No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.
Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.
- A Russian translation of this article can be found here, contributed by Timur Demin.
- A Turkish translation can be found here, contributed by agyild.
- There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.
Because a VPN in this sense is just a glorified proxy. The VPN provider can see all your traffic, and do with it what they want - including logging.
There is no way for you to verify that, and of course this is what a malicious VPN provider would claim as well. In short: the only safe assumption is that every VPN provider logs.
And remember that it is in a VPN provider's best interest to log their users - it lets them deflect blame to the customer, if they ever were to get into legal trouble. The $10/month that you're paying for your VPN service doesn't even pay for the lawyer's coffee, so expect them to hand you over.
I'll believe that when HideMyAss goes out of business. They gave up their users years ago, and this was widely publicized. The reality is that most of their customers will either not care or not even be aware of it.
Doesn't matter. You're still connecting to their service from your own IP, and they can log that.
VPNs don't provide security. They are just a glorified proxy.
VPNs don't provide privacy, with a few exceptions (detailed below). They are just a proxy. If somebody wants to tap your connection, they can still do so - they just have to do so at a different point (ie. when your traffic leaves the VPN server).
Use SSL/TLS and HTTPS (for centralized services), or end-to-end encryption (for social or P2P applications). VPNs can't magically encrypt your traffic - it's simply not technically possible. If the endpoint expects plaintext, there is nothing you can do about that.
When using a VPN, the only encrypted part of the connection is from you to the VPN provider. From the VPN provider onwards, it is the same as it would have been without a VPN. And remember, the VPN provider can see and mess with all your traffic.
Your IP address is a largely irrelevant metric in modern tracking systems. Marketers have gotten wise to these kind of tactics, and combined with increased adoption of CGNAT and an ever-increasing amount of devices per household, it just isn't a reliable data point anymore.
Marketers will almost always use some kind of other metric to identify and distinguish you. That can be anything from a useragent to a fingerprinting profile. A VPN cannot prevent this.
There are roughly two usecases where you might want to use a VPN:
- You are on a known-hostile network (eg. a public airport WiFi access point, or an ISP that is known to use MITM), and you want to work around that.
- You want to hide your IP from a very specific set of non-government-sanctioned adversaries - for example, circumventing a ban in a chatroom or preventing anti-piracy scareletters.
In the second case, you'd probably just want a regular proxy specifically for that traffic - sending all of your traffic over a VPN provider (like is the default with almost every VPN client) will still result in the provider being able to snoop on and mess with your traffic.
However, in practice, just don't use a VPN provider at all, even for these cases.
If you absolutely need a VPN, and you understand what its limitations are, purchase a VPS and set up your own (either using something like Streisand or manually - I recommend using Wireguard). I will not recommend any specific providers (diversity is good!), but there are plenty of cheap ones to be found on LowEndTalk.
A VPN provider specifically seeks out those who are looking for privacy, and who may thus have interesting traffic. Statistically speaking, it is more likely that a VPN provider will be malicious or a honeypot, than that an arbitrary generic VPS provider will be.
Because it's easy money. You just set up OpenVPN on a few servers, and essentially start reselling bandwidth with a markup. You can make every promise in the world, because nobody can verify them. You don't even have to know what you're doing, because again, nobody can verify what you say. It is 100% snake-oil.
So yes, VPN services do serve a purpose - it's just one that benefits the provider, not you.
This post is licensed under the WTFPL or CC0, at your choice. You may distribute, use, modify, translate, and license it in any way.
Before you comment: Be aware that any non-constructive comments will be removed. This includes advertising for VPN providers (yes, even when you phrase the marketing claims like a question), trolling, harassment, insults towards other people, claims that have already been addressed in the article, and so on.
If your comment isn't a genuine question or a concrete counterargument supported by evidence, it probably doesn't belong here.
Firstly, good luck actually setting up a browser that flies under the radar like that. If you sign in anywhere, your browser will be tracked, your new fingerprint will be tracked as long as you stay signed in or sign in again. Marketers employ many different methods of tracking. From the classic cross-site tracking cookie, to the modern fingerprinting methods we know today. You basically aren't safe from this unless you're using Tor Browser (with or without actually using the Tor network) and not signing in anywhere.
Since some time Firefox prevents exactly these practices with its tracking protection, each domain has its own memory here where no other domain can access and if you use containers in addition, even the domain gets a different memory in each container.
As long as you're signed in, or allowing cookies, or allowing javascript, or it's able to get actual canvas sizes, etc from your browser, no proxy in the world can protect you.
With each domain the browser fingerprint changes and remains valid for this domain until the browser is closed but each container has different fingerprints for the same domains and another IP.
The VPN provider that shares data of its customers without obtaining their consent is actually protected by silver tongued legalese in the terms of service and gag orders in the law.
My government's laws prohibit the unstoppable storage of connection data. There must be a reasonable suspicion of a serious crime and there must be a suspect, not just thousands of VPN users because someone might have done something wrong.
It is in fact not easier to tell the authorities, "Sorry I can't identify my users because I have no logs!". That's a good way to get in trouble with 14 Eyes surveillance laws. And no, those surveillance laws are not limited to the 14 core nations of the Eyes. Most nations of the world are in on it without increasing the number of "eyes" in the name, and even if your company is from another country, if you have servers in an Eyes country, you're subject to their laws.
Why should a company get into trouble with the secret service if it complies with the laws in force in its country, where no one has to store any data. And if it would be so easy to get companies to record, why does even the NSA have its own department that deals with cracking VPN connections?
Be honest, if the secret service is looking for you, it will find you, no question, but who is wanted by the secret service?
The only danger you are exposed to when using VPN or even Tor is that you are swimming in a pot together with a few criminals, the price is not too high for me to protect my privacy.