this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Your provider will just see encrypted traffic (mostly), so yes it will provide protection.
Your provider will just see encrypted traffic (mostly) anyway, so no it will not provide protection. The only thing that you're now hiding from your provider is which servers you're connecting to. Instead you're showing that info to a VPN company whose main business practice is scaring people into buying a product they probably don't need. Think about who you would trust more.
Your replies all make a very big assumption that the only connections being made, by people who are advocating VPNs, are over https (or possibly ssh) and thus VPN isn’t necessary. There exists more services than that some of which aren’t end-to-end encrypted (many messaging apps, for example).
Also, I agree that at the end of the day, a user is trusting someone not to snoop. But given that ISPs have been proven to snoop (for various reasons), I personally will put my trust in a VPN provider that I have researched and one that has shown a considerable resilience against outside forces. Mullvad comes to mind here.
Yes, a VPN is probably overkill if all the user is doing is using a web browser, nowadays. But it is useful beyond just setting up a tunnel for access.
A VPN doesn’t do much to protect HTTP connections.
Explain?
Your data still travels across the internet unencrypted. It only protects you on the LAN level.
Wouldn't the lan level be the most important part to protect when accessing http website? How likely are your connections to be hijacked once you are outside of your VPN tunnel?
I don’t know how likely that is. But I was a bit too quick in my judgement, on public networks a VPN does ass significant protection to HTTP connections. Not really on home networks, mobile networks or well-secured public/office networks though.
I honestly don’t know how much risk your data is at after leaving the tunnel. Luckily most things are HTTPS now.