I fear false privacy because a corporation runs it. I’ve never been afraid of a government but I worry about corporate shittery all the time.
Do you ever think that maybe all VPN services are actually secretly owned/funded by governments and that they are only giving you a false illusion of privacy?
Submitted 8 months ago by suspicious_eye@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 8 months ago
scarabic@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Why is “governments” the boogeyman that comes to mind? Scammers and thieves would have much more interest in your everyday consumer internet usage.
THE_MASTERMIND@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Yes i guess most of them could be but i don’t think proton is because they are open source and comes under swiss law just to be safe use tor.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 months ago
I feel that if your government really wanted your secrets, they’d just send goons to your house to beat the fuck out of you.
I have a VPN to protect me from nosey bastard piracy lawyers.
cantankerous_cashew@lemmy.world 8 months ago
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I believe protonvpn is no log. I hope they make their servers ram only like mullvad eventually though, it would be a great improvement.
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sure, it what’s your threat model?
Even assuming a VPN is a government surveillance device …
- It protects me from surveillance by my ISP. This is the big one
- It protects me from other corporate and scammer surveillance
- It protects me from law enforcement abuse/overreach - however my data was obtained would not meet evidentiary standards
glimse@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This isn’t a community for speculation or conspiracy theories
dotankaa@lemmy.world 8 months ago
[deleted]glimse@lemmy.world 8 months ago
People will upvote anything to the point that communities have no identity. Unless you think lemmy is somehow different than reddit and won’t share the same fate?
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Generally speaking, governments aren’t that good at keeping secrets at scale. Government-run VPNs would require a lot of people doing coordinated work; data center employees, ISPs, people passing themselves off as independent auditors, legal teams, marketing teams, and more. The more people you add, the less likely it is to be kept a secret. And all of this across multiple VPN companies (because there’s no guarantee that the person you want to surveil is using the one you own) and internationally (many VPNs are based in or have major operations in multiple countries).
Now, is it possible that the NSA has an undisclosed financial stake in one or more VPNs and has secretly inserted a backdoor? Sure, anything is possible. But is that more likely them just buying up Ring doorbell footage or doing large data analysis on social media activity? Or installing rootkits on your smartphone firmware? Or just good old fashioned LoJack?
If they have reason to investigate you, they’re going to probably get everything anyway. No reason to make it easy for them by not using a VPN.
philpo@feddit.de 8 months ago
That’s not how these things work - Intelligence agencies use cover companies very differently. They simply provide a few people money to create a company. These people set up a VPN company - and run it like it’s legitimate.
Marketing or legal won’t know that their company is actually a listening post, most Datacenter employees won’t know, only very few people(mostly network engineers and IT security, some managers)would know. And of course the Auditors - which is not a hassle for any decent intelligence agency.
It’s far easier than one would think - how do we know that? Because it would be the same way other intelligence service companies are run like that for decades.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh what a novel idea
Now, is it possible that the NSA has an undisclosed financial stake in one or more VPNs and has secretly inserted a backdoor? Sure, anything is possible. But is that more likely than […]
Justas@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
VPN companies actually use user created genuine traffic to hide bots and web crawlers and scrapers. That’s part of why their VPN’s are that cheap, they use your traffic to hide more expensive to buy bot traffic.
potentiallynotfelix@iusearchlinux.fyi 8 months ago
Only one I’d trust is mullvad
trustnoone@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Of course, besides the people who fall for the basic “VPN are some magic security device” most people (in particular those that know what they’re getting) always looks for the same thing “which one can I actually trust”.
Even if it’s not government owned you have no idea whose keeping logs, sharing data etc.
So you can really only base your trust on whether the company has come up to any issues with the government and have refused, or has run for a number of years and provide a positive track record. With the changing of laws and how companies work, you also need to regularly check that your they stay respecting privacy and security.
For what it’s worth, a VPN company worth is if it private, security and stands up to scrutiny. The moment trust is lost, the company is meaningless. So that’s something for those that are long lasting.
xia@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Not the ones with numbered accounts that accept crypto…
Etterra@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Nothing says legit like taking anonymous money.
Cinner@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This but unironically. Accepts monero and cash? Worth a look.
IronKrill@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
All? No. But some? I’d be more surprised if I found out none were.
terry_tibbs@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Yeah but would they show their hand by coming down heavy on the average pirate or petty law breaker? If they did have ways to track all VPN traffic they wouldn’t want us to know about it.
Candelestine@lemmy.world 8 months ago
All I know is that if you’re very worried about being surveilled by governments, the Fediverse is the absolute last place you should want to be.
This is one of the most transparent platforms we have come up with yet. Instead of all your data only being viewable by a host company, it’s viewable and able to be analyzed by basically anyone who puts some effort in. This makes it economically worthless, can’t really sell something that everyone can already just get for themselves.
We’re all out in the open here. So, wave to all the national security agencies everyone. Hiiiii! Hope you’re all enjoying the memes!
umbrella@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
👋👋👋
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What data does Lemmy log?
Candelestine@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Very little in its current form, I think mainly just IP address.