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this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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VPNs do little for your privacy, unless there's specific reason to trust them over your isp
ISPs pass on your data to various authorities in quite a lot of countries. My own country (UK) has such a terrible privacy reputation I wouldn't be at all surprised to find ISP's hand over data for every request.
Literally illegal in much of the US. Rentseekers must be protected.
God it feels good to have some of the only municipal fiber in the U.S.. gigabit symetric for a flat $60/mo, never get ads from them, price is always the same, never gone down, speeds are largely as advertised... there's even a 2.5 gig and 10 gig option. once i have the hardware for it I'm looking at the 2.5 gig. right now I'm almost saturating my 1 gig with jellyfin and stuff, but if I get some more hardware I'm looking at using it to properly get in on the self hosting scene finally.
Its a double edged sword. You don't want the government to be the ISP but banning community broadband is silly. It should be perfectly legal and acceptable for a bunch if neighbors to get together and make there own network. It could function like a community garden.
Why is a private business inherently better than the government as an ISP, though?
Either way it has to follow all relevant local laws about how to behave. The ISPs will respond to law enforcement requests either way. But at least a public entity will also need to be accountable to the public and respond to things like FOIA, as opposed to a private entity which has all kinds of ways to resist transparency and is more accountable to the shareholders.
Either way it is a near natural monopoly because running redundant wires/fiber is a waste of resources. There won't be much consumer choice.
The idea that the government would be inherently inefficient is one that presumes a private entity that is highly insulated from market force wouldn't. Free markets create a lot of pressure to improve products, but there's no free market happening in a utility like an ISP. Even in the most competitive markets, that's still choosing one from maybe 4 providers that barely compete with each other at all. And you have to sign longterm contracts with all kinds of complex pricing to "test" the competition, and testing it requires pretty advanced knowledge beyond most users -- if you have no freedom to easily change your ISP, there's just not any competition.
If the sword is double-edged, one of those edges is safe enough for a renfair.
The problem with the government being an ISP is that they are very slow to change. Every 10 years or so we are seeing a massive change in internet speed. This would be hard for a government to keep up with.
Why would likely happen is that the government would award a contract with one single company which would be terrible for a lot of things.
I remember 15ish years ago when a bunch of new community fiber products started launching with cheap gigabit service in a few towns and we were all so sure it was going to be a revolution. The ISPS were going NUTS with how impossible it would be to compete.
Guess they're right since now I pay $80/month for the privilege of AT&T to deliver 500mbps service to me using their incredibly, incredibly bad gateway hardware that cannot be replaced. But hey, at least I'm not spending $5 more per month to have Comcast, my other option who is even worse and no faster. My state protected me from the evil of a community ISP and left me with this turd sandwich instead.
ISPs are going to be very slow to change indeed because they are not competitive. Free market competition only causes fast iteration where it exists.
Well fiber has hit my area quickly just like 5G. Its very fast and cheap. That same $80 will buy you fiber with unlimited data (Gigabit speeds)
That same $80 is fiber. Cable costs... the same. But tell me more about how the free market is coming to my rescue.
Yep, same here. Its almost trivial for ISPs to hand over data to the govt on any invented basis. They also do so to any business or company that asks for it, but they will charge them fees AKA selling data.
Worst part is there is no oversight, and there really is no segment of population that cares about privacy to raise this as an issue either.
How do UK based VPNs differ?
imo it's always better to trust a well reputable VPN over your ISP. I don't know of any ISP that can be trusted. By not using them you're essentially turning a "maybe private" into a "certainly not private".
There is no reason to trust your ISP.
ISP's in many countries happily share with government, they also sell your data to ad agencies.
VPN providers are just ISPs you can hire without a physical connection in most respects there.
Nice try, ISP!
Nice try, VPN!
A VPN can collect the same data as an ISP, and can be subject to the same requests/laws from governments
Oh my sweet summer child
Thank you for this helpful comment providing insight into a complex topic
I have a friend who works for a German ISP.
He personally has set up a system which automatically provides all the data requested by the police, without checking whether the request is formal and valid.
I rather trust a VPN provider from a jurisdiction where logging any user data is not required by law. Or an SPN, where even if logging has to be enabled by law, it is technologically impossibe to extract a user's activity from the data.
So you have a specific reason to trust certian VPNs over your ISP. My point was just that VPNs aren't inherently better than ISPs
I see what you mean, but I think that point is pretty inherent.
Most if not all countries have similar laws related to getting user data from ISPs by making them log it for some time. And people can only use the ISPs from their country.
On the other hand no country can force their law on a VPN provider from a different jurisdiction, yet people worldwide can use those VPN providers.
If you are trying to maintain privacy from the bad actors that most people should fear -- that is, advertisers and marketers --
VPNs are very effective because they increase the cost of that kind of datasurvillenace of you enough to make it not worth it. At least for now.
If you are trying to maintain privacy against state actors, especially to hide criminal activity, they will not be particularly effective. But are still better than the ISPs who likely don't even have a policy of vetting state requests before turning over info.
Not really, because you left out a huge asterisk. They are only effective after you have implemented a bunch of other methods to deal with cookies, tracking scripts, finger printing etc.
A vpn on it's own doesn't do shit if you don't auto wipe your cookies after every session for example. Which vpn marketing conveniently forgets to tell you