Sunday, October 11, 2020

NCSAM 2020: Updating Old Claims

Last year, I made some comments about VPNs.

Most of those statements were based on old information, pre-HTTPS-Everywhere. They weren't inherently wrong, or even bad advice. They were merely out-of-date in a way that could be preceived as fearmongering.

I don't like fearmongering, and even as the themed October posts sometimes lean that way (it's hard not to, given the risks so many people take on the Internet without even knowing it), I still try to avoid it as much as I can.

I could feed you all corrected information, or I could share with you a video of someone else who actually is a computing expert explaining all the things in clearer language than I could probably manage, even with skirting the edges of plagiarism.

So yes, there are good reasons for using a VPN. Also, there actually is a relatively easy way to find a VPN provider that truly doesn't save logs: you just have to find one that has been subpoenaed and released no information, because they didn't have any to release.

So yes, there are good reasons to use a VPN, but protecting your passwords or credit card numbers isn't one of them. As for the "probably not a front for the FBI" gag, you should probably read this.