VPNs Won't Save You from Congress' Internet Privacy Giveaway [View all]

[Miles Archer]

For the record, I am currently using AirVPN, which costs about $8 per month. I have also used ExpressVPN, which is $12 per month. Both are among the top-rated VPNs, and neither keeps logs pertaining to your activity, only raw traffic, which would reveal nothing, so nothing about you can be "sold," either.

Read this article: Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2017?, https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/ I also do NOT use Tor for the reasons listed below.

The title of the article i posted here is a bit misleading, because a VPN CAN protect you, but you MUST choose the RIGHT one. As an example, Golden Frog DOES keep logs of your activity, and DOES turn them over if asked to. So do many others.

VPNs Won’t Save You from Congress’ Internet Privacy Giveaway

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/vpns-wont-save-congress-internet-privacy-giveaway/

Many security experts recommend that you use what’s called a virtual private network, or VPN for short, to protect your privacy. In effect, VPNs route all your traffic through their service. Instead of your internet provider having a list of websites you’ve visited, you’ll only ever appear to connect to one particular server.

While VPNs are an important privacy tool, they have limitations. The most obvious: You need to trust your VPN provider not to track you and sell your data itself.

While using a VPN, you might find that you can’t connect to all the sites and services you’re used to using. Netflix, for example, tries to block all VPNs to prevent people from accessing content not licensed in their home countries. Others sites may block particular VPN providers used by malicious hackers or criminals to cover their tracks. It can be hard to tell if you can’t access a particular site because you’ve misconfigured your VPN software, the site is down, or if a company has blocked your VPN provider from accessing a site.

Tor, privacy advocates’ favorite browsing software, tries to anonymize your internet use by routing your traffic through multiple servers around the world. It’s free and, since it’s an open source project tied to no company, at least partially solves the trust problem. But it’s more complex to set up, typically slows down your connection speeds, and malicious Tor servers do exist. Many sites and services also block Tor. Regardless, neither VPNs nor Tor would protect you from software like Carrier IQ that tracks what you do locally.