I use Control D, which is a decent DNS service. With it, I can do the sort of magic that Proton VPN does in terms of “make me appear if I’m in Canada”, but on a website-by-website basis. So the geographic spread of ProtonVPN isn’t as useful to me as it might be.
I use an Android phone, and pay for Google One. Because of that:
a) Google knows where I’m going and what I’m doing anyway. I have no privacy from Google. So there is no downside for my privacy in chucking all my VPN traffic via Google. You may have a different view, and that’s fine, but this is mine.
b) in terms of privacy, my goal is to keep my data private from hotels and similar free wifi when I travel. My mobile phone company knows where I am anyway.
c) the Google VPN is built-in to my phone and seems to work very well. It appears to not take any appreciable extra battery and just works. And it looks to have a Mac OS app as well, not that I’ve tried it. (Proton VPN appears to reliably fail to connect the first time I try using it.)
d) Google knows everything about me anyway, irrespective of me using its VPN service (I use Gmail, an Android phone, and Google Home). But Proton knows nothing about me, unless I use its VPN service. So it’s worse for my privacy, oddly, to add Proton into the mix.
In my case, I’m just idly wondering whether there is any actual benefit for me to keep the ProtonVPN subscription? (I don’t use Proton Mail, the password thing, or anything else).
If you’ve made your peace with that state of affairs and your threat model is covered by all you said, I’ll concur with my fellow Redditors, it seems you’ve got your bases covered. I’d love to see Proton gain/retain more paying customers, but if the service has already been less than great for you it would be silly for you to remain involved there.
I don’t think you’re wrong. I think this is a very subjective thing for each of us.
Every one of us has to decide what’s their acceptable risk / trust factors with every service they deal with. Those of us who have used ProtonVPN have decided that for whatever reason, they’re trustworthy and OK to do business with. That could change in the future, and that would be the time to re-evaluate that relationship.
But if you’re OK with using Google services, then that’s fine. I personally avoid them because underneath it all, they are an Ad company and the more data they have about you, the more ads that they can serve you.
Are you visiting insecure websites? Because if not, your hotels are only gathering a minimal amount of data.
Beyond that, I’m not the opinion you want. I deplore Google. And I adore Proton. yea, proton knows my browsing habits just like your hotel would, but afaik being a Swiss company they’re pretty much prohibited from sharing their data about me.
(Someone correct me if it I’m wrong.)
Even if I am wrong, I’d prefer the service that I’m paying specifically for, which means they’re getting revenue from, rather than spoon feed it to Google
I do note Googles pledge that they aren’t logging activity, etc, but seriously? They are decades away from their “do no evil” era and decades into their “if you’re not doing anything wrong why hide it” era. They’ve already been caught red handed
Beside, how many awesome services has Google introduced throughout the years only to pull the plug because only a few million people signed up? So even if their VPN is all, how long can you count on jt for.
Excellent question an a well defined use case and threat model. That’s something that you don’t see often.
I have a similar situation to you, although I am a paying proton customer. I use the VPN when I travel for my larger systems, but I also use a self-hosted VPN for my day-to-day VPN needs. I’m not a huge fan of the google, so personally I’d rather not give them one more datapoint or further tie myself into them. I’d love to degoogle as much as possible, though since I don’t like apple devices and there are really no good privacy focused phones out there that will still allow me to conduct business, I know there are limits.
I’m use Firefox on everything from Mac, W11 PC, Android Pixel w/ VPN and iPhone all sporting UBlock, Privacy Badger, SimpleLogin free, Hide my Email, Bitwarden w/BW Authenticator and I’m just a human without a TS clearance. One of millions of other humans without a need for any kind of privacy because I’m just one plankton in the oceans of the world with literally no one looking to scam me beyond jumk mail. Using Gmail pretty much catches 99.9% of that.
There are always examples of someone who literally needs extra security but to pay extra for something you don’t really need because you’re just not Secret Squirel enough.
If you’re going around turning your phone to Airplane mode, or not even using your sim then you must be high a High Level Get Smart type and no wonder you’re on Reddit encouraging lesser people then you because they’re trying hard to be just like you. Flattery is the sincerest form of attraction next to acknowledging you’re just not that important or like an individual plankton in the worlds oceans.
Different strokes for different folks and all of our subscriptions I suppose make more security offerings, give recent technoligists better job opportunities and what really matters id blowing our money on stupid unneeded shit because we make so much of it and there’s nothing more important.
Here’s my guess: Google has visibility on a lot of things, but generally not all the user traffic. By logging the behavior by identifier (even if they don’t know who it is, they can still correlate multiple connections from a single user), they can get valuable data about user behavior.
To get the intuition about it, they could get information like: “If the user visits website aaa.com (that we know, because it is covered by google analytics), it’s also very likely to visit moreprivatewebsite.com (that we don’t know because there’s no google analytics)”.
If we push this logic more, I would assume it would be possible to single out a user and get their full internet behavior based on the data that google has.
Personally, I find it quite scary. Good for you if you don’t care :-/
Google VPN is very stable and connects fast, but you can only connect to the servers in your country, if you are a paid Proton plus VPN user, then you have fast speed than Google VPN, and can connect to servers abroad.
Are you visiting insecure websites? Because if not, your hotels are only gathering a minimal amount of data.
When I log in to the hotel wifi, it asks for a room number and my surname.
Any https website you visit, the domain name is not encrypted. Everything else is, but the domain name isn’t.
So the good folks at Marriot could - and probably do - dump all those domains into my data, and know who I bank with, what news sources I read, all those things. Not sure I want that… !!
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Plenty of bad things Google does; but I don’t believe the data that Google has on me already will be altered much by using their VPN.
Sounds like Google “play”s (I’m sorry, I had to )by other countries censorship rules in exchange for being allowed to conduct business there… maybe Proton is a good travel VPN in certain countries?
Thanks! I assume that the VPN is correlated to my name - it’s a paid service as part of my subscription.
My assumption is that Google has the majority of my user data through my use of Android + Chrome + Gmail + YouTube + Google wifi. I doubt that they gain more information from the VPN use (even if we all assume that they are lying when they say they don’t keep the data).
I don’t think that “I don’t care” - I think my view is a little.kore defeatist. “I care but it’s much too late to hide anything from Google”.
Is it smarter to use your carrier’s 5G for the internet rather than log into the public wifi in stuations such as a hotel or other public place that you will be at for an extended time?
Sorry on the delay, but if Google alresdy has all your data, the little bit more that Marriott could add is a drop in the bucket and probably already accessible to and by Google and their advertisers
I just work double time trying to keep Google out of my life. No chrome, no Google apps, block analytics, and so forth.
I’ve only made small sites, but any site I’ve made served Google fonts directly from the sites server, rather than let use googles. Last I knew they said they wouldn’t use font logs for tracking but I don’t actually believe them.
What’s the experience like using a VPN in china? I’ve heard that their Great Firewall is supposedly able to detect VPN users but where there’s a will, there’s always a way around a snooping government
Or, less conspiracy-theory, Google don’t have VPNs in those countries yet and therefore don’t offer a service there.
Google’s VPN is designed to look as if you’re from the place you’re currently in. So I guess if they don’t have a VPN in, say, the UAE, they can’t offer one.
“I care but it’s much too late to hide anything from Google”.
It’s never too late; you can always make some minor changes to give Google less data than they already have. (Ex: turn off targeted ads, disable storage of search results & location data, use a different email provider) And it is always possible to move completely out of the Google ecosystem.
If you are fine with Google’s presence in your life and then tracking everything you do, that’s honestly fine. But it’s incorrect to say it’s “too late”.