| Any claim reg anonymity is hard to uphold. The tor project makes it clear that using tor-as-a-proxy is suicide for anonymity [0], so there's nothing VPNs could do that tor doesn't do better. Also, anything stupid one might do at the application layer can absolutely make tor useless in protecting your identity let alone the VPNs (like updating OS over tor, or accessing email, WebRTC apps and the like). So, the author is right on all accounts, but one needs VPN for similar reason one needs IPSec and TLS-- there are multiple levels to it. Here's why I think using a VPN makes sense: 1. ISPs cannot track and mitm you. ISPs have MiTMd https [1]. 2. Circumvent censorship, esp DNS manipulation attacks. 3. Prevent use profiling: traffic meta-data analysis (what IPs you connect to, what protocols you're using and so on) [2]. 4. A lot of propaganda is targeted at a demography in a particular location. Tunneling traffic through a VPN might mask your location unless the app or website had access to it prior, and fingerprinted you already [3]. Sophisticated actors can still do all of the above VPNs or not. The trackers have it too easy and use IP addresses as a signal. Masking IP address is one signal less. Then, up the stack at the application layer, it's up to the end user to make saner choices. That isn't on a VPN provider or Tor. VPNs could def do better: 1. Firewall known trackers server-side. Similar to how how browsers today block known rouge websites that have been caught phishing or spreading malware. 2. Stripe traffic over multiple exit IPs. Much like Firefox's multi-account containers. 3. Let the end user analyse their traffic client-side, and help them take control over what the client should send and not send. 4. Open-source their stack, and provide ability to inspect what's running on the servers. 5. Provide technically better internet experience by accelerating traffic over uncongested paths, provide better connectivity over lossy networks [4][5]. If VPNs aren't improving the experience and if IP masking is all you need, then remember, Tor is free [6], and is pretty decent in terms of speed and latency these days. -- [0] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/Transparen... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=495830 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11278784 [3] https://panopticlick.eff.org [4] https://blog.cloudflare.com/1111-warp-better-vpn/ [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19543085 [6] https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ |