There’s a ton of advice to use VPNs to protect your privacy. But isn’t most of it just marketing talk by the VPN providers?
Say I only browse internet at home, at work and through mobile connection. I have reasonable trust in all of these networks - and no service I use relies on network as a security. I live in western world where the government doesn’t block content, and I don’t care about watching Netflix from other countries.
It’s been ages since I saw a website that didn’t have https, which means the traffic between me and that website is encrypted already. The only thing that’s visible to the ISP or anyone upstream are domain names and the amount of requests to each of them, and I suppose for me that’s OK.
I just don’t see the need. I read the sub’s wiki, but the reasons in “why you should use one” just don’t seem to apply.
Am I overlooking something? Isn’t it just hype?
There are a few points. One is the question of trust. I am in the US and have no trust in my ISP not compiling and selling data based on my internet use. I have no trust in my phone provider.
Two, I do occasionally like to access servers on my home network remotely.
Three, I don’t like to use my ISP’s DNS, or redirect attempts to their own search pages…
It keeps DMCA notice away.
I have computers in two physic locations (and a few virtual ones). One location has static IP, one does not. VPN allows me to connect to machines behind the dynamic IP as they’re in the same network. VPN is not only about privacy but about convenience also.
With a paid VPN you would connect to a server with a decent number of people using the same connection.
This way you can assure that nobody knows your IP(besides the VPN provider).
So it is good if you don’t want to give your ip to the website you want to visit.
And even if the traffic is encrypted your ISP/Company can still check to what sites you establish a connection. That is something a lot of people want to avoid.
Then there are people running own VPN server at home, this way you can access services in your home network.
Keeps gaming safe. Keeps from people grabbing my IP when gaming and then them DOSing me offline.
Say I only browse internet at home, at work and through mobile connection. I have reasonable trust in all of these networks
You should NOT trust that every device and router on those LANs is trustworthy. Any of them could get malware that might then try to spy on traffic. Work could be recording your traffic routinely. I wouldn’t trust cell-service-providers as far as I can throw them. My router is owned by my ISP, and they update it.
It’s been ages since I saw a website that didn’t have https
Lots of apps and services in your system may be doing traffic of their own (updaters, mainly). Are you sure all of them have proper security ?
Am I overlooking something?
Nothing critical. I’d rather not let my ISP see what domains I access. Some VPNs give nice features such as known-malware-site blocking, ad-blocking, etc. I live outside USA, so sometimes I need to use a USA server to get access to a site that blocks access from outside USA (e.g. annualcreditreport.com).
Isn’t it just hype?
No, it’s not just hype. You may not need a VPN, or choose not to use one. VPNs do have valid uses.
You can avoid geoblocking for websites for example.
When you’re outside and need to connect to something inside???
My ISP is way too nosey for me to trust them to keep my dns queries and my surfing private and away from advertisers. So, i unburden them from the temptation.
From scenario you described it seems you feel safe, If all ISPs you use are honest and you are not surfing any illegal content there still might be a need for it.
For Home network and Mobile network only:
You are actively tracked and targeted for advertisement as it fuels the online business. Some people mind it and think its not ethical to track you online for what you wear and eat and your favourite things to do.
A vpn in this scenario can mask your IP and mix it with hundreds of people so you are not actively tracked and targeted. in some cases vpn help lower your travel cost by masking your current location. Also you can get a subscription in different country to lower cost. So vpn saves money
Vpn can sometimes help in traffic congestion from isp when there is a routing issue from isp to your home and can decrease or increase latency in some cases. It can be helpful if some sites are not giving you full speed.
And vpn gives you freedome to surf intenet without any blockes and borders, to surf the interent how it should be.
Hope it helps
You are not overseeing anything. VPN were originally developed to interconnect two sites of a company together in a safe way. Or workers could connect from the outside into the company network when they were for example at a customer. Or nowadays: Accessing your NAS at home in a safe way.
However many public VPN subscribers misconcept privacy with anonymity. Some people think that when they turn on their VPN they suddently become anonymous. If you read some posts here people ask why their geolocation still shows their real address, etc etc.
These providers still have their reason of being. If you are for example georestricted to use some software they can probably help you. Sometimes on public wifi networks there is a chance that your computer creates unencrypted connections. Back in the days where I did not host my E-Mail server the free provider did only provide POP3 and SMTP for access them with my mail application. The paid version would have POP3S, IMAPS and SMTPS support. Don’t know if that’s still the case today. Keep in mind: You only shift the trust with unencrypted connections.
Gamers/Streamers can use it to hide their real IP in games so kiddies don’t DoS them offline. Sometimes you can use them to get a better, less congested routes to gameservers etc.
There are good reasons to use one. But most of the regular internet user don’t need one. It’s a choice you must make with yourself. I personally have a subscription (I’m from germany). I route my open, free for all wifi over a VPN so I don’t get into legal trouble.
u/rastarobbie1 are you dumb? A VPN is to protect you from elite hackers (who, like ghosts, can come into your house remotely and use their mythical hacking abilities to steal all your information and basically take your life and everything you own.) If you don’t use a good paid secure VPN (like HMA) then you risk the future of your family and could lose everything you’ve ever worked for and hold dear. You should also get LifeLock and make sure to backup all your sensitive data in plaintext to a secure cloud storage like Google cloud in the event your house burns down or you get hacked (despite taking wise precautions with a VPN.) Google already takes care of security better than you’d even understand how to; don’t double encrypt things, it just makes everything more difficult and can cause data loss and sometimes hair loss and/or ED.
You shouldn’t even ask questions like this… you might accidentally give somebody else the wrong idea that most paid VPNs are just the NSA’s way of making you pay for your own data censorship and monitoring via deep packet inspection (DPI.) 
This is of course ridiculous… crazy conspiracy theorists put out such ideas and the terrorists support them online to undermine National Security. You should buy HMA… they are good company that would never lie about not storing data logs . LifeLock probably comes with a VPN too… do you know why? It’s to protect your life! You wouldn’t question that now would you? So don’t question this. You should instead be supporting important new legislation to put an end to free speech online child sex trafficking and terrorism. Lobby congress to pass bills like EARN IT! (The EARN IT Bill Is the Government’s Plan to Scan Every Message Online | Electronic Frontier Foundation) or if it doesn’t pass… just keep using VPNs to protect your children online.
Edit: I posted the wrong link above, just ignore that fake news. Here is the link: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3398/text
I don’t live in the US, but there is also the issue of net neutrality, I assume?
Got it, if you have that need a VPN seems like a good solution.
I’m more interested in the privacy aspect.
Gotcha, the IP masking is a good point. I guess you can’t really rely on IPs as a reliable identifier, but there are definitely services which try to identify visitors based on those on best effort basis, or to complement other identifiers.
To be fair, if I ran a VPN that didn’t keep logs, I think my favorite part of the job would be telling cops where they could stick it. I’d totally have some contact info for them. 
I have no idea what service you’re talking about and how they are responding, but I know how I would. 
I route my open, free for all wifi over a VPN so I don’t get into legal trouble.
What’s your setup with this? Currently using an Edgerouter X but I imagine the power usage of OpenVPN will use too much CPU and reduce my straight through connection speed
I was wondering if it’s trivial to have a separate box between the Wifi AP and the router which acts as an OpenVPN client. I imagine there could be a double NAT issue, but for browsing the internet that doesn’t sound like a problem
Nice, thanks. I guess if your country actually punishes pirating it makes sense, VPN must be a godsend.
Never heard about the gaming use case, but sounds annoying!
Ok, even then, the dynamic IP is provided by phone operator, so I can route my traffic thru the static IP that is provided by a person I know, so there’s privacy improvement also.
This is of course ridiculous… crazy conspiracy theorists put out such ideas and the terrorists support them online to undermine National Security. You should buy HMA… they are good company that would never lie about not storing data logs 
I have no idea what service you’re talking about and how they are responding, but I know how I would. 