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Zack Whittaker

Most people don't need a VPN, so we look at the best privacy tools that can meaningfully help protect your privacy online, and why.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but reducing the digital trail you leave behind online as you browse the web is really important. Some of these have immediate effect!

techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/vpn-

30 September at 16:34 | Open on mastodon.social
6 comments
Walter Burns

@zackwhittaker

If you use the right VPNs (Mullvad, IVPN, and ProtonVPN) - it does in fact and indeed provide online privacy.

30 September at 16:38 | Open on toot.community
Ian Campbell

@zackwhittaker Great article. I'd like to add a few points:

-Privacy-first service providers like Proton.

-As of MacOS Sequoia quite a bit in networking and DNS is either broken or changed. iCloud Private Relay now overrides any DNS system setting or proxy and defaults to Cloudflare, a company many security professionals find problematic.

-NextDNS has been a neat value-add for me so far.

(COI: none other than Proton and NextDNS customer)

30 September at 16:43 | Open on masto.deoan.org
🌻 Defederate Threads 🌻

@zackwhittaker ISPs have stated their intent to sell customers' access info to "partners". Even if they are only IP addresses, those are easy to reverse-lookup.

Advice: Most people should be looking for a VPN that honors the "P for private" part of the acronym. But do avoid any VPN or other service offered by parent company Kape inc.

30 September at 20:14 | Open on infosec.exchange
🌻 Defederate Threads 🌻

@zackwhittaker The fact is that the "handful of situations" where VPNs can help is actually all the time, IMO. If you want to avoid #surveillancecapitalism commercial tracking, they are an important ingredient along with ad blockers and a browser that uses first-party isolation (most browsers other than Chrome).

If you jump between Wifi access points, and ISPs, then VPNs are important. Its not just a matter of whether you (mis)trust your home ISP. And its a lot easier to choose (and actually obtain) an alternative VPN than it is an alternative ISP.

@zackwhittaker The fact is that the "handful of situations" where VPNs can help is actually all the time, IMO. If you want to avoid #surveillancecapitalism commercial tracking, they are an important ingredient along with ad blockers and a browser that uses first-party isolation (most browsers other than Chrome).

30 September at 20:20 | Open on infosec.exchange
Victor S Sigmoid

@tasket @zackwhittaker I am unclear why the content producers releasing the "you don't need a VPN" seem to consistently downplay the use cases where they are potentially effective. Not all of those use cases are satisfied by running your own, either.

30 September at 20:24 | Open on hachyderm.io
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