I'd love to agree, but speaking globally - if they had physical offices in India and in San Fran, they'd be paid based on the market value for the location.
With conspiracy theorists, it's always: if something big and bad happens, OBVIOUSLY someone is behind it.
they don't accept that real life isn't about good/bad dichotomy, that there sometimes isn't a villain. bad things happen, and sometimes there isn't really anyone to blame.
They appear to be a group with a mission financing themselves with VPN services, as opposed to most other VPN providers, who're just there to make a buck, and wouldn't give two shits to the circumstances as to why a VPN would even be necessary.
Hell, I'm pretty sure, the guys at AirVPN are aware that working for their goals actually reduces their potential customer base, but the mission is more important, it just needs to be financed, and it appears to be going well.
Profit-oriented VPNs would probably (secretly) support legislation inhibiting digital freedoms to make more money.
Also, you can probably guess who's more likely comply with authorities in legal issues...
Find yourself a good VPN provider, worth staying loyal to, and save yourself from future headaches. When I first signed up on AirVPN, they were charging 54€ per annum, now, last I checked half a year ago, they have three-year plans for 45€. I wish them continued success!
Yes, you and I both recognize that they're only talking about the VPN's own websites, but I'd bet good money that a majority of less-technical readers (not HN readers) won't understand that distinction. It feels like the author knows that, and deliberately failed to point out the fact that the tracking in question doesn't affect a person's privacy while using the VPNs.
Case in point:
> Remember, these trackers are made so that they can track your online behavior, and follow you wherever you go on the internet. Having even 1 of them on your website really defeats any argument for ultimate privacy and anonymity.
Tell me that isn't trying to scare the reader into thinking the trackers can follow your activity while using the VPNs.
I see what you mean. A little bit of "reasonable ignorance" but full understanding on the author's side that people don't read full sentences (or long titles).
nonetheless, the research is still valuable. not very surprising that those antivirus companies with vpns have such huge numbers of trackers
I'm a technical person, and the title absolutely baffles me.
"Top VPNs Recording Users" <-- By itself, this sounds bad and forces me to read the article to get more info. Most people won't, and it muddies the water. Recording users implies that they are somehow recording the browsing history of people using their VPNs. This is the immediate connection a non-technical and technical person would make here. Let's be honest.
"Potentially Leaking Data When Visiting Their Sites" <-- What does this even mean. I am leaking what data, and how would I be leaking it to their site? Why is this pertinent and what does it have to do with them recording users? Are they recording users history and leaking it to their own sites?
So many questions, so much click-bait. The net result is that I had to waste time trying to figure out whether this article was correctly backing up what its title conveyed. I have now given them ad-views, trust the VPNPro website even less, and the web is less well off in general because some > 0 amount of people will start mistrusting VPNs and VPN-review sites.
I know it's the crucial part, that's why they included it in the title as an easy-out in case someone calls them out on their dishonesty.
I'd rewrite your example as below in order to more clearly illustrate how I view the VPN title:
US DoHS Keeping Track On World travelers movements, potentially leaking data when visiting the US.
Note the main title, then the comma, and then the minor clarification. Firstly, the "main" point is at the beginning so that's the one that has the most effect and evokes an emotional response that colors the entire reading. Secondly, the last portion is separated with a comma, adds two points, doesn't clearly state how it modifies the first part of the title and is also ambiguous on its own. It vaguely confuses that tracking happens when they visit the US with the interpretation that the tracking happens all the time but only leaks when they visit the US. It also allows your interpretation that they only tracking while they visit the US. The comma should at the very least have been an "and".
If we wanted a real title that wasn't click-bait, here is my stab at it:
Top VPN providers record website-visitor's click/browsing behavior on their sites, potentially leaking it to metric providers with various degrees of anonymization.
OR.
Analysis of User-Behavior Tools On VPN Providers' Sites. <- This last one shows we can have an honest internet that isn't driven by click-bait, and could instead rely on the integrity of publications and the authors.
> US DoHS Keeping Track On World travelers movements, potentially leaking data when visiting the US.
Even with you changes it still looks easy to tweak or turn into click bate. "Potentially" is a weasel-word, because even safe things could potentially go wrong.
"Every time you fart you spread germs, potentially infecting everyone in the room around you with cholera or other diseases"
> Any third party will behave this way. This is the behavior of businesses that need to increase their effectiveness.
It's really not the "third parties" to blame here for the most part. You can make a viable business from selling a VPN service in exchange for money with a contractual requirement that you be respecting privacy in particular ways, so that you can actually get in trouble for not doing it.
But when Shady VPN Corp. starts offering the "same" service for "free" under a different contract because they're logging everything and selling your data, and then all the customers go over there because who doesn't like a free lunch, whose fault is that really?
I hope that, by now, with all the research coming out about that, that people would have stopped using free VPNs by now. it's more than likely a big hustle to do something shady
> it's more than likely a big hustle to do something shady
Of course it is. But it's also the case that doing the opposite of whatever idiots do isn't necessarily smart.
It's like the thing where people say don't use Google because "if you're not the customer you're the product" but then the same people are pushing Microsoft products that not only charge you money but then still do the same thing as Google or worse.
If you're not paying them then you can guess how they're making money, but just because you are paying them doesn't mean they're not doing the same thing. You still have to read the fine print.
As far as i know (form my college days in mid-2000s), we had this issue for setting up movie nights. Some people claimed that rented videos had an agreed-upon audience of (i think) 8 people. So to accommodate, let's say 100 people, we had to rent about 12 of the same videos.
Of course, we were in college and laughed and said screw it and just rented the one DVD.
isn't the census about to start this year? this is some "same shit, different toilet" scenario. all these so-called secure government institutions or private companies or wherever this database came from. always promising a lot, and delivering little.
that's what happens when non-cybersec people are in charge of cybersec things
It's all the data that's not census data and the fact that it's joined with census data. Why is this data joined with tax information, calls to fire departments, and bike share information?
I don't think they're saying that at all. My take was that we should treat the internet as a public space even if a web pace claims that it's private.
Getting off of Facebook directly contributes to their premise that everything online will be public. If you don't want it to be public, don't put it on the internet.
My take: Unfortunately, there are some places where we pretty much don't have a choice - banks, insurance, some government, etc. And the solution to this is to incentivize these institutions to lock things down better.
I get what you're saying. Makes it seem like people are less responsible than they actually are, i.e. Like putting all their business out on social media for everyone to see
Realistic, not giving up. You can't escape them. even if you do, your friends are on instagram, facebook. what are you gonna do? social distance yourself in a camp in the woods forever?
you can mitigate, not avoid. but how do you avoid government data collection and (possible) data leaks like this?
The radical solution is to understand that everything is out there, data brokers have collected and will sell everything you do.
We need to start demanding transparency. That's it. The whole solution. No business should be permitted to have data secured. Period. Hold whatever's needed for immediate transaction purposes, everything else gets WIPED.
Credit bureaus have already exposed us all. Open their databases, no more secured storage allowed. They can dump their data or accept responsibility 100% for every field they hold onto.
Every other company can follow suit. Every government can follow suit. No more black ops, CIA, FSB, any intel security. No more separate government databases for each department or program, just one open cluster of everybody's info.
Screw corporate trade secrets and copyright and every other protection. Open every database and every server everywhere.
It'll take maybe a generation or two to adjust to the new reality, but when everybody has to have all their actions out in public, maybe everyone will start to realize that the world really is a different place.
Maybe enforcing radical honesty on everyone will help eliminate all the class distinctions, judgments, tribal bullshit when the 1%'s actions are as wide open visible as everybody elses.
Maybe data brokers wither and die when nothing is monetizable anymore.
Maybe the constant stream of corporate malfeasance goes away when all the records are there for everyone to see, all the time.
Maybe we actually start to recognize and treat the mental health issues that result in stalkers, abuse cases, stealing from the elderly, pedophilia, drug addiction, when all the dark web and every other facilitator is in the open.
Maybe a couple of decades down the line we'll have people who understand that their actions have consequences and every choice affects those around them and when lying is near impossible the whole damn planet will be more sane for it all.
Or I'm a nutcase, or too early for my time. Who can tell?
The real radical solution is to enforce ownership of any and all metadata connected to you, and to acknowledge that in the case of a breach, damage is done statutorally, even if nothing has happened due to the fact that no one has seen interest in using your info against you yet.
You should also have the right to update or modify any state stored about you at any time; after all it is yours.
So the same probably goes for remote work.