So I’m pretty recent to the high seas but I’ve seen a few posts now about “stop relying on your VPN” and “people that think VPNs will protect them are naive” and so on.

So since I believe knowledge is our greatest weapon/tool/super-power, can we get some answers regarding what exactly the doomsayers are getting at? ELI5 why VPNs wouldn’t protect your anonymity.

Is it about logging? The country your end-point is in? Something more technical?

Ultimately I’d like to be fully armed in order to keep making the best choices for my fledgling ship as it navigates the vast, stormy seas.

  • Armbar@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

    Do keep in mind that the NSA can easily sniff your VPN traffic, even through logless Mullvad in theory, and access your account information to correlate and deanonymize you via subpoena.

    Can you say more about this?

    • justinalanbass@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      The NSA has unlimited legal power in this context. They can legally go to any US VPN, copy all traffic onto their massive servers, and use it as they want. They probably already do this, although that claim is unverifiable. That traffic contains your IP address and the websites you’ve viewed, clear data of torrents you’ve downloaded, etc. Mullvad, being outside its jurisdiction, is possibly safer, but presumably since they operate servers in the United States at least those could be sniffed. There is precedent for all of this.

      While it’s unlikely for you to specifically be targeted, my point is that you can never be truly anonymous on the internet.

        • justinalanbass@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          That makes it sound as if using a foreign VPN can keep you totally anonymous. It can’t. The NSA has authority to also operate in other countries. They can and surely do MITM any traffic going from the U.S. to another country. They can and probably do social engineer or zero day compromise a Mullvad VPN engineer’s credentials. Again, there is precedent for this. Not so much for piracy, but for sure for the very bad guys. They can keep your data forever and use it if they decide piracy is being very bad.

          You are right that there is no precedent for the NSA going after piracy - and I’m definitely not even talking about piracy specifically here. But I do think everyone should know they are not as anonymous as they think they are any time they use the internet.

    • leraje@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      Its trivial to find out youre using a VPN and which one and which of their servers youre using. If you pay for your VPN with identifying information (a card, PayPal etc) then they can theoretically make the provider log your specific activity.