it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.
Nothingburger who cares?
- Download a browser with a built-in VPN
- Get browser and VPN services on your computer
Why is this news?
Because it’s Brave and people like to jump on bandwagons. This is like the 6th time I’ve seen this article posted in lemmybin also.
And since we have the reddit-minded folk here, no, I do not support Brave and never will and I would much rather they disappear from the internet, but using ragebait to complain about the browser installing the necessary files to have one of their advertised services working, like pretty much every other software does, is not the way to move forward.
Yea i don’t get the hate boner for brave. I get it’s sketchy and don’t use it myself, but they aren’t sneakily installing some VPN to redirect all your web traffic without you knowing. They tell you about it right up front because it’s a service they want to sell.
If you don’t like the browser, don’t use it. There isn’t a need to go on some crusade to smear them with bullshit.
It’s a bunch of people upset with the company’s CEO or whatever over personal views. The browser itself wasn’t that bad after you disabled the ad and crypto stuff, which they heavily pushed on you.
I had switched to it from Chrome last year but ended up not caring for it, so I went to Firefox and Librewolf. People can use whatever the hell they want, idgaf. But for those who will eventually end up complaining about YouTube ads and continue to use Chrome, I have no sympathy for if you can’t take the few minutes to download and install a new browser and move your favorites over.
This community has some of the worst biased tech readers.
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It’s good users are now aware that Brave includes redundant features that you have to pay extra for to activate. Users browser will update everytime the browser or the VPN software needs an update.
For example Firefox VPN from Mozilla is separate software. They don’t force millions of users to download it even if they don’t want it.
This is yet another example why people should not be using Brave and should be skeptical of its intentions.
They don’t force millions of users to download it even if they don’t want it.
Mozilla has been forcing Pocket on Firefox users for years, as well as Mr Robot ads and numerous other things. They don’t exact have the moral high ground here.
Whats pocket? And why is it bad that its on the browser?
Pocket is Mozilla’s bookmark/sync pay-cloud-service. Comes with Firefox by default and can’t be easily removed. From a company that claims to care about privacy I would expect a self-hosted local-first approach for such problems, not a cloud service.
But its not active unless you turn it on right? Just preinstalled so if you decide to use it its already there?
Cause that does sound like a little bloatware but if thats the only bloat they have and thats its only issue Im not sure Im bothered by it.
that’s exactly what people are complaining in this thread, just about different browser
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brave is basically installing a future minefield with system-wide access waiting to be triggered by them, or an exploitable bug by others, on all brave users’ pcs and not just those who sub to their vpn service.
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Just imagine: using Windows and being concerned about privacy. Big lol.
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Imagine claiming to be technically competent and using Windows, being obliged to “lock it down” to made it a “non spyware”. Take your meds, dude.
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They have a point though.
Windows automatically means you don’t have privacy and you cannot have privacy.
On Linux you at least may or may not, depending on configuration.
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But you don’t. Because you don’t.
Nobody does. Windows is closed source and its inner working is a trade secret. This means you cannot know how to lock down windows. Of course there are best practices based on info from microsoft or people who know a thing or two about info sec but it’s all guess work and/or trusting the developer by its blue eyes.
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Why would someone who uses Debian care about Windows?
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I don’t, because I have better use of my time than to learn to use someone else’s computer
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But you don’t. Because you don’t
Exactly, that’s the point he was trying to make.
You can’t harden windows to the point of an acceptable level of security. That is the inherent nature of proprietary software.
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How do you harden windows?
Prove to me that your windows system is actually “hardened” and that you have no backdoors or telemetry broadcasting at all. At the very least, Microsoft still knows what you are doing, you cannot trust your 3rd party firewall because windows can still sidestep it.
I don’t even know who the fuck those people are, all I can tell you is that there is a reason that any professional application that requires legitimate security, runs on foss systems, or at the very least source available. If you are too stupid to realize that, then you really don’t have any say in this matter whatsoever. It doesn’t even just include baremetal Linux either.
I don’t know who you’ve been arguing with on this, but I actually make a living working on Linux machines, I’m not even coming at you from a freetard perspective, solely work experience.
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So what?
Are people upset about this? I honestly don’t understand.
I honestly don’t understand someone that would accept anything from a stranger.
You member U2 and the forced album through iTunes?
No, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
But I still don’t understand why people would make a big deal about a piece of software that installs multiple software packages…
I mean have you ever installed Microsoft office? Did you ask it to install Microsoft access? What does Microsoft access even do?
Or have you ever installed nvidia drivers? Did you ask for the whole “GeForce experience”? Wtf does that even mean?
Installing extra software packages is definitely par for the course, bit in the brave example, at least the extra shit isn’t required for the main app to work, in fact it’s disabled by default, that’s great!
To answer your original question: yes I do think people are genuinely upset with this.
If you take your office installation example, you’re installing a suite of applications. You’re not just installing excel, you’re installing the office suite so you’re bound to get all the applications in the suite.
Meanwhile, this would be like installing the office suite and getting a service installed along with it, that can monitor outgoing network traffic without them saying anything about it.
The main two reasons I’d be upset with this if I used brave was: They installed it without saying anything and It’s something that’s inherently a privacy and security risk. Even if brave themselves don’t do anything malicious with it, doesn’t mean that someone who’s found a potential exploit in the VPN service won’t.
Also just as an aside, I also absolutely despise “GeForce Experience” and there are ways to fetch the drivers as standalone packages without getting the telemetry spyware installed alongside them.
It’s something that’s inherently a privacy and security risk. Even if brave themselves don’t do anything malicious with it, doesn’t mean that someone who’s found a potential exploit in the VPN service won’t.
Ok, well a vpn is a potential security improvement if anything… But regardless, it’s off, it’s disabled, unusable unless you’re paying for it. I mean just for perspective, any browser is much more of an inherent security risk than a VPN app sitting dormant and inactive.
But you’re right that users never asked for it, so I get that part.
A VPN is only as much of a security improvement as the service behind it. If it gets installed in a shady way, how much trust can you put into the service?
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I don’t trust Brave, there’s too much money tied up in it for it to be good for users.
Just a reminder, any time you see a “tech” youtuber with brave installed, they’re not going to be an excellent source of information
What browser signifies an excellent source of information? Ice weasel? w3m?
Lynx
I have Orion (macOS only for the time being) and it’s sooo good.
The amazing part is that it even works as a daily driver if you’re a not-so-techie person/normal user… but then on top there are all these little extra features and optimizations that make it like Safari if Safari was actually good.
I would at this point a) not be able to go back to either Safari or Firefox (edit: nor Ungoogled Chromium) as well as b) immediately trust an Orion user on most of what they have to say about a “tech” related opinion :D
Sounds interesting. I’d thought I’d heard of all the browsers that exist lol. Gonna give it a spin
Based on your comment, I’ve just downloaded Orion to give it a shake. Very much enjoyed the OS X-esque intro video. Took me right back to installing Snow Leopard for the first time.
raw dogging straight html
Haha, my browser is called curl
Brodie Robertson is an excellent source of information ☹️
Brave partnered with a Washington DC based company to offer this VPN service to its users.
I don’t always use a VPN, but when I do, it’s as close to the White House as possible
I love that most people don’t realize how close Reston, VA (You know, where AWS 1 and 2 is located) is to DC.
Ok. Chrome sucks. Brave sucks. What’s good. Firefox?
Firefox and Mull (a Firefox fork) have your privacy in mind. They work as good as Chrome and don’t fuck you without asking.
There is Fennec available on F Droid that is basically Firefox with some blobs removed. Not as hardened as Mull but still a worthy option. There is one more browser based on Firefox called Iceraven for Android but it is not available on F Droid even. Though it supports a much wider variety of extensions than mobile Firefox does as of now. The downside is that it gets security updates usually later than Firefox, being an independent project.
Firefox?
Hell no. I lost all respect for them when they tricked users into uploading browser screenshots into their cloud and than took forever to fix it. And that’s just one of the many many missteps they had over the last years.
PS: Depressing how many of you seem to consider such a drastic violation of privacy acceptable.
That feature was originally meant to be an image sharing platform, but had an unfortunate name and the button being called “Save” (although it did have a cloud icon on it) didn’t help either. Long story short, people mistook it for a screenshotting tool.
It was definitely a blunder, don’t get me wrong, but it was dumb rather than malicious.
Tbf, when Mozilla realized their blunder they cut out the sharing part and left it just as a screenshot tool because that’s the part that people liked.
but had an unfortunate name
I have a hard time seeing how anybody can be stupid enough to make such a colossal mistake by accident. Let alone how it can slip through all the layers of QA that are in place and then take so f’n long to fix it once the bug reports come pouring in. This is not a small woopsy, but goes completely against decade long establish GUI nomenclature. This was straight up from the malware dark pattern cookbook.
And even ignoring that, an upload into the cloud should always come with a big fat warning anyway. The whole process made it incredible unclear where the data is going, who has access to it, how long it is staying, how to delete it and all that.
All that from a company that has made “privacy” their main marketing feature.
Long story short, people mistook it for a screenshotting tool.
It IS a screenshooting tool.
when Mozilla realized their blunder they cut out the sharing part
The sharing part was great. The problem was never the functionality, but the malicious and misleading integration of it. Them removing that part just felt like they were trying to hide the evidence of their misdoings instead of fixing the problem.
This was straight up from the malware dark pattern cookbook.
To what end? They didn’t do anything to exploit it and deleted the sharing platform as soon as the confusion became apparent. What was Mozilla’s nefarious goal, to dig through people’s screenshots? 🙂
It IS a screenshooting tool.
It is now. Originally it was just a tool to capture pages as images and share them online. If it had been called “Share” they could have avoided the whole debacle.
The sharing part was great.
This only goes to show how conflicted the whole thing was. You can’t find two people who liked the same two aspecte of it. 😅
Trust me, you can’t get such a confusing mess on purpose. Please also remember who you’re dealing with, this is Mozilla, the inheritor of Netscape, which previously gave the world such blunders as Netscape 6.
This was a Pilot program that mixed multiple goals together and ended up as feature gore. I also wish they could have salvaged the sharing platform too but rescuing the image capture as a screenshot tool was a pretty good outcome, all things considered.
PS: Depressing how many of you seem to consider such a drastic violation of privacy acceptable.
It’s more that I had hoped we left everyone who acts like any little thing Firefox does is the worst and most egregious privacy violation in the world back in r/Firefox where they let all the Brave astroturfing take over.
Sure, you’ve got one significant issue (that was already mitigated and addressed), but you’re ignoring how unique it was while also saying there is “many, many more” without any hint of what they would be. Is “The Megabar exists” one of them?
that was already mitigated and addressed
Yeah, after a year. Sorry, but I don’t take lightly to companies that are stealing screenshot of my browser and than act like it’s no big deal.
without any hint of what they would be.
Have you not been paying attention over the last few years? Mozilla’s numerous missteps ain’t exactly a secret. Here is a little list:
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That site isn’t a list of egregious privacy violations, it’s some random guys inane and hyperfocused ranting.
Which browser do you recommend?
Brave. It ain’t perfect, but I actually like that it comes with Adblock, IPFS and Tor support out of the box. Gives you a fully functioning browser out of the box without having to mess with tons of plugins.
If you want something more minimalist, Librewolf might be worth a look.
A lot of people lost trust in them after they sneakily installed an extension on users’ browsers to promote Mr Robot.
I’m team Firefox, very happy here. There’s a small amount of optional telemetry to disable to maximise your privacy, and it has the best plugins because there’s a lot of choice and they’re not purposely crippled.
I like Firefox because it allows, Atleast for now, customization via userchrome.css files. I once tried Edge and hated it’s bloated right click context menu. Meanwhile, in Firefox, I can trim down the context menu to only basic elements.
I do wish Firefox had proper PWA support, but otherwise I have been using it as the main browser on both PC and phone(since uBlock Origin is supported on it, the only Chromium browser to support it is Kiwi Browser on Android).
There’s probably an addon for Firefox that gives some PWA support
There does exists one. But when I last tried it, the experience was worse than what a native integration would give. It wasn’t streamlined as in other browsers. It doesn’t matter much since I only use YouTube Music as a PWA, which I have a relegated to another window in another browser.
Off topic, but screw you Google, for not giving a native app. Spotify meanwhile has command line third party clients even(looks at ncspot) for Premium users.
Check out this custom YouTube Music desktop client: https://github.com/th-ch/youtube-music. It has neat features like an adblocker and a download feature and many more things built-in and it’s open source. It’s available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
It still uses electron though, but we live in this timeline after all.
@kirk781 @Deebster I’m using this, I’m not satisfied with the solution but that’s what we’ve got https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
Yes, this one I think I tried some time before. It is not perfect as you said but it is the closest Firefox has. I think I will give it another go to see how the extension has matured.
Plus you can use pretty much any plugin on mobile. this is the biggest feature for me.
It’s got its problem but it’s my preference
Firefox is great.
Firefox with good plugins is even better!
Absolutely! Another really good fork of FF to check out is Floorp I’m thinking of making it my main and going steady :) https://floorp.app/en/
Your link points back to this post.
OMG fixed. Thank you :)
he uses this post as the sole way to access the internet. He is forever trapped here with no way out. He weeps for there are no memes to him but his condition, as he slowly falls into the pit of insanity. He is forever condemned to read about Brave browser quietly slippin VPN services, and the occasional comment. But eventually the activity will die, and he will be condemned to a lifetime of loneliness until bit-rot will consume the thread or death will free him of his pain.
It’s like his personal version of when the sun dies for an immortal.
😆 How did I manage to do that? LMFAO
Wow man, you should write a short novel
😄
Unless browser fingerprinting is your concern, in which case the most generic, unmodified browser is best (e.g. Tor).
But that is a huge topic for another thread.
Overall you‘re right but in which world is tor generic and unmodified 😂
The Tor browser is a modified version of Firefox, but you are not meant to modify the Tor Browser, in order for everyone using the Tor Browser to look the same and blend in. This is done for maximum privacy and anonymity.
Simply the OS already makes that difficult, true. Nonetheless, it’s one of your best bets.
For those who truly want to stay private, installing plugins on the Tor browser is obviously a no go. Changing any setting or even the window size should not be done. Seriously.
And I’d venture that Tor on phones might be the most homogenous, though that still isn’t saying a lot, sadly. Plus, smartphones are a privacy nightmare regardless (tip of the iceberg).
In the end, fingerprinting makes true privacy very challenging. Great introduction to the topic.
Edit: spelling
It’s not possible to identify you if you use the tor browser without changing the window size or any other settings, because the fingerprint is literally the same amongst everyone that uses it this way. So you kind of blend in with the masses, it’s neither generic nor unmodified, I give you that :D
This is the way
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And LibreWolf is better. It’s Firefox with all of the privacy settings preconfigured and uBlock Origin preinstalled. Also, crap like Sponsored sites and Pocket are removed.
Is LibreWolf still a version or two behind on Gecko?
AFAIK the most recent Firefox version is 118.0.2 and LibreWolf is based on that
Word. Last I had looked, they lagged a version or two behind on the base FF version. Likely just a lack of contributors or something then. Ty.
They used to lag behind, but now they caught up, so I can recommend LibreWolf to anyone without worries from a security perspective.
Been very happy with Librewolf. Thought it would be another one of those softwares recommended by linux-losers but which never actually works, but it’s quite the opposite.
How is Librewolf different from Mullvad browser, which is supposed to be Tor browser (hardened FF) without the Tor?
The Mullvad Browser is based on the Tor browser, but it doesn’t use the Tor network, whereas LibreWolf is based on Firefox + arkenfox user.js. LibreWolf is better for normal day-to-day browsing, where as Mullvad is meant to be used for high privacy/security tasks. Mullvad is kinda hard to daily drive, because it can’t be configured to save cookies, you can’t really use extensions and it lacks some other things. These features were removed in the Tor browser, because as I said, it’s meant for high thread model usage.
High threat*
Not trying to correct you at all, only for ppl’s understanding :)
Btw ty for mentioning Mulvad Browser. I liked it honestly but it’s still new, you feel me.
Thanks, just realized that this is not [email protected] and people here are probably not aware of threat modeling. But in this context just the word ‘thread’ might actually fit better as the threat model pretty much stays the same.
Good call
Waterfox is similar, though it doesn’t install additional extensions but comes with a bit of look and feel customization options instead. It restores those non-floating tabs from quantum by default and is pretty speedy.
Waterfox is more for look and feel, whereas LibreWolf makes significant privacy improvements. You can choose for yourself. Btw: You can also customize the UI on LibreWolf, just enable userChrome.css customization under Settings -> LibreWolf -> ‘Allow userChrome.css customization’. Now, you can customize everything you want.
Well yes, Wolf is a lot more focused on privacy, but it’s also a secondary goal for Waterfox. In 6.0 they enabled DNS over Oblivious HTTP (no idea what that means but you probably do) by default and incorporated yokkoffing’s Betterfox preconfig of user.js. It’s for those who are concerned about privacy but not nearly as much as the privacy community. For me, I’d rather have cookies.
I love Firefox, used it for years. However I eventually had to switch because of weird bugs and issues with functioning sites. In my sparing personal usage I didn’t run into many issues, but using it at work I ran into really weird issues all the time.
And the only thing greater than Firefox is Librewolf.
Or hardened Firefox, which is pretty much the same thing (I use Librewolf myself for convenience).
Floorp is my favorite Firefox fork!
Cool, that kinda looks like vivaldi except based on firefox.
It’s the closest I’ve been able to find to vivaldi. Unfortunately no one does workspaces as good as vivaldi, but their implementation deleted all my workspaces one day, with no back up, and that was after several other total wipes of my windows/tabs.
It’s like Vivaldi, if Vivaldi was actually open source
Vivaldi is a good Chrome replacement.
It’s really great! Been using it for nearly a year now and love the influx of privacy friendly features.
its not open source
Firefox, or on mobile, Fennec. It’s a Firefox clone with some added functionality, maintained by the developers of the F-Droid app store themselves, so highly trusted & fully compatible to stay in sync with the desktop Firefox.
For those rare occasions where a website absolutely doesn’t work with FF, and you must use it for some reason, I’d suggest Chromium portable on Desktop, and Kiwi Browser on mobile.
I have Kiwi installed and like that desktop Chrome extensions can be installed on it for the odd occasion. However, IIRC, it is updated infrequently and isn’t recommended as a daily driver.
I’d never use it as a daily driver, really just for websites that absolutely don’t work with Firefox/Fennec. Happens very infrequent if at all though.
Check out Mull.
Last time I tried Mull, I could only use a handful extensions. I chose Fennec particularly because it supports all desktop extensions. Is that still the case?
Mull has the same limitation as Fennec in that you have a small curated list of available add-ons unless you sign in with a Mozilla account and make a collection or whatever.
Firefox is the least sucky.
The ol’ bait and switch…classic. Opera used to be good too, then chinese people bought it, then emerged opera vpn. Shaddy af. Same as camscanner
Can you elaborate on CamScanner please?
It’s a Chinese app that lets people “scan” a document using the camera on their phone. It was “free” for a long time, turns out it was dropping injected adware on people’s phones.
To be honest, Microsoft lens has had the same features for a long time, but didn’t have “scanner” in the name and most app searches are piss poor so people just literally searched “camera scanner” and got the adware result. Microsoft has their own long and shady history, but dropping an adware payload wasnt part of that.
Thank you!
I’m not so sure that’s true anymore with Windows 11.
Showing in app ads is one thing. Installing a Trojan specifically meant to circumvent App Store ad requirements is another. Windows 11, and most MS products at this point are ad delivery platforms, but they still follow the rules of app stores with the basic requirement of “shows in app ads” and “won’t try to inject a Trojan that beats your phone’s app sandboxing”
Camscanner hurt. I used it constantly. Then boom, absolute 180. I guess that’s the goal. Make a legit app that people love. Then sell it to someone who will exploit your loyalty customers. Cool!
Pretty much everybody has a number they will sell out at, for some it’s astronomical, for others it’s basically what you’d expect
Mine is staggeringly low.
At this point that seems to be the case everywhere. The future looks bleak, and so for most, trying to get what they can out of life before the climate wars, or WW3, or whatever happens seems to be the case. I don’t criticize it. I think there’s a high probability that the reason that we see little extraterrestrial life is that they did the same shit we are doing. The universe has a fractal nature. There are likely many species that also had planets that could support intelligent life. However since the competition for resources is baked into existence, they probably did what we are doing and are themselves no longer alive because they ended themselves before they could really end their stupid arguments about their gods, or work for the collective good more than the individual good
Some of the OG devs who made Opera have made Vivaldi. It’s chromium under the hood, but with googles tracking and telemetry turned off. It’s not perfect, but it adds a significant number of power user features, includes its own (limited) ad and tracking blocking. I alternate between that and Firefox dev edition as my daily driver
At least Opera has the distinction of having been a very different company back in the 90s when they maintained their own rendering engine entirely separate from the ones used by Microsoft, Netscape, run. They started back in the day when you would spend money on a web browser, and they stuck around for a while before finally becoming a shell of their former selves… And, ironically, a shell around Google’s WebKit/Blink rendering engine.
And those devs working at Opera that objected to the sale of Opera started Vivaldi, literally “one of the kings of opera” as a competitive browser. It uses chromium under the hood but they’ve made strides in a power user browser. No crypto, built in ad blocking. The only revenue they get in the actual default browser install is that there are like 20 bookmarks to commonly used sites to start, and they have affiliate tags if you keep those bookmarks and use them. Other than that, they’ve turned off chromium’s new DRM features
Just use Firefox. Or LibreWolf if you want a pre-hardened Firefox. Remember to install uBlock Origin.
Thanks for pointing me to LibreWolf. I like to use separate browsers as information silos and have been using Brave as my secondary. Been looking forward to switching it out for a long time, LibreWolf sounds like just the ticket.
Sick. Thanks brave.
Installing VPNs without telling the end user isn’t a good thing.
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O.o did you even click the article? That’s exactly what they did.
Yes they did install services.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/18/brave-is-installing-vpn-services-without-user-consent/
And that’s what we call a Trojan horse
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im not too brave to be gay
lol brave fanboys are too jealous of my big THICK HUGE COCK
You have to be very brave to download that browser
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Meanwhile there’s Floorp xD
Ok but have you tried my nft browser?
I’m not downloading Brave, fuck off
Well, they do have some sort of crypto integration in that browser, so it makes sense why they come off that way.
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It’s also enabled by default.
Having a VPN basically just means sending your traffic (albeit encrypted) to someone else’s server, before sending it to the wider internet.
That means if you don’t specifically disable it, everything you do in the brave browser could theoretically be logged, processed and analyzed by the owners of brave.
Even if the traffic itself is still encrypted, like with online banking, just knowing how many people in a certain city use which bank for example, could be very interesting to advertisers.
Depending on how evil they are, they could also log extensive amounts of user data, just waiting for the day it becomes legal to sift through it (just like a lot of governments do).
Or maybe they just log and sell your data even though it’s illegal. Like a lot of companies do all the time (see Cambridge Analytical scandal etc.).
Or maybe they don’t. But if I was a browser company I’d sure enjoy having all my users route all their traffic through servers I control.
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the toggle shows up by default, but without a paid subscription the vpn is unusable. even then you need to enable it. you can disable it completely in brave://flags and set “enable experimental brave VPN” to disabled. it’s shitty that they include it by default, but it’s disingenuous to say they’re rerouting traffic of all brave users through their own vpn servers.
Why is installing a VPN considered bad? Is it because it is done without user consent? I don’t understand if there is any malicious intent.
I agree with what other people said. And here’s a new twist.
Any software that messes with the networking stack, can cause really difficult to debug errors. And it may induce errors in other programs. The more complicated your computer’s networking, the more fragile it is.
So introducing, silently, unasked for, network drivers and VPN hooks into the operating system is harming the compute stability of their user base.
At the very least, it should be opt-in! There should be a dialogue asking hey we have this new awesome feature, click okay to install it, something like that. Informed consent
It’s “all your mail is now redirected to a third party that makes money by mining it for data without you knowing” level of nastiness. Absolutely deplorable and a reason to never touch anything made by the people behind Brave even with a ten foot pole. Brave is a scam and why people pretend its not is beyond me.
that’s what the new outlook ‘app’ (replacing win 10/11’s mail ‘app’) does with gmail accounts. routes all your mail from gmail through microsoft servers before delivering to the app on your pc.
huh? they install a windows process in case the user enables their vpn. is it good that they act prematurely there? no. is it like stealing all your emails? no?
They’re apprehending ALL of your browsing activity to their lucky vpn provider of choice.
Because a vpn can monitor all the websites that you visit. Not directly what you’re looking at, but definitely where you’re looking. Just line your provider can, if you’re not using a vpn. But at least with your provider, you have a contract with them - you pay them to transport your data and nothing more. Some very scummy providers aside, that’s where it stops.
A free vpn, however, needs to pay for transporting your data somehow. And if you’re not paying for it with money, then who/what is?
See also Tom Scott’s explanation about vpns, why you probably don’t need one, and why he refused their advertisement money.
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I’m interested to hear what you think a vpn will protect you against. Or what you think the flaws in Toms arguments are.
Edit: I don’t know about you, but I trust my own, GDPR-backed isp far, far more than I trust whichever foreign based vpn company. Especially if they for it for free or cheap.
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I actually work in cyber security and I was really happy Tom Scott released that video. VPN companies are some of the scummiest companies out there, and their rampant sponsorships on YouTube were shameless misinformation and fear mongering in order to scare you into giving all your internet traffic to them.
There are good VPN companies out there, and there are use cases for them, but what Tom is addressing are the shady ones that lie to you about what they’re for and how they help you for their own monetary and in some cases data mining benefit.
Since we’re throwing creds out…I’m a sysadmin who had cyber security training in college, training and classes throughout my 20-year career, and I have and had multiple cyber security certs. No, I do not get my info from these shills, I do my own research when I’m interested in a product.
My main reason for use is privacy because I refuse to be a corpo product. When I’m away from home, I use my own Wireguard VPN back into my private network, where all of my traffic is filtered. I also have Proton VPN for when I think I need it. I didn’t subscribe to Proton for the VPN though. I did it for Protonmail because I was sick of how shitty gmail became. I will dump Protonmail if/when they become shitty too. They were meant to be temporary until I have the time to set up my own mail server among the myriad of other home lab projects that I have in mind.
I use a VPN for my job as well, and it isn’t to protect company products. It’s to keep prying eyes out.
Yeah, you don’t NEED a VPN always on, but you should have one available to use for specific things. However, the regular person doesn’t understand the inner workings of these companies, tech in general, and how their data is being used to make them the product without paying them for their data. They use corporate and legalize lingo in their privacy policies so that no regular person understands what they are signing up for. Or there is so much in the policy that no one will bother to read it.
I’m sorry, but when my wife and kid’s phones are showing them ads for things we talked about 5 minutes ago, they appear horrified by it. Then they move along like nothing happened. Then you see how corps are utilizing your location, cookies, and browsing history to also change prices on you on the fly, just because of where you live or how you shop. I will continue to not be spied on 24/7 by corporations and my government.
I don’t remember if I saw that video from Tom Scott or not, but I imagine his argument was along the lines of, “if you aren’t doing anything nefarious or you don’t live in a nation state that censors you, then you have nothing to worry about”.
Yes, there are scummy VPN companies, just like there are scummy companies in any other industry. Yes, I see all of these YouTubers out here shilling for VPN companies, but I also see them shilling for food subscriptions, clothing subscriptions, and web browsers, among other things. YouTube, in general, has become predatory for ads both in and outside videos.
It’s not even free, the service itself is a payed subscription. But it’s there and it could be working and funneling data without the user knowing it if they wanted to.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Tom Scott’s explanation about vpns
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Brave browser has been automatically installing VPN services on Windows computers without user consent, but it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.
They’re installing extra software that’s useless unless you give them money. Plus you really want to be aware of your VPN since all your traffic will be going through it.
It doesn’t auto enable and chromium also gives you a lot of unnecessary features. While I think Brave is bloat I don’t see how this is any more than the usual.
a service has far more privs on the system than a browser should have or need (which can be installed on a per-user basis, no admin/root required).
Independed browser from Google when?
