r/privacy • u/addteacher • 14h ago
question VPN questions
Question 1: This sounds rhetorical, but I really would like to know. What is the point of VPN if I have to keep turning it off to access sites, like Safeway, my college, etc.?
Question 2: If I have several tabs open and then turn off my VPN to access a site on a new tab, am I right in assuming all the other sites in my open tabs now have more info on me?
Apologies for any naïveté. Just trying to keep up. Thanks.
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u/Mayayana 7h ago
VPN is mostly for people who need secure contact, such as dissidents in oppressive countries. I use it when I stay at a hotel, because I don't want to trust the security/privacy of the network. As a privacy tool it's limited. You might pretend to be someone else in another country, but if you're allowing script and not using a HOSTS file then you're still being tracked all over. And if you log into your college, why would you try to be anonymous? You just told them who you are by logging in!
The obsession with VPNs and fingerprinting is mostly a red herring. To actually be private online is a completely different issue. You need to block the surveillance from the likes of Google in webpages.
This reminds me of my niece who sent me an email via gmail when she was about 12 y.o. I warned her that Google is a sleazy spyware company. She said, "Oh, I know. I told them that I'm a 60 year old farmer from Arkansas." It was clever on her part, but of course she wasn't fooling Google. They had her IP address, tracking data and her email.
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u/Ok_Muffin_925 5h ago
Sincere question.
What if you have a single family home and a family of four.
Each family member uses You tube. All family members have alias accounts on You tube (as many as three or four).
Your has occasional weekend and overnight visitors who come with their own You tube credentials, including alias accounts.
They all use the same computer in the kitchen at some point over various weekends.
How does Google/You tube identify each unique individual versus the others in the home and their alias accounts?
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u/billdietrich1 10h ago
If I have several tabs open and then turn off my VPN to access a site on a new tab, am I right in assuming all the other sites in my open tabs now have more info on me?
I think it depends on how those open tabs behave. If they're just waiting for input from you, no change. But if they have background worker threads refreshing them, they (the web server they're talking to) could pick up on the change of IP address and record it.
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u/BenevolentCrows 5h ago edited 4h ago
VPN's don't actually provide privacy, they provide an encrypted traffic to your ISP, and a masked IP. Websites can still profile and track you via your browser anyway.
Edit to clarify: The traffic is encrypted up until the VPN provider's server so its not just the ISP that can't access it, but it also protects you from untrusted internet access, like public wifi, and man in the middle attacks (propably)
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u/Ok_Muffin_925 5h ago
I ask the same questions all the time. There are websites I use that explicitly block any users with VPNs. I am not sure what their motivation is. Some of them brag about being pro privacy sites but they won't let people use a VPN.
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u/UsenetGuides 3h ago
Posted recently something about VPNs you can surely get some info from there.
- You are not full anonymous while using a VPN, mostly you want to mask your Activity. Like even if they know where you are, you still don't want them to know what you do.
- Yes, there's kill switches options for most VPNs just to make sure you don't expose yourself.
I suggest you spend a bit more time on what a VPN does and how to use it, you will see, nowadays it's pretty important.
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u/halftwitch 12h ago
youre on the right track, and a trying to login to battlenet with a VPN turned on will get you silently banned for 2 weeks.
VPN ads make it seem awesome, but theres lots of clear pit falls