Courts can order providers to keep logs on certain users. Wiretapping laws also allow for it. And all of that goes out the window if the government decides there's a threat to national security.
> Domestically, I wouldnt be surprised if all of this data from US owned VPNs is shipped to the NSA or other groups and analyzed. After the Snowden reveals its hard to really see this stuff as conspiracy anymore.
Even the "friendly" international ones aren't in the clear. Sweden isn't in FVEY, but they're in Fourteen Eyes. And we know from the XKeyscore leaks that the NSA hoovers up metadata like there's no tomorrow. I'd bet my house that anyone who connects to a commercial VPN or _especially_ to Tor lights up like a Christmas tree on the NSAs board – so they might not know for sure what you're doing, but they know you are possibly doing something.
Apple's Private Relay is probably the best chance to actually blend in, but estimates are 1-2% usage for "average users" and 3-5% for Wikimedia editors who I'd assume to have a technical slant. That's an order of magnitude too low for a crowd to exist to blend into, and with two friendly US entities on both sides of the privacy equation, I wouldn't rely on it to stand up against significant scrutiny.
> The only practical use case I can think of is torrents where the legal and political will to subpoena a vpn provider is low, so its this weird loophole where you can torrent but your ISP will never be informed. For now I suppose until the IP holders think the legal fees are worth it or get a law passed to sidestep subpeonas.
My analysis tends towards this: there's a gradient of behavior that is "tolerated" at each step. If you want to torrent, a cheap VPN is tolerated and your crimes will be overlooked... because it's far better to catch serious criminals through that VPN. If you want to buy LSD from a dark web site, Tor lets your crimes be overlooked, because the big fish are the sellers. If you want to commit a significant crime, TLAs know everything about you already and the DEA/HSI/FBI/USPIS/IRS-CI or your local equivalents are ready to parallel construct your ass to the wall when you become noticeable enough.
But maybe I'm not as pessimistic as you – the vast majority of people aren't at the far end of the spectrum, so if you want to infringe copyrights, $60 to Mullvad for a year is what you want.
1) I do believe it is quite private
2) the socksv5 proxy is useful to prevent qbittorrent connecting to the internet at work by mistake
3) if the network is spotty or a bit unstable the vpn hides the instability from apps
4) I don't trust my isp DNS
5) geoblocking (mullvad is not the best at this though)
Worse, some of these are tied to foreign nation state intelligence, who are now analyzing your data when before they couldn't because they didnt have a relationship with your ISP. Domestically, I wouldnt be surprised if all of this data from US owned VPNs is shipped to the NSA or other groups and analyzed. After the Snowden reveals its hard to really see this stuff as conspiracy anymore.
Weird technical issues happen because a lot of services don't keep vpn's in mind. I saw a lot of people were having issues connecting to multiplayer game servers. The vpn provider broke something, maybe it was on a blacklisted IP, maybe increased latency, maybe the IP is in the wrong region and people are connecting to a NA server but are in LATAM, etc.
I really dont know the use case for a vpn, not to mention advertising snooping happens on the application level anyway. Its javascript running on my browser and html5 and heaven knows what else analyzing me for ads, not "what IP did you connect from."
Lastly, there are privacy tools like onion and running a browser with no js active. These vpn types dont do that. They're actually not getting the privacy and security they want because tor is slow and a no-js firefox is unfun. So this weird cargo cult of VPNs has appeared, similar to stuff like "disable UAC" and other "computer enthusiast" knowledge you see in gamer or low information forums. Its the blind leading the blind here and these capitalist opportunists absolutely are taking advantage of that. "I'm safe I have a vpn," is a normal thing to say even though its almost entirely wrong.
The only practical use case I can think of is torrents where the legal and political will to subpoena a vpn provider is low, so its this weird loophole where you can torrent but your ISP will never be informed. For now I suppose until the IP holders think the legal fees are worth it or get a law passed to sidestep subpeonas.