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.
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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.
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Most hosting providers will sell you additional IPs for your VPS at €1/mo and you can rotate your IPS all you want (and get completely new ones every month). And you can share your VPN with as many people as you like. So for the cheapest €13/mo N**dVPN plan you can get a server with like 10+ IPs, share with all your friends and even sell it if you want.
When multiple people use 1 IP, the service you are connecting to doesn't know that. So if it tracks an IP, it tracks it the same way regardless if it's from a VPS or VPN. Your VPS could as well be a VPN host used by thousands of people. That's why no service identifies users by IP. Even your home network IP will change (unless you're paying for one that doesn't). I won't even start talking about mobile data IPs.
If you want 1000% anonymity, you can't get that with anything online. If someone really really wants to know who you are, they can. "No log" VPNs have proven to have logs in the past, and if you don't control the VPN yourself to know for sure, are you willing to risk your 1000% security requirement based on trust in a corporation? And if you have a VPS, authorities can always find who you are through the VPS hosting provider. You can't get a new internet subscription without the ISP knowing who you are, so that's out of the options as well.
Furthermore, any service that really wants to, can easily block access to all VPS or VPN etc IPs. How? Every IP belongs to an ASN and all ASNs are publicly registered. Is the ASN a residential ISP? Or is it an ISP for data centres?
Don't waste money on VPN. Waste significantly less money on VPS.