this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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vpn's are not what you think. They just more your traffic somewhere else. Honestly just use https only and you'll be fine
ISP says hello, seeing which sites, videos you visit and sharing this info with government. Reputable VPN's exist. Link to reputable resource for comparison.
They don't. They can link your IP to your identity and they might be able to collect DNS queries. Nothing more realistically.
They don't though unless your not using https for some reason
The DNS resolution, assuming you're just using your ISP's DNS authority servers, is still very much known to your ISP.
They can still identify my traffic, where I'm going, what I'm browsing, etc.
With a VPN that you can trust, that emphasizes user privacy, that doesn't store PII, that doesn't comply with local law enforcement short of being issued a warrant, all my ISP sees is I keep routing encrypted web traffic to an IP that they can identify is a machine somewhere in the Netherlands.
And besides that they know absolutely fuck all.
Without the VPN they can identify the IPs I make https requests to belong to beehaw, belong to imgur, belong to Netflix, belong to some torrenting site, etc etc.
Or I could just use encrypted DNS. Also the VPN company also can see IPs
They do hide your "real" IP address from other peers when using BitTorrent, such that angry letters from copyright holders go to the VPN instead of your ISP. The assumption is that your ISP would be more likely to snitch on you when compared to a reputable VPN.
The VPN company is legally required to report you just as much as your ISP
That's true, but you can hope they don't keep logs, or hope they don't know your identity.