Why VPNs won't always keep you safe online

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> Date: February 2, 2019 at 4:42:15 AM GMT+9
> To: Interesting Stuff list <is () iconia com>
> Subject: IS: Why VPNs won't always keep you safe online
>
> If only you could solve your online-privacy problems with the right three-letter abbreviation, things would be so 
> much easier.
>
> Sign up for a virtual-private network service, the sales pitch goes, and end online spying: Your browsing will once 
> again be nobody’s business but yours!
>
> But the reality of using a VPN is much more complicated. Sometimes—as seen in this week’s report by TechCrunch that 
> Facebook (FB) has been using a relabeled VPN app to collect data on the online habits of teenagers—using one can 
> actually leave you more exposed online.
>
> Here’s what you should remember the next time somebody suggests that online privacy starts with using a VPN.
>
> VPN FYIs
>
> In the memorable phrase of the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska), you can think of a virtual private network as a 
> series of tubes—but a VPN’s tubes stretch from your device to its own gateway to the wider internet and come 
> protected by encryption that scramble everything going to and from your device.
>
> Anybody snooping on your connection will see only gibberish, and sites will see you arriving from an Internet 
> Protocol address that can correspond to a spot on the map thousands of miles away from your actual location.
>
> The immediate upside of that: The source of your internet connection—your internet provider, a coffee shop, a hotel, 
> your neighbor’s open WiFi router—can’t see what you’re doing online.
>
> But a VPN does nothing to stop sites from tracking you there and across the rest of the web. Facebook, Google (GOOG, 
> GOOGL) and other online ad networks can still use cookies and other web features to profile your browsing history. 
> And showing up online at a different IP address, won’t confuse them. They learned long ago how to track people across 
> different devices.
>
> A VPN also won’t stop hacking attempts against your computer. If you open the wrong attachment or visit a hacked site 
> with an out-of-date copy of the already-insecure Adobe (ADBE) Flash player, the VPN won’t block those malware sources.
>
> It’s also important to remember that the absence of a VPN does not mean you’re left naked in the open. Most sites 
> already encrypt their sessions—Google stats show that 82% of pages loaded in Chrome for Windows are encrypted—so your 
> ISP or coffee shop would only see the domain names of the sites you visit, not distinct page content.
>
> Transferring your privacy fears
>
> Meanwhile, a VPN connection does leave one party in a privileged position to see all your unencrypted online data—the 
> VPN provider itself. It’s essentially taking over your internet provider’s role in routing your data online, so in 
> the bargain you must transfer your tracking fears from your ISP to your VPN.
>
> Picking a trustworthy VPN is much harder than picking an ISP because a) there are so many more of them and b) so many 
> of them leave you guessing about their virtues.
>
> What you want to see—as the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington non-profit, laid out in a recent study of 
> VPN privacy—are clarity about their ownership structure and business models, commitments to keep a minimum of data 
> about your online history, and clear documentation of how they respond to legitimate law-enforcement queries.
>
> What you may see instead are improbably generous prices that leave you wondering how the VPN service stays in 
> business (beware of lifetime subscriptions for less than the price of an okay dinner), contact-us pages that leave no 
> hint of where the company operates, and leaky data-management systems.
>
> This industry also overflows with sketchy marketing ties, where VPN services pay for promotion on review sites that 
> tout themselves as independent.
>
> That CDT study includes detailed answers from five well-regarded VPNs; I would also trust the advice of Consumer 
> Reports and the New York Times’ Wirecutter (a site I also write for occasionally). If you were curious about my own 
> choice, I paid for a two-year subscription toPrivate Internet Access in 2017; I will consult those sites and others 
> before renewing that.
>
> When you should use a VPN
>
> But awareness of all the risks of using a fly-by-night VPN service should not lead you to throw up your hands and 
> assume nothing’s safe online. A good VPN will prove enormously helpful in three scenarios.
>
> First, if you’re on a connection you shouldn’t trust too much—not even just the WiFi at a hacker conference, but at a 
> hotel or a coffee shop—a VPN’s shroud of encryption will vastly lower the odds of an attacker peeking at your 
> information.
>
> Second, if your regular connection blocks access to some sites, a VPN’s encrypted tunnel should route you around 
> those restrictions. The canonical example: going to China, where government censorship blocks access to many U.S. 
> sites.
>
> Third, if you can’t access sites because of your real-world location, a VPN can make it look like you’re getting 
> online from thousands of miles away. Historically, that’s been useful for watching “geofenced” content—think 
> professional sports games that are only streamed online outside of their teams’ home cities.
>
> But the advent of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation has created a new use case. U.S. newspapers 
> that decided not to enact GDPR’s strict privacy mandates, and instead blocked European readers from accessing their 
> content can be viewed by setting a VPN to make it appear as if your connection is coming from within the U.S..
>
> Yes, that can be the humble reality of using a VPN app: Instead of fending off spying ISPs, you wind up using it to 
> read local news sites when you travel.
>
> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-vp-ns-wont-always-keep-you-safe-online-180650275.html
>
>
> -- 
> Geoff.Goodfellow () iconia com
> living as The Truth is True
> http://geoff.livejournal.com  



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