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1) In many countries (e.g. US) the ISP sells the surfing data (e.g. DNS lookups or plain http request contents).
When tunneling the traffic, the ISP will not see even DNS queries (besides the lookup of the VPN hostname).
2) In some countries must log all IP addresses of all users for potential use by the police (e.g. UK, Denmark?, Germany -> currently not enforced). A VPN can effectively prevent that, if they really do not log by themselves.
-> It makes sense, but only if affected by those issues. -
@bahua True, but that's not the kind of VPN being discussed here.
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What the above posters said: avoiding ISP data mining, country-level traffic logging (and firewalls, if applicable), home resources (e.g. Pihole), bypassing geo locking, etc.
Additionally, you shouldn't be logged into Google or Facebook anyway because why make it easier to spy on you? At least give them a challenge. -
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@bahua Not using Facebook works better ð
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@Root Unfortunately Facebook tracks even if not logged in and even when not registered.
An effective protection are those Facebook containers or any script blocker, configured to block e.g. Facebook like buttons, analytics and comments. -
@sbiewald Unfortunately, I'm well aware. I block everything facebook-related (and google, etc. where possible), replace CDNs with local hosting, avoid any shared account services, and use container tabs to keep various activities (dev, banking, trading, social media, gaming, movies, etc.) separate. I often use a VPN as well. Apart from occasional broken sites I need to fight with, browsing is a much more enjoyable experience now.
The occasional Czech, Romanian, Estonian, Yiddish, etc. ads that slip through also amuse me greatly. -
@irene
I definitely used one to watch the Kansas City Royals' postseason games in 2014 and 2015, with traffic routed through a VPN in the UK, because of the television networks and Major League Baseball jerking each other off into each other's mouths. They blacked out the games to people in North America, because they love the taste of TV executive jism. -
@sbiewald well what stops the VPN provider from doing the same malicious acts? You are just tunneling your data through them to add another layer of encryption. Plus, plain http request? I hope you are not sending anything sensitive over a site that does that. Please switch to what everyone have been using for the past 5 or so years and HTTPS
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@python3 Of course those commercial VPNs are just a shift of trust, and in many jurisdictions ISPs are more restricted than VPN providers.
I did not say I use VPNs for that (or even use http secret data) and I never claimed it makes HTTP any better.
You might have misunderstood me: My above comment was not a recommendation to use a VPN at home - I don't even use one of those commercial VPNs.
It was just an explanation why people use one at home.
So, recently, a person in the US was arrested for stalking people.
The evidence was some data from google, a ...
The most easiest explanation of VPNð
Can someone example to me why do people use a VPN when not on public wifi? Like you are already at home with your own private network.
Like the moment you log into Facebook or Twitter or medium or to check your Gmail/outlook whatever, all you are doing is making is making it very clear to the host companies that you are inconsistently paranoid. Because all the sudden the person who's home address is in Seattle, work and home phone are in Seattle and all of their communication is done with people in Seattle. Has their web traffic location encrypted unknown.
Yeah your packets might be encrypted, but you are still spreading enough self identifying information by merely existing on the web.
At the end of day it seems more like a illusion of safety that these VPN sell. At the cost of a good dollar and slower internet speeds.
Unless you got some actual trade secrets and sensitive information, the f is the point for you to use one?
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why!?
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