This is so well timed, I just bought a 3-year subscription to NordVPN and they have a 30 day refund policy.
Commerical VPNs are, for the vast majority of cases, simply not a good bet for your privacy. You're changing your network traffic path from a diffuse and byzantine series of paths to once centralized collection point. The payoff for an attack on a VPN rises very quickly. Meanwhile, you're also conditioning yourself to say, "My traffic is secure while my VPN is on."
It's not a great combo.
And no, it doesn't break analytical by Facebook or Google in any substantial way. I know some people use them to evade Netflix region exceptions, and that's about all they're good for.
> I always assume that hostile public networks like free WiFi have agents actively trying to man in the middle any connections they can.
And VPNs just move that problem. If you're not demanding and forcing SSL, you're not actually addressing this problem.
> If your device has a known exploit and a single connection not going over SSL you drastically increase your exposure on a public WiFi, hence the one use case for VPN.
I regret to inform you that none of these things you've described stop thise sort those attacks. Forcing SSL on your browser is a realistic option for most threat models. If you're at a level where you're actually being surveilled by a nation-state-level actor, a commercial VPN won't help you. Short of that scenario, forcing SSL will cover most cases.
And even if I don’t run my own VPN, I’d prefer to “move the problem”. It’s so much easier to attack machines on public WiFi than compromise a VPN provider... and much more anonymous, and less likely to incite law enforcement activity. Public airports, libraries, etc are hotbeds of nefarious activity.
So, 0%? But personally I don't go to many sites that dont have full SSL coverage. Do you?
I highly recommend you do this.
> It’s so much easier to attack machines on public WiFi than compromise a VPN provider... and much more anonymous, and less likely to incite law enforcement activity.
Do you think there will be a successful law enforcement follow up to this breach? I doubt it.
> Public airports, libraries, etc are hotbeds of nefarious activity.
As are VPN data centers, as evidenced here.
If you really want to just shift your egress point, lots of self-hosted VPN options exist. These are much better able to do the things you want to do, without being as vulnerable to corporate VPN attacks.
And it sounds like your just looking at http traffic and web browser traffic. Your computer is communicating over lots of other ports and protocols that are often not encrypted. Are you blocking all outbound traffic?
Let’s take the recent iTerm vulnerability. ( https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/763073/ ) I’m guessing you don’t have a plug-in to force curl to use https? What if you execute a script that curls http and you don’t realize?
Now you could say well “I just make sure all my curls are https.” The problem with that approach is it requires unrealistic levels of vigilance, about every outgoing service you may use, and that all your software on your machine is patched or bug free.
The easiest and quickest place for a hacker to learn their tools and skills is simply public WiFi. Want to try that iTerm exploit out... you go to the coffee shop and wait for a programmer to accidentally curl something over http.
VPN is not perfect, but it does provide some protection in certain circumstances that can’t be ruled out.
Best course, force https for web browser, and use your own hosted VPN anytime you are on a public network.
But wouldn't you get a cert error if someone messed with the DNS to send you to a different IP than you would normally?
(Especially if they're using pinned certs, which many sites do now)
I got a few good laughs out of that signature :)