• Emerald@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    Many students in my IT class think that a VPN is just “that thing that encrypts your Internet”.

    • GameGod@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      4 hours ago

      As someone who works in tech, I feel like the sales pitch for VPNs is snakeoil for the average person. All you’re doing is trading out your own ISP spying on you for another ISP who can spy on you. I know I have rights if my ISP spies on me in my own country, but if my traffic is all egressing via a foreign country, I may have zero privacy rights in that country.

      If you need to hide your torrenting activity, just use a seedbox. If you need to hide from the NSA, none of this is going to help you. And TLS basically does the rest.

      Same with DNS-over-HTTPS - the DNS server is where they’re going to be spying on you!

      • Emerald@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 hours ago

        If you need to hide your torrenting activity, just use a seedbox

        I never understood seedboxes. A VPN on my own hardware works nicely. I hate cloud stuff. With a seedbox I’d have limited storage and would need to constantly pay monthly fees for it. Instead, I can just use my own hard drives on my own hardware.