A secret program called "Project Ghostbusters" saw Facebook devise a way to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic of Snapchat users to study their behavior.
That’s debatable. In my estimation, by using a “service vpn” you’re giving advertisers some other kind of demographic information, namely that you’re the kind of person that pays for a vpn.
Is that better or worse than giving advertisers the data point that you’re high-tech knowledgable and browse personal accounts from a server in a datacenter?
Yeah, that’s why I think it’s debatable. It’s a lot easier to make those decisions on traffic coming from a known vpn ip, versus all vps providers in the world - many of which have corporate uses.
On the other hand - if you’re smart enough to set up a vpn, you’ll also be smart enough to set up ad blocking, so the point is kinda moot anyway. Plus you’ll be a lot less likely to have your traffic logged opposed to a service vpn.
That’s true. I’d only use a VPN service that’s been audited (either by a security company or, preferably, law enforcement) not to keep logs. There are only a small handful of those however. It really all depends on your needs. There are far more VPN services that do log and sell the data, and/or turn your host device into a proxy for other users/services.
Can’t all vpns do this though?
Yups. You’re usually better off running one yourself.
This only works if you don’t want the privacy enhancing aspect of advertisers not tying your activity to an IP address.
Beyond more safely using open Wi-Fi or bypassing a censoring ISP, there isn’t much reason there.
That’s debatable. In my estimation, by using a “service vpn” you’re giving advertisers some other kind of demographic information, namely that you’re the kind of person that pays for a vpn.
Is that better or worse than giving advertisers the data point that you’re high-tech knowledgable and browse personal accounts from a server in a datacenter?
Yeah, that’s why I think it’s debatable. It’s a lot easier to make those decisions on traffic coming from a known vpn ip, versus all vps providers in the world - many of which have corporate uses.
On the other hand - if you’re smart enough to set up a vpn, you’ll also be smart enough to set up ad blocking, so the point is kinda moot anyway. Plus you’ll be a lot less likely to have your traffic logged opposed to a service vpn.
That’s true. I’d only use a VPN service that’s been audited (either by a security company or, preferably, law enforcement) not to keep logs. There are only a small handful of those however. It really all depends on your needs. There are far more VPN services that do log and sell the data, and/or turn your host device into a proxy for other users/services.