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Comment by ThoAppelsin | Hacker News Reader

I, too, use encrypted VPN, but we are just a minority. Many people use the services provided as-is without taking any extra measures, and I think that those are the people more likely to be influenced by the influencers anyway.

We, the ones that they'll have to spend undue effort to sniff out a profile about, are not targets to them. We are much too resistant to it that we have gone all through the effort of setting up a private VPN with good encryption.

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Whilst a VPN is an important and arguably now necessary way to protect yourself on the internet, it's use in practice is very far from a sliver bullet. Ignoring the somewhat inevitable problems of latency and bandwidth - much of the internet appears hostile to VPNs. A significant number or sites either don't work at all, or are a pain to use.

For example

* On NordVPN through US servers you can't access Amazon (!) Although through Canadian servers you are ok.

* Costco, Apple store, Business Insider, YouTube, google, netflex, dell, consumer reports, ebay - either don't work, or are a pain to make work

* On PureVPN you can't send email - until you have your domain whitelisted

* On PureVPN it's a crap shoot if you get a connection

More detail on experiences with PureVPN and NordVPN are here..

https://www.toytheory.com/?p=295

https://www.toytheory.com/?p=273

https://www.toytheory.com/?p=321

(edit: formatting)

> I, too, use encrypted VPN, but we are just a minority.

You're right that VPN usage is technically a minority [1], but it is well beyond fringe usage.

[1] https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/304927/Downloads/VPN-Usage-Ar...

Just wondering, what makes you trust your VPN provider more than your ISP?

It's more VPN'ing into your own router and trusting your own ISP more than some random free wifi provider.

I use DigitalOcean as my VPN provider and make my connections to there over IPSEC. I did not set the server up myself alone, but used the Algo VPN [1] script to do it for me. With this setup, I have two things to be concerned about:

1- I did not audit the script myself, and they may have injected various malware to the VPN server it spun up during the setup. I am not concerned enough to not trust them, but I could just read the script thoroughly to eliminate the necessity for trust.

2- DigitalOcean has the access to hardware, so it might be doing whatever while I am not looking, and I just never look. Similarly, I could monitor the activity on the server to assume some control.

I chose DO for being the cheapest ($5/month).

[1] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

I am the same as you, but I worry the opposite. Using an encrypted VPN in a sea of unencrypted traffic paints a big target on you that says "Im doing things I don't want you to see". You can bet they are working on / can already decrypt and some three letter agency is targeting specifically VPN traffic.

I don'ẗ think you have to worry, I have never had a job that didn't require encrypted vpn to access the internal networks away from the office.

The only company I know of that puts everything in public so to speak is google.

So VPN traffic is very common.

Good to know , thanks

Hopefully no more than using an envelope instead of a postcard marks you as hiding something.

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