| HN Mirror

> VPN services that don't defeat geolocation like Apple's Private Relay, the Google One VPN service

TL;DR these VPN offerings don't provide privacy since we are merely exchanging who is doing the surveillance.

Long version: The problem with these are that instead of now denying a service to privacy-conscious users, these users are being profiled big tech companies that can afford to do more sophisticated things like track you across the internet using trackers and browser fingerprinting and thus don't need to rely on IP addresses. By profiling you they are themselves able to guarantee geolocation or to kick you permanently out of their VPN if you violate their arbitrary ToS.

And that they are profiling you is totally making sense too: Otherwise how would they be able to keep any malicious activity at bay.

> legitimate reasons

Yes, these are legitimate reasons. But does the need of a number of profit-based tech companies outweigh the need of society for privacy?

I doubt it! Since it doesn't seem fair that everyone must suffer for the benefit of a few.

The entire problems is made more complicated by:

1) lawmakers that don't understand that you simply cannot perfectly replicate.

It particular the need for geoblocking shows how arbitrary laws even are, if the same thing is lawful in one state but not the next.

Thus it seems contrived to do surveillance on everyone just so that a few companies who insist on having an internet presence can emulate physical geopresence.

There should be a law that states that if it takes too much of a toll on privacy to emulate physical behavior, you should be forbidden to seek to emulate it.

2) the fact that you can put an exact number of how much money you save as a business by using such scores, but you cannot put an exact number on how detrimental privacy loss is, since thst evolves on a very slow timescale. The latter only becomes visible really late, like a silent but terminal disease that barely in the very last stages begins to show itself: For example, when you reach China-style surveillance. Only then most people ask themselves: How did we get there?

To conclude: I don't particularly blaim your service for that since you are simply acting within a web of incentives and probably your livelihood depends on it - and if that is the case you can't possibly be expected to make an obiective decision (sorry if I was a bit harsh in this entire back-and-forth). Though if I were running such a company at least I'd make sure to donate some funds to non-profits that promote privacy and the use of VPNs/Tor for everyone - somewhat similar to CO2 reduction certificates that CO2 emitters buy.