Discussion
It has always made me uncomfortable when privacy projects align themselves with VPNs.
VPNs are, at best, a tool for rerouting traffic. There are a few good reasons
for choosing to reroute traffic but none of those reasons are about privacy.
And all of those reasons are predicated on an ability to trust the new provider *more* than the default/another.
I'm skeptical of that trust in the best cases, I have no idea how it can be justified when/after a provider actively supports authoritarianism.
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To respond to a lot of replies at once - the terms "privacy", "security", "censorship", "trust", "encrypted", "anonymity", "jurisdictional flexibility", and "deniability" while all sharing related domains are all technically describing very different properties.
My work and research depend on being able to treat these properties separately, and understand each in isolation (and warning that it is important to not conflate them with each other)
It is incredibly important to be specific about what properties apply in situations to be able to make the correct trade offs.
An in that respect, VPNs are incapable of providing privacy - under any specific definition of privacy.
They can route around censorship, they can provide security, they can permit jurisdictional and trust flexibility.
But they can only do those things under very specific assumptions which require sharing additional information (albeit changing who gets what data)
@sarahjamielewis (Not disagreeing with you in any broad-functional way beyond the narrow-detail specific absolute "incapable" and "any definition", but I had a friend whose parents monitored network traffic via capabilities on the router (iirc. it's been a bit.) in their attempt to surveil and control their gender/sexuality (and like, them in general).)
(I also think I feel like in my own usage, I have found utility in distinguishing between "private" and "secret" in a way that locates them in mostly-distinct places on a spectrum of "control of information, often considered socially" of which "public" is a range at the other end, but you've done a LOT more work in related areas than me so I'll defer to you around it.)
@sarahjamielewis
As a general rule of thumb - there are obvious exceptions! - unless you own both endpoints of the VPN, one does not need a VPN.
@sarahjamielewis Imho, it all depends on where you are and from whom you want to keep your privacy from.
@sarahjamielewis
The only private secure VPNs are ones with the server/endpoint in your own home or office. Those allow secure use of public WiFi etc.
The 3rd party ones are not about security or privacy, they are a service to evade geo-restrictions.
The big issue on age limited access is nothing to do with VPNs, because it has zero affect on services or VPNs provided from your own office or home, but loss of privacy for everyone accessing public services / websites.
@sarahjamielewis i just want to show ad websites a different grouped ip, not one unique to me over the medium term.
@sarahjamielewis Part of the appeal of a VPN for me is routing the traffic through a country with stronger privacy laws than my own. Beyond that, I don't expect VPNs do to much else for privacy. I also recognise I'm putting a lot of trust into the VPN provider doing that, but it's something that seems to be mitigated by other steps I take that have a lot more utility for privacy concerns than whether or not I use a VPN.
@sarahjamielewis yeah, it's not an increase in privacy, it's a rerouting of trust with data. Still, I understand why the two are often conflated.
People are desperate to control their data, and VPNs return SOME control over how it flows, but, crucially as you point out, not an increase in the level of privacy of that data inherently. It's about trust management.
And yeah, a provider needs to display trustworthy values. Supporting authoritarianism isn't it!
@sarahjamielewis It also baffles me to see a sad deactivated big VPN button in new #Firefox profiles, like as you would absolutely need to start the VPN service now to be protected, somehow.
@sarahjamielewis I mostly hear about people using VPNs to do bittorrent, I guess the idea being that the VPN provider is headquartered in another country and that the local authorities won't be motivated (or wouldn't be able to?) approach them to find out who is torrenting copyrighted material
I don't know if that's "privacy" exactly but it doesn't feel totally unrelated to privacy
Censorship resistance / jurisdictional flexibility are definitely very interconnected with privacy (and civil rights as a whole) and a lot of privacy groups care about the - but neither reduce shared information.
e.g. choosing to visit a library in a different city/country with reduced censorship / more choice / better civil liberties does not alter the ability of the librarian to see what books you are checking out (and to use/reveal that information to others)
@sarahjamielewis thanks, "jurisdictional flexibility" is a great term
@sarahjamielewis there’s a reason why the Privacy subreddit bans discussion of VPNs.
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