Do You Need a VPN - Virtual Private Network?

I'm with you on this.  That said, I was working for Doubleclick when they were sued by the Attorney General of Michigan because they acquired a direct mail company that would allow them to tie your online data with your physical address.  Is it scary to see that FB knows your interests and serves you ads? Sorta.  Do I buy some of these things?  Indeed.  It really speaks to the individual's privacy preference.  For example, I would be all for a chip implant that links my ID, passport, credit/debit cards, work id, etc. (think Apple Wallet) so that I could not carry all of that stuff with me.  I could just scan my wrist and go.  My wife thinks I am insane, but she is starting to come around to the idea.

The reason is because it’s not just about tailored ads. Your reasoning implies a base assumption that tracking your moves on the internet would generally be used for  good, or at least a non-harmful, purpose. I can’t possibly dream up all of the ways that information could be turned against you, or even just used to make sure you don’t see certain things, especially as AI becomes more advanced.

The more data collected about you, the easier it becomes for that data to wind up in the wrong hands. Suddenly, you become unable to get a loan because your credit has been stolen, you have a bunch of negative hits on that credit, and what you thought was a score of 820 is actually a 580.  It happens, and that is one of the ways it happens.  Corporations track you and collect all kinds of data, and employees within those companies can access this data. They may not know it’s you, specifically, but they don’t care. 
 

Depends how you feel about your spending habits.  If you are confident in your ability to turn down a "good deal" and stick to your saving goals, then sure it's not a problem.  Most people aren't saving as much as they should and targeted advertising does hurt them in a concrete significant way.

I disagree that a "tailored ad experience" is all that useful. It's often somebody who just wants to try to sell you something that they think you might be interested in--regardless of whether or not you actually are.

For instance, I work in IT. For a long time, if I let targeted advertising run freely I'd get ads for certain large IT vendors I had to deal with and for crypto. Neither of which I had any interest in, as I'm not a big fan of most large IT vendors and I prefer to extort organizations in person rather than through ransomware.

I will admit that for me poorly targeted advertising is more annoying than the traditional scattershot approach. 

Targeted advertising also doesn't deal with any of the issues that make advertising awful (misrepresenting the product, malware, excess repetition, etc.).

"buying something I think would genuinely improve my life"

Ads are meant to genuinely reduce your savings account. What the hell ads are you talking about? 

Yea - I think a lot of people in this topic are rather confused about what a VPN actually does and does not do.   The only thing a VPN really does is:
 

1.) encrypt your data  - for the vast majority of internet traffic in 2023 this is already happening.  Modern web browsers default to going to https:// on websites, practically every single public email provider utilizes SMTPS etc etc.   That does not mean there isn't actual benefit to using VPN, but it's not giving the majority of people using it a massive increase in network security they likely think it is.   It's kind of like wrapping an already wrapped present.  

2.) It masks your IP address.  I don't think this is as valuable as many people think it is, but it can be a very big plus for some users and is typically one of the big reasons people want it, to appear they are coming from somewhere else to the site they are interacting with.   There have been ways to figure out your actual IP address even when using a VPN (WebRTC hello) but I don't believe those methods work on VPN clients discussed here.


That's it - people talking about using a VPN to protect your private data because websites make money selling that info... they're not getting that info via unsecure network transmissions, they get that information because you enter it into a website when you register for it.   A VPN isn't going to somehow stop them from getting that data.   A VPN doesn't protect your cookies or movements or anything like that.

A website itself can also be insecure - you may be terminating HTTPS to their content delivery network, but then the connection back to the website's origin - which will flow over the public internet - is over HTTP.   A VPN isn't going to protect you from that at all either.

A VPN can have it's uses, and I don't think there is anything wrong or bad with using one, it's still pretty much just giving you good things at a very afffordable cost.   But some of the claims as to what it actually does are just not accurate, and I think the vast majority of people actually using these services don't really need to use them.


My biggest recommendation, using a VPN or not, don't expect anything you put on the internet to actually be secure and private.

(20+ years in IT security and networking)

Proton has just been slower and less reliable than the other two in my experience.

I don't like gravy generally and don't like cheese curds but I love poutine. I don't understand it... there must be some sort of black magic involved.