News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by romanichm12 on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @04:54AM (#37144404)
It's fascinating how VPN services have successfully marketed themselves as the ultimate privacy solution, when in reality, they are often just a middleman with full visibility into your internet traffic. How can we, as users, ever truly verify a VPN provider's claims of "no logging" or "complete privacy"? It's a promise based on trust, but why should we trust a company whose business model revolves around our data?
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by input_sh on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @05:38AM (#37144701)
> How can we, as users, ever truly verify a VPN provider's claims of "no logging" or "complete privacy"?

Court orders. They might be lying to customers, but they're unlikely to lie to a court. So if a court approaches them and they respond with "we have no data", they have no data.

Okay it's never gonna be no data, they'll still supply email address, payment method, registration date and similar things, but that's not my concern.

Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by WithinReason on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @07:12AM (#37145323)
In addition, may VPN services have been tested in court like this and have been found to do no logging, showing they can be trusted.
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by EspressoGPT on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @05:17AM (#37144556)
It's especially fascinating how such a highly technical, rather nerd-ish concept is being marketed so widely. They did a great job there.
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by MattGaiser on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @05:32AM (#37144661)
It has lots of practical uses such as evading Netflix geo-restrictions or getting around local network restrictions, even without considering privacy.
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by mnd999 on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @05:33AM (#37144666)
> Because a VPN in this sense is just a glorified proxy.
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by coldtea on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @10:55AM (#37148052)
What else would a proper VPN be besides a particular way to have a internet-wide proxy (as opposed to e.g. just a web proxy)?
Re:Don’t Use VPN Services by mnd999 on Thursday August 17, 2023 @03:14PM (#37166558)
Traditionally it’s a mechanism to connect to a private network via a public one, for example to access a corporate network from home.

But a proxy doesn’t have to be a web proxy. Socks proxies were pretty common at one time.