[saurik]

Meanwhile, a lot of users really can't trust their ISP: your "ISP" might be coffee shop, or someone renting on AirBNB, or your friend (as you are at their home or office). If you are in any of these circumstances, I would probably first recommend "tether off your phone or something", but if you are finding yourself needing or merely wanting to use someone else's internet connection (maybe for speed or because you don't have a good cell signal), it totally makes sense to use a VPN.

(Also: I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, as maybe it is somehow "gauche" to do so, but one of the top reasons people use VPNs around the world is because they want to browse porn and they don't want people around them to know. At some point, the people in the apartment next door to me figured out my wi-fi password and seemingly felt the correct solution to this issue was to use me for their porn browsing, but it was then all the more awkward when I figured out why my network was slow and knew all of the porn sites they were browsing. Most people seem more OK with the idea of paying a company like ExpressVPN--even if they are legitimately run by "spies"--to be their dedicated porn access point than hoping that someone else more locally won't find out what sites they are browsing.)

[SkyMarshal]

> Meanwhile, a lot of users really can't trust their ISP: your "ISP" might be coffee shop, or someone renting on AirBNB, or your friend (as you are at their home or office).

Or your ISP may be one of the big ones - Comcast, Time Warner, etc or whatever they are in other countries, and you may legitimately not trust them either.

[bcook]

>At some point, the people in the apartment next door to me figured out my wi-fi password

That seems implausible.

[willcipriano]

I've used this personally: https://www.whatsmyip.org/lib/fios-wep-key-calculator/

WEP can be broken with: https://www.aircrack-ng.org/

WPS can be defeated with: https://tools.kali.org/wireless-attacks/reaver

[saurik]

My wi-fi password was loudly spoken often and our windows were open constantly. Honestly, if they had asked one of us for the password, I am sure we would have given it to them also (and for all I knew at the time that was how they got it: I am just saying they figured it out, not that they stole it). (It wasn't designed to be secure or anything... is yours? I do not even think I changed the password once they started using it... I just upped my cable modem plan so I wouldn't get affected by it ;P. I might have, though... this was like 15 years ago (I have been using the same wi-fi password at least since right after that, certainly?)

[UncleEntity]

I leeched off my old neighbors’ WiFi for a few years until everyone in the complex upgraded to routers which weren’t vulnerable to the pin key attack (or whatever it was called).

[ybbond]

correct in some part, but I think other main reason people use VPN is because their ISP block access to porn. VPN allows them to watch