Why VPNs are a WASTE of Your Money (usually…)

Commercial VPNs probably hurt your privacy and security more than they help. Behind the layers of marketing sits a darker side of the industry. Ask yourself questions like:

- Why trust a VPN company and their ISP over my own?
- Who’s actually running these companies?
- Why so many VPN ads on YouTube?
- What’s up with all the review sites?

VPNs are designed to transport devices from a network of low trust to high trust. Or bridge traffic between high and high trust. A site-to-site or corporate VPN both fall in this category.

With commercial VPNs, you’re more likely to be transporting your Internet to a network of lower or uncertain trust. Rather than just your ISP seeing your traffic, you grant this privilege to the VPN provider and their ISP too.

Most of the providers out there are owned by just a few parent companies. Many of them have hidden ownership and conflicting motivations. Many “no-logging” VPN companies have turned out to be doing the opposite.

You shouldn’t use a VPN if:
- You want to encrypt your traffic.

Most of your traffic is already encrypted because most common sites support HTTPS. Encrypting your DNS queries is becoming standard too in web browsers.

- You want to hide your identity.

There’s all kinds of other metadata in your network packets available to track you. Advanced actors can correlate them to track and discover your location.

There are some cases where using a VPN does make sense though.

- You want to mask your IP address.
- Circumventing IP blocks to watch Netflix
- Getting around national firewalls
- Bypassing download limits
- Performing offensive security assessments
- Conducting OSINT and research

If you do need a VPN, the best option is to do-it-yourself. Tunnel back to a home server. Set up a cloud server. Open-source software like Wireguard, Shadowsocks, and SSH makes this easy.

Not to mention the hundreds of guides out there to follow.

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📖 Additional Reading:

You might be asking at this point,
00:00 Should You Stop Using VPNs?
01:00 The Mysterious History of Snake Oil
02:09 The Problem With VPNs
03:46 How People Think VPNs Work
04:59 What They Don't Tell You About VPNs
07:42 BadVPNs
08:10 How the CIA used CryptoAG to Spy on the World
10:13 How Spy Agencies Would Use VPNs
11:35 When Should I Use a VPN?
13:41 Signs of a Trustworthy VPN Provider

#VPN #Privacy #Security

[cometsands]

Imagine he says: "That's why thid video is proudly sponsored by Nord VPN"

[pt]

"I use a VPN to stay anonymous on the internet"
>Logs into Facebook using their VPN

[vapesnob]

He says, “Practicing digital hygiene isn’t that complicated.” Then goes on to name like 50 different bullet points to practice digital hygiene.

[ajirhussain]

i really enjoy these 'deep dive' videos types, telling a story while educationg and exposing industry secrects. this is awesome keep it up

[nicopootato]

All i have learnt in this videos is that I either have to go all out James Bond style clearing my name off the internet, or do nothing and accept the fact that I will die to a dark web hitman one day. Using a VPN isn’t really worth for security sake.

[HMan]

Main uses for VPNs outside of corporate VPNs is geospoofing, bypassing traffic shaping from the ISP, and hiding your IP for peer-to-peer applications... All very useful and worth the couple of dollars a month price... But you have to do your homework and make sure you are getting what you are paying for.

[abdullahnadeem]

This channel is seriously underrated. Hope to see more like this

[ronnienicklas]

i understood about 30% of the video tbh however it did help me understand that vpns aren’t everything that my favorite channels have hyped them up to be. thanks a lot

[HyenaEmpyema]

Another crappy thing about it is when you use a VPN, most major websites treat you like a criminal and force you to "prove you're not a robot" or just block you. Cloudflare often blocks or throttles me when I go to normal websites from my VPN.

[AndyRoidEU]

"Use an unique email for every site."
Haha, 900 email adresses coming in.

[xarfram]

The thing to remember is that the data from websites still has to reach you somehow, and if the data can do that someone can probably follow it

[trentterryfriends]

I was expecting "VPN's are a waste of money, now here's a word from our sponsor NordVPN" 😂

[Cyberspatial]

Hey everyone, really appreciate your patience and waiting. Have been working super hard experimenting with different workflows and new styles. Hope you enjoy this one!

P.S. Never gonna get sponsored after this... 😅

[bws]

I've been a netsec engineer for a large company for over 25 years and the video above is exactly what I've been preaching to people for years. Bottom line, there IS NO privacy on the internet, no matter how much you try to hide or mask. People make mistakes, become complacent or simply refuse to believe the sheer scale of the amount of information that most commercial businesses collect. Every individual byte or bit is just another contributor to each users digital fingerprint.

[NutritionalZero]

Deliberately polluting someone else’s analytics (for whatever reason you may wish to do that) is a perfect case for a VPN. Data like that is usually looked at only by suits to make “data-driven roadmap decisions”, so getting your opponent to think their product is really, really popular in, say, New Zealand can be hysterically funny and possibly also profitable.

[leewallis]

I run an IT MSP company and this is by far the most accurate, well thought out and research/fact based synopsis of ‘Big VPN subscription providers’ I’ve ever seen. For years I try and have this conversation with our clients but the words I use and the understanding of our customers when it comes to tech means it largely falls on deaf ears. Thank you for this and I will be adding your video to our new customer induction resources. Big thumbs up from here 👍👍👍👍👍.

[TheWayManREAL]

As a cybersecurity engineer I see all of these partnerships with VPN's and advertisement claiming you are safe as long as you use a VPN, oh gosh I am so glad someone came out with a video to finally debunk it. VPN's have always been a threat more than a help, think about it like this "Secure virtual network with site to site connections, trusting traffic between locations" or in the consumer world we look at VPN's as just changing the public IP. A agreement is made, thus opening the door to new, or bad possibilities.

[kinshihypha]

-VPNs are a WASTE of Your Money!
-I live in China.
-Ohh...

[pugnate]

Since there is a huge market for personal data, routing yours through a company and just trust they will not screw with it, because you pay them 2 bucks/month always felt weird to me.
The crazy marketing was the next hint (like that's expensive, how do they pay for that?)
and then Tom Scott's video ...
Thanks for the deeper dive! Much needed reassurance!

[Iron-Bridge]

As usual, love and appreciate the high level of research, presentation and overall flow that went into this video. You deserve far more subscribers and likes and shares. I'm sure you'll get there deservedly.