Katzenfreund Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 VPNs grant anonymity and privacy, also protection from hacking to their user. They can be used to bypass a government’s, ISP’s, company’s or geographic blocking. And of course protect from law suits for illegal activity like downloading torrents. The good ones charge subscription and assure privacy and no log keeping in their terms. So you can thrust them. Or maybe not so much? I’ve done some thinking and personal research on the subject. Firstly, if I were the NSA, FBI, CIA, MI6 etc, I’d set up a cheap VPN and monitor its users. Who’s to say they’re not doing it? Then there are always rumors about such authorities having access to specially made backdoors. And not so imaginary stories of spying apps planted by them. Or the service might get hacked. As an example: Snowden Docs Show UK Spies Attacked Anonymous, Hackers. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/war-anonymous-british-spies-attacked-hackers-snowden-docs-show-n21361 But let’s look what the more honest of anonymising services say. TOR in its FAQs says: “There are plenty of subtle attacks people might try. There might also be accidental bugs in Tor that could affect your anonymity. We periodically find and fix anonymity-related bugs, Tor does not remove personal information from the data the user’s application sends. Note that there are situations where Tor fails to solve privacy problems entirely. If your IP happens to be an illegally used exit node, you can get into legal trouble without doing anything wrong. Exit nodes can eavesdrop on communications. Tor is a work in progress. There is still plenty of work left to do for a strong, secure, and complete solution.” https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#Backdoor Also, Tor does not hide the fact that someone is using Tor. An adversary may try to de-anonymize the user by some means. One way is by exploiting vulnerable software on the user's computer. The bulk of the funding for Tor's development has come from the federal government of the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network) But what about VPNs? Taking the well known – and honest - Windscribe as an example, it says in its FAQs: Q: Will Windscribe make me 100% anonymous? A: Unlikely. Achieving complete anonymity online is extremely difficult if not impossible. Anyone who claims otherwise most likely has a pair of pants that are on fire. Windscribe will get you 90% there. And I’ve seen reports by VPN users who checked their anonymised IP using more sophisticated tests and their true IP showed thru. Finally, I’ve just come across this news story that prompted me to do the research: Facebook promotes a VPN under the Onavo brand that collects even more data on you https://www.techspot.com/news/73267-facebook-promotes-vpn-under-onavo-brand-collects-even.html So whom can you trust? What do you think? solitario, jamesDDI and snf 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamesDDI Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 Using AirVPN from years. Their TOS explains everything. https://airvpn.org Do not believe the paid reviews of the "other" vpn samuelthegreat and Tickler 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cherishjoo Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 Do you guys know SSR? ShadowsocksR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamesDDI Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 12 minutes ago, cherishjoo said: Do you guys know SSR? ShadowsocksR. Yeah, but never used it for what i remember Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
straycat19 Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 1 hour ago, Katzenfreund said: So whom can you trust? What do you think? We have our own private VPN simply because we don't trust any of the commercial ones. I have 5 of my home computers on 5 different commercial VPNs but none of them are as secure as our own. I use those as a security test bed, but don't publish results outside of our organization. I will say this. At any moment in time, if you are connected to a VPN, whether they say they keep data or not, your data is visible on their servers and any law enforcement organization can get access to that data simply by having the VPN capture their current data when told to by any law enforcement organization monitoring for when a specific user is online. The old saying you can run but you can't hide has been proven over and over again. On TOR. On Bitcoin. And on others. If you really want to hide, don't use a computer or cell phone. haris_sane69 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David_N Posted August 13, 2018 Share Posted August 13, 2018 (edited) Yes i can trust some vpn which are trustworthy and anonymous but can,t trust All vpn. Edited August 13, 2018 by David_N Matrix 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sm1tty Posted June 16, 2019 Share Posted June 16, 2019 for what I do online I think a VPN is OK, I would not trust a VPN to do things illegal though. I think they would tell on you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IBNHAGAR Posted July 16, 2019 Share Posted July 16, 2019 Yes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhjohns Posted July 16, 2019 Share Posted July 16, 2019 The poll should include a simple NO. No, I don't use VPNs but not for any of the polling reasons. I just don't want to waste my money on something unnecessary. Whether or not a person thinks a VPN is necessary is up to the individual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solitario Posted October 19, 2019 Share Posted October 19, 2019 I never use VPN nor will I ever use it, I like to leave my mark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vitorio Posted October 19, 2019 Share Posted October 19, 2019 (edited) On 2/16/2018 at 9:49 AM, Katzenfreund said: They can be used to bypass a government’s, ISP’s, company’s or geographic blocking. This Is my main purpose, to unblock geographic blocking. Edited October 19, 2019 by vitorio Tickler 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dce3480 Posted October 21, 2019 Share Posted October 21, 2019 I Trust Seed4.me jamesDDI 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oriondin Posted October 24, 2019 Share Posted October 24, 2019 VPN's are good tools to use but trusting any VPN 100% is equivalent to believing seat belts and airbags will save your life if you drive off a mountain Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kasper Posted February 10, 2020 Share Posted February 10, 2020 https://vpnscam.com/nordvpn-protonvpn-proton-mail-owned-by-tesonet-ceo-darius-bereika/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dce3480 Posted February 10, 2020 Share Posted February 10, 2020 CyberGhost! FTW! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duddy Posted February 10, 2020 Share Posted February 10, 2020 (edited) YES, I do! It is BetterNet. Edited February 10, 2020 by duddy aum 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tickler Posted February 14, 2020 Share Posted February 14, 2020 On 2/16/2018 at 7:27 PM, jamesDDI said: Using AirVPN from years. Their TOS explains everything. https://airvpn.org Do not believe the paid reviews of the "other" vpn I don't trust any TOS that says it guarantees my privacy but I do trust most VPNs that they will allow me to access something banned within or outside my nation or by my ISP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebelas Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 Yes, i do use 1.1.1.1 and express vpn is better Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A2R14N Posted June 10, 2022 Share Posted June 10, 2022 I use Tunnelbear extension and it's perfect for me and trustly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maiyeu3t Posted July 4, 2022 Share Posted July 4, 2022 I use Windscribe vpn. It is good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corleone Posted July 31, 2022 Share Posted July 31, 2022 I am on NordVPN now. My 3 years subscription will expire in about one month, and after that I'll opt for CyberGhost or Private Internet Access. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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