Also recall that multiple ISPs have been caught tracking their users and selling their user’s data.
The expansion of secure connections limited that to a degree, but we know ISPs are still extracting and selling data based on their response to people switching over to encrypted DNS requests.
Some government agency (KGB, FBI, CSI, whatever) comes to VPN, secure mail, etc provider; Informs that some "enemy of the state" is using the service; Demands to overtake the service, install some software etc; Or else CEO of the service is also an "enemy of the state".
From this moment this service is not only "not secure" but directly allows access to your email data, leaks all the keys, passwords, browsing history, logs whatever they want etc.
Yeah VPN will allow you cheat Netflix. Never trust any service to not comply to some government agency.
Most if not all of the big VPN providers collect data and give it to law enforcement, which isn't exactly news to us.
Tom Scott had a pretty good video on what VPNs can actually deliver on, despite the claims of many sponsored content creators. He lost his VPN sponsorship because he pointed out, among other things, that you don't actually have guaranteed privacy with these services.
ETA: I'm surprised these providers are even able to market with the use-case of evading geo-locking without getting sued (tbc I'm against drm in general and geo-locking in particular)
[1] from the standpoint of, "is this a good reason to use a vpn", not "does society/the law consider this a legitimate thing to do"
Geo-locking isn't a law. It might have been part of the tpp that the US never signed.
Certain marketplaces don't allow vpn advertising or wording like that.
In reality they act as a Canadian store selling drugs to the US customers at a discount.
Dutch ISP KPN was the target of a blackmail attempt in October 2017 by an ex-employee who was using NordVPN. According to a lecture given by KPN's cert team members at BalCCon 2019, NordVPN gave out everything they had including logs to law enforcement. Pretty sure someone can find the court documents about it.
(we may be forced)
It is a tri-state legalistic term: didn’t, forced to, complied with.
^ VPN Payable in Bitcoin
