading my emails, it's Spotify (for example, but there are many, many more) refusing to sign me up because my IP is in a different country to my bank account.
Or every single bloody website on the internet ignoring my browser's preferred language settings and serving me content in the language that they think my IP address comes from.
If you're American and want a VPN based in America (not the Virgin Islands etc), I've found TorGuard[2] to be very good as well.
Disclaimer: I’ve been doing just that for 13 years now