my people we've heard you we will no
longer be promoting vpns all right let's go what that's it
yes king lonus that's it but as short as
the outrage cycle was that doesn't mean that people's concerns about the VPN
industry were invalid Tom Scott did a great video Back Then covering a lot of
them and we're going to touch on some of his more nuanced points later but the
big one that really ignited the wave of distrust was his takedown of the
inaccurate fear-mongering VPN talking points that your Nana's favorite
podcaster was paring without the slightest understanding of them that was
a big problem but the thing is none of
that was ever part of our deal with private internet access and even Tom
worked with a VPN provider recently before he went on Hiatus earlier this
year so I think it's time for us to take another look at what vpn's do what they
don't do and whether they're worth it in insert current year now to keep things
clean this video will not be brought to you by a VPN but rather by our sponsor
delete me delete me helps protect you against the risks of identity theft
fishing and even rooc calls and other scams by removing your data from
hundreds of data broker websites we'll talk more about them later a VPN or
virtual private network does exactly what it says on the tin it establishes
an encrypted tunnel between your computer and a remote server allowing
some or all of your network traffic to be routed through that server before it
goes to its destination that's about it
but don't let the Simplicity fool you a VPN can be an incredibly powerful and
versatile tool which is why virtual private networking has been built into
Windows for almost 30 years now back in those days the server you were
connecting to was probably run by your work it department and enabled you to do
exciting things like connect to Shared drives and internal servers as though
you were physically in the office when you were actually working from home or
abroad and another big one at least for
young me was gaming see in the early days many games supported land
multiplayer but didn't necessarily Support internet multiplayer so virtual
private networking was a way for me and my friend who were actually many miles
apart to play land games together now
both of those are still common use cases but they aren't the ones that get a lot
of marketing so when the average consumer thinks of a VPN it's more
likely that they're thinking about a commercial VPN provider who has servers
all over the world to give your internet traffic let's say a British accent so
you can watch your favorite baking program without getting burnt by a location check now most commercial VPN
providers also offer extras like ad blocking antivirus password managers
remote access and even dark web monitoring but none of that is the VPN
it's just add-ons to entice you away from the competition in a very
competitive Marketplace so at the end of of the day the VPN portion does two
things it obscures your IP address helping hide your physical location from
the sites and services that you use online and if it's properly configured
and that's a major if it encrypts all your internet traffic including services
like DNS concealing your browsing habits from your internet service provider and
by extension any entity like a government or special interest group who
might compel them to share that data what a VPN isn't though is some kind of
all-in-one solution for Online safety security and privacy and this was and
continues to be a major contributor to the backlash surrounding VPN marketing
see a VPN doesn't prevent you from punching your credit card number into a
sketchy website and it doesn't prevent you from giving your real personal
information to that mysterious cutie that you met on a dating app for the
personal data that's already out there you need something completely different
like from our sponsor delete me data Brokers collect massive amounts of
personal information from anywhere they can get it and they sell or rent it to
anyone that pays their fee now you could go to each broker's website and follow
their opt out process then go back and do it again every so often to make sure
your info stays offline or delete me can do the work for you getting your data
removed from hundreds of online data Brokers back to vpns though let's look
at a scenario where it wouldn't help you one bit you sign into Netflix through a
Japanese server in order to get access to your favorite anime that still hasn't
made it to the US there's a couple small problems for one thing your IP address
might be obscured but your vpn's IP address is visible to the service that
you're using and they can tell that uh hey that's not a residential IP that's
coming from a Data Center and you're watching Netflix you're probably using a
VPN the other thing is that okay while
your ISP might not be able to see what data you're downloading Netflix
absolutely knows what you're up to because you signed in with your Netflix
account that has your credit card info and your billing address attached which
might not be a big concern with Netflix but let's be real here many of you are
relying on vpns for media acquisition on
other services and the truth is that a VPN can be an extremely powerful tool
for such Endeavors but it still isn't a silver bullet and depending on the laws
in your jurisdiction there are a number of other protections that you should
absolutely have in place before sailing the high seas for one thing you should
be using a throwaway email ideally from a provider with strong privacy
protections like proton mail use a fake name or the real name of someone you
hate and don't enter any payment information that can be traced back to
you Pia for instance takes cryptocurrency for payment though that's
probably not as untraceable as we once thought it was and finally choose a VPN
that has a long history of not just refusing to Prov provide data logs to
entities who demand them but being unable to cuz that's kind of An
Inconvenient Truth of the VPN industry without additional layers of protection
like torrent protocol encryption your VPN provider has a pretty good idea of
where you go and what you're up to and all of that is only as secure as their
willingness and ability to protect you which requires a lot of trust without
much ability for the average person to verify so how do we choose a VPN to
partner with I mean that VPN is owned by so and so and those guys own all these
other VPN and those guys hired that sketchy dude you know the one but the
fact of the matter is guys in the Cutthroat world of online security and
privacy you're going to find sketchy characters who came over from the other
side unscrupulous Crypt Bros and conspiracy theories Galore some of which
turn out to be a lot more than just theories and depending on who's doing
the spinning of the facts the same developer could be a nefarious former
hacker with ties to the Middle Eastern intelligence Community or they could be
a computer nerd that served the mandatory time in their country's Armed
Forces when they were a teenager another concern is that according to VPN pro at
least 105 VPN providers are owned by
just 24 corporations and making it worse
many VPN review sites and even giants
like PC magaz azine and IGN are owned by
Umbrella corporations that also own VPN
companies so with so many conflicts of interest everywhere it's hard to trust
pretty much anything that you read about this industry so for me what It
ultimately comes down to is my personal experiences and who's got the provable
track record which is why more than 6
years after we first partnered with them I'm still happy to tell you guys that
we're going to be sticking with private internet access who again is not the
sponsor of this video but we do have an affiliate relationship with them I use
them Luke uses them and a bunch of other folks here at LMG do too but lonus how
can you trust them I hear you asking well they had me at bro too
soon okay to start with Pia's no logs
policy has been tested in court multiple times they have never produced logs in
response to a government's demands for data I mean you can't hand over logs if
they don't exist and depending on where you live in the 100 Acre Wood or beyond
that can be the difference between freedom and imprisonment or Worse on top
of that their RAM only server architecture their logging prevention
architecture and even their Anonymous dedicated IP offering have all been
independently audited by one of the big four Professional Services networks
multiple times with the most recent audit results released just a few weeks
before shooting this video the Android app has been independently reviewed with
a mobile application security assessment something only a handful of VPN apps can
boast and if all of that still isn't good enough for you all of their clients
are open source and you can go over every line of code for yourself or you
can even just not use them and connect to their servers with a generic openvpn
client pia has also removed their physical servers from a number of
countries in response to changes in legislation law enforcement action and
other threats to customer privacy when they removed their servers from Hong
Kong back in 2020 they stated that Pia will not operate servers in locations
that have enacted anti-privacy internet laws or who have proven to not follow
the rule of law they also publish quarterly reports detailing government
requests for data bug Bounty submissions along with some company and industry
news their blog archive goes back more than a decade and in between General
Industry news and security tips you'll find explanations for controversial
hiring and policy decisions and some excellent essays on digital privacy most
importantly though while I have acknowledged in the past that VPN deals
can be pretty lucrative and more subscriptions you drive the more money
you can make Pia doesn't push us to say
anything that is misleading whatsoever in fact they give us zero guidelines
other than to say hey don't say the product does something that it can't do
and don't drag us into any of your endless controversies they actually
didn't even say that second part which leaves us free to keep the BS completely
out of our talking points and stay focused on real world benefits for our
audience like the aforementioned privateering for which uh
Pia uh definitely works pretty well so
if you guys evaluate things for yourself and decide Pia is for you we're going to
have an affiliate link to Pia in the description but whatever you decide just
remember that a VPN any VPN doesn't give
you some kind of digital diplomatic immunity and they don't make illegal
activities any more legal they're just one piece of your broader digital
privacy toolkit just like our sponsor delete me your personal data is already
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plans just follow the link in the video description if you guys liked this video
maybe check out our how to browse the internet anonymously video from a few
years ago it's got a few more things that you might want to add to your privacy toolkit and some of them are
free so there's no reason not to do it