I think I understand fully enough what a virtual private network service (VPN) does, and I can see some advantages in using a VPN, but after considering whether I should purchase one, I’ve reached the tentative conclusion that it wouldn’t be worth the hassle or the cost. I do not do download or watch anything that is illegal. I don’t communicate with people who are doing things that are illegal. I am technically and socially literate enough to not be duped by phishing, scams, and the like. Google and the other big tech companies have all kinds of information about me and my browsing habits, but that information isn’t interesting enough to anyone of consequence for me to worry much about it.
By “average person,” I mean someone who is not doing anything illegal and who is not famous. It could also mean someone who doesn’t earn enough income to make paying for a good VPN inconsequential.
Costs: If I did buy one, I’d buy one rather than go with a freebie. I read reviews of the more popular services, so I have an idea about the price range of a decent service. But again, I’d bear all these costs if I thought it was worth it.
I’m pretty open-minded on this one, even though for now, I don’t intend to purchase one. I may not know what I don’t know about VPNs and the reason why they’re worth the price to someone boring like me.
The first is a question of how much you value your privacy and Internet anonymity. If you place a high value on those things then you will find a VPN valuable in achieving goals that reflect that value for privacy. You’ve stated that you don’t place a whole lot of value on that and are pretty much indifferent, but not everyone thinks that way.
The second use case is accessing content that would otherwise be region locked. If you’re a sports fan, for example, you can generally use VPN to access local games using a monthly service that would generally not allow you to view those games. If you play video games a VPN can allow you to access games that are either banned in your area or would otherwise be censored. If you stream video & movies you can use a VPN to access content that is otherwise not viewable in your region. Again: not everyone has these needs, but I feel like your “average” person may be a sports fan that doesn’t have cable, or your “average” person could be a gamer living in Australia.
You leave a lot of info out that could help determine if you need one or not. Doing illegal stuff isn’t the only reason people use them. Dealing with sensitive information is a good reason for having one as an example. Does your country have a repressive firewall like China? Do you do things like twitch or live streaming?
If you ever do anything financial while not on your own network, IE buy something online while using airport wifi etc, its much much more secure to do so behind a VPN. You can argue even on your own private wifi network its safer to still do it on a VPN in case someone is snooping your wifi. Hell they give us a wifi network at work and using my VPN im secure in knowing they dont know what I am looking at. Not that I am looking at anything bad but just saves any potential for them to question my usage.
Ultimatly I bought one because it was like 20 bucks for 3 years. Thats so cheap as to say its basically free worth it even though I am not covering up anything illegal.
One use case that I’ve heard about is to use the vpn to browse in public unprotected networks like “free WiFi”, where the tunnel offers you a protection whereas the usual traffic would be open for being eavesdropped.
Also I don’t think that it offers you much protection in terms of illegal activities (not that I would endorse any such activities) as you’re basically employing a middle man that has access to your meta data and over whom you’ve no control. So no VPN are probably just for average users that have specific anonymity necessities rather than for people who need trustworthy anonymity from all sources.
By “average person,” I mean someone who is not doing anything illegal and who is not famous. It could also mean someone who doesn’t earn enough income to make paying for a good VPN inconsequential.
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I am technically and socially literate enough to not be duped by phishing, scams, and the like. Google and the other big tech companies have all kinds of information about me and my browsing habits, but that information isn’t interesting enough to anyone of consequence for me to worry much about it.
This is not only what a VPN does. A VPN protects you from man-in-the-middle attacks if you are on public wifi. Even on your home network, which may or may not be secure (spoiler: it doesn’t matter), your ISP can and will, fully legally, sell your data to anyone who will buy it.
There is also another CMV with exactly the same premise here.
Ummm… actually, there are more reasons to use a VPN than not to… the very least of which is as some level of “out of country proxy” so you can access things on the Internet that may be restricted simply based on your country of residence and/or origin (a “new”, but already seriously outdated concept).
Moreover, many content providers are already starting to lift, or have been advised to lift, those “country of origin” type restrictions (one of the most obvious examples being professional sports, who may ask a channel to “black out” a particular televised game with X miles of the location where it is being played (most of that being rendered as useless, simply due to advances in technology).
But, you should be using VPN services of the-most-common nature whenever you are on a non-private network. Or, more specifically, whenever connected to a network where you do not own every single machine or device on that network. Basically, the VPN is used to transport your traffic back to an origin you “trust” to not be spying on you, or what traffic you are transmitting.
Sure, there is also worry about random “appliance” devices which may also be connected to your home network, for example. An appliance, at its basic form, is any potentially untrusted “black box” device which you do not know 100% of what is coming in to it, or what is leaving it. Ideally, even on a home network, those types of devices should be relegated to a separate subnet or VLAN, simply “for privacy” - that, however, is sufficiently outside the scope of this DMV and thus, irrelevant to this discussion.
Are you talking exclusively about people buying VPNs only for themselves? A lot of workers—especially remote workers—use VPNs every day to access sensitive material on their employer’s network. This is a very common use case and should be included in the definition of “average person.”
You damn sure should if your ever using any wifi that’s not yours! Hell even then watch your usage to see if someone is sniffing you!
A VPN protects your traffic from people listening in, if I go to a net cafe I can got on the free wifi and boot up Wireshark an watch everything your sending over the internet - pictures, files, text, passwords, etc. the VPN makes that much harder as all I will see is scrabbled bits and bobs. A VPN is damn near essential just to cover your own ass.
I do pen testing, there are prebuilt programs that I point at a wifi network and let them go to crack the pass, now this could take a while, so you just get a PI brick and hide it and let it go. Now I’m on your wifi and can watch all your lovely traffic! Not using HTTPS? That all mine now :3
Get a damn VPN or set up a SOCKS5 proxy yourself on your wifi and use that… this is like someone arguing they don’t need to wear a helmet because they would never crash - it’s protection against other people - not from yourself!
Private Internet Access is pretty good, so is TorGuard. Check out slicksdeals.net they get good VPN codes fairly often. They have a lifetime Ivancy one for 25$ heard goods things about them but a few bad ones too.
I gave someone else a !delta for a similar point, and I appreciate your time, so you get one too. I don’t know if its enough to budge me into buying one, but you’ve weakened my resolve a tad.
The second use case is accessing content that would otherwise be region locked. If you’re a sports fan, for example, you can generally use VPN to access local games using a monthly service that would generally not allow you to view those games. If you play video games a VPN can allow you to access games that are either banned in your area or would otherwise be censored. If you stream video & movies you can use a VPN to access content that is otherwise not viewable in your region.
Again, I’m not the type to do something illegal. Maybe the average person is, which would be an indictment of my word choice, but not a challenge to my point of view.
I do think you’re onto something with the region locking. Can you provide some concrete examples where, in the USA, accessing something that is region locked would not break terms of service or any other laws/contracts?
Ultimatly I bought one because it was like 20 bucks for 3 years. Thats so cheap as to say its basically free worth it even though I am not covering up anything illegal.
Where did you find this as a deal? I’m interested myself, considering the discussions going in on this thread.
Yes, I’m talking about people buying them for their own use. I’m not arguing categorically that VPNs are useless in all imaginable situations, and I don’t think of an employer or company as “an average person like me.” IN other words, if my employer has one (and they probably do) I’m fine with using it, but that’s all the more reason I’m not going to buy one for myself.
It could be that you don’t really need one, especially if you live in the United States. My brother was looking at getting one a while back and I talked him out of it because it really wouldn’t have gotten him anything. You could very much be in the same boat.
There are lots of people that it’s handy for, though - and you don’t need to be a crazy hacker-type to get a lot of good, regular use out of VPN.