Except for, wfh, or tricking Netflix servers, no normal everyday person needs to be using a VPN - i.e. being linked to a VPN 24/7. The government don’t care about average Joes.
My view is only applicable inside the home. Of course, there are lots of reasons people should use a VPN when in public. However, when at him I do not believe people should be using a VPN. The government do not care about them. They (the government) are only interested in specific people.
There’s no reason. It makes connection slower too which is a 21^st Century pain. I am willing to change my view if convinced of the following:
- That actually the government records everything and tracks everyone at all times and normal people are hunted.^1.1
Please change my view. Thank you.
^1.1 Yes, I am aware of PRISM, Five Eyes et al, but I believe the government is only interested in high profile individuals.
EDIT: I am talking about Western countries namely those in the Five Eyes.
“normal everyday people” exist in Iran and China and so on as well.
Also, it’s not just denying data collection from the government (although that’s a fair reason - the government doesn’t care about you until they do and then what?) - people use VPNs to stop companies like Google from harvesting your information as well.
That actually the government records everything and tracks everyone at all times.
The government does record everything and track everyone at every opportunity. For example, the NSA has in the past been found guilty of bulk phone data collection. This happened even after their right to do so from the PATRIOT act was rescinded by subsequent legislation, so its not like having laws to prevent it help you very much.
and normal people are hunted
Do you want to wait until the government considers you worthy of hunting before taking precautions? Not only is that way too late to take action, it also permits the slow erosion of privacy that is the norm nowadays.
The government might not care, but their databases retain that data regardless. This is only as secure as the government which has been shown time and time again to be flawed.
This is even more important in currently developing nations with less stable governments, those citizens are normal everyday people.
VPNs also provide an additional layer of anonymity when browsing. As others have said, they makes it more difficult for would be hackers to find your data or something.
Normal, everyday people, should be using VPN if they want to watch porn and live in a country that bans pornography outright.
But you’re only willing to change your view if someone convinces you of some exact niche point of view which should be your title instead:
“CMV: The government doesn’t record everything at all times and normal people aren’t being hunted”
People do not use VPNs for the express purpose of protecting their information from the government only.
VPN can provide data protection from your Internet provider, apps, and services that you use. If you’re using public Internet, it can protect your information that way. Yada yada yada.
Edit:
Probably should be a little bit more specific about which government you’re talking to. Some governments actually do very much care about what their citizens do which is why they restrict what they can access on the Internet. They also may persecute you for what you post, VPNs help fight against this or allow individuals to access parts of the Internet that may be restricted to them.
Okay so there are two aspects to government surveillance that you need to take into account:
- Is what is called “tailored access”, this is exactly what you were describing: The government knows who you are and finds you “interesting” for one reason or another. At that point it does not matter what you do, you will be surveilled thoroughly, VPN or no VPN.
- The other aspect is big data surveillance. This applies to the average joe, to everyone. The government (the NSA specifically) records and stores most of the internet traffic at certain key junctures in the backbone infrastructure. Crucially, this includes encrypted communications. The way computer hardware is developing means that a secure encryption today will be able to be broken economically in 10-15 years time. The government stores TLS-encrypted traffic until they have the means to decrypt and analyse that data efficiently. Storage is cheap on the very large scale while processing isn’t at the moment. If you use a VPN it can be harder to extract meaning from your (meta-)data even after it has been decrypted. So if you want to throw a wrench in a system that can retroactively figure out what everyone has been up to and extract psychological profiles from that information to exert influence and control… you could use a VPN. If you don’t believe what I have said I recommend you have a look at the edward snowden leaks which you can still find online.
From what I know of VPN, which is admittedly not a lot, many people don’t use them for the government. They use them for the scammers and telemarketers and bullshit artists that try to make fake websites or get your number from your bank login or what have you.
From my understanding, a VPN can help protect you along with cyber wallet security measures so that your shopping and online money management is a lot more protected from OUTSIDE people, not necessarily the government. So if you buy stuff on Amazon but have a VPN, it’ll be more difficult for someone to hack your Amazon account or something.
But I’ve never heard someone claiming that a VPN will hide you from the government. I have heard people use VPN’s to stick it to ad revenue agencies though. Which I 100% support.
I use a VPN to read US news sites that geoblock EU since they don’t want to make their site GDPR-compliant.
GDPR is usually considered a major step towards more consumer protection on the web. So in this case, the govt clearly cared about me as a consumer.
/u/BrexitBlaze (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn’t necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
(https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| (https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
You actually use VPN technology more than you may realize. Any time you browse an HTTPS site, you’re building a VPN (SSL/TLS tunnel) between your browser and the hosting website. This is to protect your data from being captured by some other malicious actor. You don’t necessarily need to use a VPN client, which builds a site-to-site tunnel and encrypts all of your network traffic, at home unless you’re really that paranoid about someone eavesdropping on your own network or from your internet service provider (ISP). Basically, the areas of concern are people connected to your home network and people connected to your ISPs network. Even if you use a VPN, if a government entity knew you connected to some web server, they could issue a warrant to access the logs of that server. They don’t necessarily need to capture your traffic in real time unless they’re building evidence for something. And even so, VPNs alone don’t make you anonymous on the internet. Logs leading back to a single user can still be found from the endpoints they connected to.
Many normal people cant afford multiple streaming service, regardless of country they are in. And p2p download is frowned upon but with VPN you can download any linux distros you want with out getting letter from isp, gov, and industry. I remember fines for stealing and sharing distros over the internet are still insane in USA and other countries And many VPN masks P2P connection, and your ISP will not bother you!
You need to trick Amazon and Disney servers too.
Sometimes it’s less about the protection of the individual, but more… make the traffic patterns at large not look that unusual or become too expensive to inspect
The more people participating, everyone can benefit
In a way I see it as pushing this envelope because we’re allowed. If we don’t, we may lose the ability before we NEED to
what if the govt has a cluster of quantum computers that can break any hash/rsa/sha/etc you name it in a few milliseconds? can you be certain that they do not?
!delta
I had forgotten about Google’s stronghold on data mining/collection that they sell. Thank you for pointing this out.
But surely that is then an individual choice by now? If someone is using Google search, and using a VPN they know about Google’s practices?
Do you want to wait until the government considers you worthy of hunting before taking precautions? Not only is that way too late to take action, it also permits the slow erosion of privacy that is the norm nowadays.
I suppose that’s a good point tbf. Seems I have forgotten about the UK’s ruling on various peoples in the past year or so.
!delta.
Made the edit to clarify which countries my post is specific to.