Thanks for making your case. I tried a VPN service for a while to see what it was like to surf the web "from another country." It was with a provider "you can trust," but ultimately who can you trust? And it wasn't worth the monthly charge.

Kind of related, but I'm also getting wary of relying on small third parties building important binaries in my life (like a browser or mobile OS) I'm thinking that it's better to use what's mainstream and look for privacy with other means.

I feel like Firefox threads this needle well.

Valid argument for using a VPN: you are better off being spied on by a government on the other side of the planet rather than your own.

Your own government can very easily do things to harm you, like throw you in prison or allow private actors to use tort/defamation/etc law to destroy you financially. A government on the other side of the planet - especially a country which doesn’t get along with your own - has far less motivation to do so. Your local ISP has to comply with local government and court orders - a VPN provider on the other side of the planet may have zero motivation for doing so. They’d have to comply with their own country’s orders, but their government/courts may lack the motivation to do that for your country’s government/courts

Yep, that's my main motivator. Recently my country started getting cozy in bed with copyright enforcers that have very nervous fingers on the trigger. It's only a matter of short time before I need a VPN or even Tor to do something as innocent as reading a science paper.

I wish them luck chasing after their citizens connecting to local websites from Kazakhstan or Chile etc., heh.

For Americans, that would probably increase your exposure. They can legally spy on their own people via foreign governments.

This is well documented, see for example the first result I found: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/19/...

Ditto for Europeans.

> For Americans, that would probably increase your exposure

For criminal matters, possibly yes, depending on the circumstances.

For civil matters, arguably not. The US government can ask a foreign government to spy on you, but the results of the spying can't be admitted in a civil lawsuit. Whereas, an American ISP, the plaintiff can get a subpoena, the ISP has to comply, and the evidence is admissible in court. Also, with a civil lawsuit, even if it is possible for the plaintiff to get an order from a foreign court, the added difficulty and expense may make them decide to abandon the suit altogether.

> They can legally spy on their own people via foreign governments.

What if you used a Russian VPN company with a server in Russia? Of course, merely signing up for such a thing is likely to attract the attention of intelligence agencies. But, if the US government asks the Russian government to spy on you, I doubt the Russian government is going to say "yes", unless you are something like a terrorist.

If I need anonymity from the site I'm browsing, not from intermediaries, a glorified proxy is exactly what I want.

Valid reasons to use a VPN:

- Circumvert geo-blocks, geo-available content, etc.

- Download torrents if you are in a jurisdiction which routinely goes against torrent-seeders.

- Visit US sites from Europe who chose to fire you instead of following GDPR.

- Skip GFW or its Russian equivalent.

I use an SSH tunnel myself. It gives me much more control over the endpoint, and thus more control over my data.

Haven't had any issues at all. Works from everywhere, and arguably is less suspicious since more governments/ISPs/whoever are paying more attention to VPN traffic.

Don't write articles with titles that completely ignore the nuance of a subject

> You can make every promise in the world, because nobody can verify them. You don't even have to know what you're doing, because again, nobody can verify what you say. It is 100% snake-oil.

I wonder how the author feels about audits? At the end of the day, even if mullvad is logging, I trust them with my data far more than xfinity/comcast.

[1] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/1/20/no-pii-or-privacy-leak...

Assuming Mullvad are benevolent then they IMO did a lot to gain credibility. I liked their articles.

That being said, none of us were there when the audit happened.

And since VPN is used a lot to mask criminal activity out there then if I was Mullvad but was malicious then of course I'd do every right PR move to gain trust. We all heard stories how certain VPN providers were basically intelligence agencies honeypots.

What is the view of the Safari proxy thing whose name escapes me?

I use one for 1) torrenting, 2) getting around geoblocks, 3) hiding my IP from everyone except my VPN provider.

And I use Mullvad, which I'd say, given we have to trust our provider, they're as trustworthy as they come.

I wonder: how ssl (httpS, rtc) traffic could be decrypted and read by a VPN provider? Is there something I missed?

… or do use VPN services because it depends.

Oh look, another argument that VPNs might be untrustworthy and spy on you, while my ISP openly admits to recording and monetizing my traffic (while also necessarily having my actual physical address and identity on file). Even if the VPN were spying on me it'd still be a win.