Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Are VPNs Just A Scam?”.
If you’ve used a virtual private network or vpn, it’s probably been for one of two reasons: one trying to stick it to those greedy corporations by getting around a geofilter, so you can watch streaming content or two to protect your own freaking privacy. Ah, today, today, we’re going to be talking about that second use case and how many vpns have come under fire for not keeping customers browsing habits private enough. So can you actually trust your vpn service? It helps to first know how a vpn works, at least in theory. The idea is that you connect to a vpn which then connects you to the wider internet. Your isp cannot see which sites or services you’re visiting or using, except for the fact that you’re using a certain vpn, now many vpns claim to protect user privacy by promising not to keep logs of user activity.
However, some amount of logging is necessary for them to even operate at all, as the services have to keep tabs on ip addresses. In order to know where data should be sent to and from. The real question is whether these vpns log, no more information than is absolutely necessary and whether they purge their logs as soon as data transfers are complete. Similarly, to your isp, a vpn could in theory, view everything you’re seeing that isn’t encrypted. That includes not only sites. You’Ve visited but information about your device and even the contents of your unencrypted messages, no matter how lewd they are, and even if you turn on your vpn’s encryption feature that doesn’t stop the vpn service from logging, which sites you’re viewing. So we find ourselves in a situation of either being forced to trust our isp or being forced to trust a vpn. So how do we know which one to trust well, there’s going to be an element of taking claims on faith? No matter what you do, it’s kind of the same way.
You trust that when you get on a commercial flight, there wasn’t a drunk incompetent mechanic who was working on patching up the wings an hour ago, but you can still minimize the risk of your data being exposed by doing some homework on vpn providers. First of all, it’s a good idea to shy away from free vpns and no, even though we’ve featured paid services as sponsors on this channel before no one’s paying us to say this, you see many free vpns are ad supported, and while these might be okay, if You’Re just trying to get around a geofilter, it’s hard to trust them to keep your data private, providing a vpn for users, costs money and many free vpns aren’t above selling your browsing data to third parties in order to serve relevant ads which are more profitable than Untargeted ads, in fact, there was a big scandal in 2020, where several free vpns, who claimed not to log user activity shocker, had over a whole terabyte of activity logs leaked out onto the open internet yikes, and if you go back a few more years, another popular Free vpn called hola actually sold their users bandwidth, meaning that many people were unknowingly having their computers used as part of a malware, botnet bottom line. It just isn’t worth saving a few bucks and we’ll tell you more right after we thank seasonic for sponsoring today’s video seasonic’s prime ultra titanium, pc power supplies have ultra high efficiency, thanks to their 80 plus titanium rating they’re, fully module feature, hybrid fan, control to control. Overall fan noise and they got fluid dynamic fan bearings.
That’S fancy. They’Ve got up to a 50 000 hour. Life expectancy along with a 12 year warranty you’re gon na upgrade your pc before then so check them out at the link below now. Even though you want to avoid free vpns paying for one doesn’t get you completely out of the woods before plunking down your hard-earned cash, carefully, read the vpn’s policies and see if there are any third party audits available.
Many reputable paid vpns hire outside auditing firms to come in and evaluate their privacy practices and it’s better if these audit results are published by the firm itself, not by the vpn’s marketing and pr team. They’Ve got a bit of a vested interest there. Another smart thing to do is see if a vpn service you’re interested in has been forced by government authorities to cough up logs of user activity. There have been instances of paid services that claim they don’t log activity.
Turning over enough information to authorities to have their users arrested and while we obviously don’t at all condone using a vpn to commit crimes, please don’t it can be useful to know if law enforcement, the one group that can often compel a vpn to turn over user Logs, if it has any, couldn’t get their hands on those logs because they didn’t even exist in the first place. Speaking of law enforcement also check and see if the country that the vpn is based in has mandatory data retention laws depending on exactly where in the world your vpn is located, they may have no choice but to track your activity so be sure to understand the Legal situation before you start browsing, for example, france and australia are known to have mandatory logging, while panama and romania do not, at least for the time being. I think the moon is also pretty libertarian and finally remember that, just because something says vpn on it, that doesn’t mean it’s designed to enhance your privacy.
There was a big scandal in 2019 after facebook was convincing users, many of them teenagers to install a vpn on their phone that tracks their activity in return for small amounts of money. I want some cash to buy bubble gum at the quarter store, so be very careful about whom you trust. Just like you do offline, i mean you wouldn’t buy stuff from every sales person that comes to your door.
Would you that was me one time and then i just ran out of room for all the vacuum cleaners? Oh my gosh, that was a tech wiki thanks for watching the whole thing guys like the video dislike the video. Whatever your heart leads you to do check out our other videos and comment below with video suggestions. Tell us what to make videos about and don’t forget to subscribe and follow. Hey. You want a vacuum. .