Did 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?
Did 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?
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No, but VPNs are a false illusion of privacy. When you use a VPN, you're really just shifting your trust from your ISP to the VPN company. And governments can just force both to give them the data they have about you
I agree, and of course it's a matter of trust. I am trusting what the VPN says when they say...they're physically incapable of storing logs. NordVPN & I think a couple others both claim their services literally don't store any logs of any kind.
So the feds could come around & demand info, but they shouldn't have anything.
It is safe to assume that somebody, somewhere, somehow could be watching you or have the capacity to monitor your web activity. If they gave a shit, if they cared enough to hone in on you. ¯\(°_o)/¯
It's not that simple though. VPN providers in most cases have been externally audited not to store any logs of user activity, meaning they couldn't comply with government requests of this nature. Generally, their entire legitimacy as companies depends on trust, meaning they have much stronger incentives to actually keep user data private than an ISP does. Of course I agree that using a VPN is no privacy silver bullet, but it's not like they have zero privacy benefits either.
That's why you do your research and use a VPN domiciled in a country that won't budge to requests coming from your country.
This is exactly right. If you really want to browse privately, use Tor.