It’s totally fine! I’m from Russia where Twitter, Instagram and Facebook were banned after the invasion (these are the biggest social media but lots of other stuff is banned too)
Russian authorities don’t really spy on you unless you’re an outspoken political activist and they want to have something on you, so they don’t bother that basically all younger people use VPNs (to tweet, to post on IG or whatever). So the security of VPNs is not much of a concern for a general user. But obviously I can’t speak for stricter regimes in other countries!
I think it’s not so much security that’s a problem as connectivity. At least in China, there are so many people that it’s a lot easier for the government to detect and deny. It’s a cat and mouse game, so there it’s probably a bad idea to get any VPN well-known enough to advertise.
Another detail is that, if you use your VPN on a mobile phone connected to a mobile service, then, if the government finds the VPN connection, the government will know that the person having the SIM (or eSIM) is the one connecting to the VPN. They might not figure out why, but their not knowing why might actually be a bad thing if all you’re doing is connecting to Gmail or something.
By contrast, if you’re connecting with a computer or a mobile device through WiFi, they probably won’t know much about you, just enough to make it hard for you to reconnect.
No, they mean de-anonymize. IP is the easiest/simplest way to do it, but there’s also browser fingerprinting, etc. Google still knows who you are, even when they don’t know your IP.
Not trying to shill, but I currently use Mullvad simply on the principle that their logs had been requested via a warrant by the Swedish government not too long ago, and they had none to produce.
Services like PureVPN, on the other hand, got audited and found that they were keeping logs despite their privacy policy claiming otherwise. It’s hard to trust these companies without hard evidence like that.
You’re absolutely right. This is why you should choose one with a good reputation. Many have outside companies come in and do an audit. A few others have actually been tested in court where they showed they didnt have any user IP addresses.
A few VPN companies have designed their systems in ways that make it impossible to provide any personally identifiable data. Not a shill, but Private Internet Access has been sued, and has proven that they simply cannot give data to governments because it isn’t there. I’m pretty sure Mullvad is quite well respected as well.
If you’re just wanting some extra security on public wifi or you want to pirate some stuff, a well reviewed VPN advertising on YT is probably fine.
If you’re doing something highly illegal or you’re a journalist in a repressive regime you probably want to use something more secure and trustworthy, which you will also pay more than $10 per month. Plus you don’t want to just rely on the vpn.
Generally, to verify the claims are true, you can check times when governments have actually tried to use warrants to get access to VPNs information. If the VPN provider was only able to hand over say, a list of customers and nothing else, that means they are trustworthy.
Basically no good vpns keep logs like some Swiss vpns. There are some in Switzerland that have been sued and couldn’t give out logs because they never kept them in the first place like protonvpn
I want to send you a parcel. But I don’t want any company (besides the VPN company) or government to know I’m sending you parcels or what I’m sending you.
So I place my parcel in metal box with a strong lock. I have it shipped to the VPN company. They have the key, take the parcel out, and then have that shipped to you. So technically you received parcels from a VPN company, not from me.
Why? Because now the government can’t trace that parcel. Lots of people are sending metal boxes to the VPN, and the VPN is sending lots of parcels to everywhere. It’s very hard to trace.
Unless of course the court orders the specific VPN company to log every metal box they unlock, along with its contents, recipient and sender. But this is exceptional and near impossible if the VPN company operates in another country.
Well when you go to purchase an airline ticket from an airlines website they know where you were located. If you switch on a VPN in let’s say Manila then the transaction will show in PSP instead of USD and sometimes you can get cheaper rates this way. Airlines will sometimes charge more if you are buying a plane ticket from a US IP vs a third world IP.
Where I have gotten the most success was using a VPN to lock in a flight from Manila to Bali. I saw there was an Australian based airline company that had flights between Manila and Bali that was half the price after the exchange rate but I could not access the website from a US IP. I logged into a Singapore VPN and was able to access the Australian airlines website and purchase the cheap flight that way.
Thats the point of knowing VPNs who keep logs and who don’t. But everything is up for grabs for the right amount of money. Look into who are running and/or owning ALL these VPNs.
The good vpns also don’t store the connecting IP so they have no Idea who was connected after the connection is closed.
A good vpn will basically know nothing except your account details so they can verify whether you’re subscribed to their service. Everything else shouldn’t be logged
That’s usually the case with VPN providers that have their seat in countries that mandate logs be created even if they advertise that they don’t keep logs or just omit that they do.