The Cold Hard Truth Behind VPNs

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Originally published at: News - Whonix Forum
The “Virtual” in Virtual Private Networks is just that: “Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.”

There is an entire market of scam artists playing on people’s fears of mass surveillance, and trying to sell them VPNs as a privacy/anonymity solution. They spout illusory promises, unbackable claims and outright lies to part with people’s cash while giving them a false sense of security.

For a brief list on why a VPN’s are a failure by design, look here. They can never provide the anonymity guarantees of Tor and no one serious about their safety online should ever consider them as a solution.

The money wasted on these services is better donated to projects like Tor and Whonix where resilient and well-tested Libre Software is being developed transparently and made accessible to everyone without cost in freedom or price.

Edit by Patrick:
Second link broken due to forum bug. Here it is…
Whonix versus Proxies - Whonix

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It’s very true.

But having seen various demographic, many people simply use or start using vpn for torrenting and circumventing large media regional bans. Tor actively frowns on it and I2P never takes off. Tor simply doesn’t replace that use and until the other networks grow (if ever) the vpns will always rake in and win over people’s hearts.

Whenever you talk about privacy, for a lot of people it’s still piratebay and the battle of copyright moguls that comes to mind, and vpns are their savior.