And if you use one, are you happy with it?
I’m trying to get more into privacy and security and VPN is currently a struggle for me (and it seems also for some people in my social circle). It’s mostly cost, effectiveness, but also connection issues (not being able to connect to servers, not reaching websites, sometimes slower speed.
VPN’s are like a condom for the internet. With much of the internet trying to fuck you putting on a wrapper is probably a good idea.
Eventually you get used to the slower speeds, rarely have issues with connection and if I do I just change IP. If a website doesn’t allow a vpn I really don’t need to go there and for the sites that I do want to visit there are optional different front ends I use.
A vpn and a good add blocker is pretty much a necessity for me at this point.
Slower speeds? I get my full 110 megabytes per second downloading with my VPN hahaha
Thanks for rubbing it in… and failing to mention what service you use.
That’s cuz I get a negative reaction when I mention it hahaha. I use Nord. Got it a few years ago to support Eric from Internet Comment Etiquette, and it just worked for me so I haven’t changed. It used to cap out at maybe 15/20MB per sec, but now I get my full-ass gigabit speeds when downloading stuff. I’ve considered switching but it works great for me and I get max speed, so ehhhh
lol… I get that ;]
I’d probably stick with it as well. My current view is that VPN mostly just provides a cover for general piracy. If “they” wanted to devote the effort they could figure out who I was. But I am sure a lot of vpns serve as honey pots and you wouldn’t want to blow your cover just for someone downloading a movie they never would have paid for anyway. They got the signature thing, but if I was doing something serious then that is going to be quite different than my general use signature and match every other user of Tails or whatever. The signature thing really sucks, but we do have control over what signatures we leave where and via vpns and tor those different “personas” don’t need to be connected by singular ip address.
Or at least that is my present opinion. If anyone here has a good argument against it, I’d like to hear it.
I’m fully with ya there. If I was doing anything more than downloading media, I’d be using something like tails with TOR or i2p or whatever. But without having any issues with my ISP chastising me in years (since I began VPNing), I’m happy with what I’ve got.
Indeed. If all my obfuscation techniques break a site, and I can’t fix it by hopping onto a new VPN IP, I go somewhere else. The internet is a vast library and usually, one site’s info is replicated somewhere else more easily accessible. I mean, when you stop and think about it, at no other time in human history have we had the sum total of the world’s knowledge in the palm of our hands or on our desk. Maybe not wisdom, but certainly vast stores of knowledge. The great libraries of Alexandria would look like my magazine rack in comparison. It’s all out there, sometimes you just got to dig for it.