Stop using VPNs for privacy. 

Are you feeling confused after watching this video? Do you find yourself asking "So, if VPNs don't protect my privacy, what should I use instead?"? Well, I've finally made a video answering that exact question: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qZE45J-MIUg.html

Title: Stop using VPNs. RU-vid: "Let's place NordVPN ad here!"

*stops using VPN* "Sorry, the content provider has not made this video available in your region." *starts using VPN again*

Plot twist: hes just a hacker and hes tired of getting stoped by vpns (this is a joke, I dont care if vps dont stop hackers) Edit 2: this was supposed to be funny. You can stop trying to argue another point in the replies?

NordVPN could've just used a VPN to protect themselves from the hacker attack

I got a VPN ad before watching this.

Also, any time a service becomes large enough to be publicly recognizable; instantly becomes a target not only for hacking but also for corporate and political infiltration.

When reading the comments, a counter-argument can be found for each argument: ''Use this. Do this. Don't use that, it's useless'' and so on. You can read the comments all day trying to find out how it really is, to get what is true and what is not, until you finally realize that no one really fully understands how it is. The more you read, the more you understand that.

Thats it I'm never using the internet.

All I want to do is just watch stuff thats not available in my country.

Glad some one is telling the truth. The real truth is privacy online has been dead for 10 years. The system was never built for privacy it was built to connect.

Thank you man. Having no knowledge of networks and VPNs I still had a gut feeling that VPN providers can monitor your traffic if the decide to, what's to stop them. That was the answer I was looking for. Your video is great and to the point.

Nice try FBI. I still ain’t gonna turn it off Edit: people below can’t comprehend the concept of satirical comedy

I saw this in my feed today, finally, someone who understands that VPN's are NOT protection for privacy but simply an exit point somewhere else in the world and the provider can LOG everything.

Me: searches for vpn youtube: Stop using VPN

That’s it. I’m moving to Montana, starting a potato farm, and building my own ISP. Who’s with me?

Stop using bad VPN's would be a better title.

Another valid use case for VPN: livestreamers and social influencers concerned with bad actors (or just whiney script kiddies) from capturing their IP address

Stop using seatbelts for safety... because it might not save you. Yeah, that logic.

I disagree with a few points here. I don't think VPNs are a flawed idea. But they're marketed in a way that is just deceptive.

Meanwhile RU-vid users in China: "Sure, I'm gonna stop using them right n

You had my heart at LD's theme! Nice take. Appreciate time spent on this. Keep up the passion...

You use VPN to protect your privacy, i use VPN for visiting website censored by my government. WE'RE NOT THE SAME

*Welcome to the comments section! Please read this first:* Q: Who else got a VPN ad? A: Everyone did. The title has 'VPN' in it, so RU-vid puts VPN ads on the video Q: The title sucks! It should've been "stop using bad VPNs" or "stop using VPNs for wrong reasons" A: If I said "stop using bad VPNs" people would automatically assume their VPN is good. NordVPN, PIA and PureVPN were all considered "good" at some point. If the title was "stop using VPNs for wrong reasons", people would automatically assume their reason is valid. Q: What if I live in China/Russia/North Korea? A: There are good reasons for using a VPN and this is discussed in the video. Circumventing censorship is one of those reasons. Q: What if I want to torrent or watch porn? A: See previous answer Q: But without a VPN my ISP will be able to snoop on everything I'm doing! A: That's not true. HTTPS and SSL/TLS encrypt full URLs and contents of the websites you visit. Your ISP will still see the domain names, but so would the VPN provider. In some cases, if your ISP is affiliated with the government and you can get in serious trouble by browsing certain websites, it's reasonable to use VPN or Tor. However, for the most part, it's a choice between trusting a big ISP comany that resides in your country and trusting an anonymous nobody on the Internet who would have no accountability for misusing your data. Q: No A: Okay

"Stop using vpns" Bruh I literally have to use a vpn to watch youtube

I trust my vpn more than I trust my ISP. Plus, it's not Nord throttling my connection to netflix

definitely diving into your videos. Thank you so much for taking the ti to teach us that are green in the field. Have a great day

Wolfgang: “Don’t use a VPN” RU-vid Ad after video: “need a VPN? Get one here.”

A better title would be “Don’t rely on a VPN for privacy”, more accurate however is less clickbaity

Dude that was the sponser ever. Thank you. cheers my friend & flysafe.

An ISP may care about torrenting, an VPN service probably won't. It's an easily accessible extra layer of protection against lawsuits. If you only use it for downloading Linux ISOs and buying digital services abroad, you're probably fine. Just don't route all your traffic through it.

"There are minor exceptions" *Proceeds to state very good reasons for using a VPN*

It's hard to believe that VPN companies aren't tracking and logging users' activity. It would be way too tempting to track users and amass huge volumes of data on people. That's where the real $$$ is. Not the $3/month subscription fee they collect.

Ultimately one of my primary reasons for using a VPN is privacy against my ISP and public networks. Which it does wonderfully.

A more correct video would be - stop using VPN companies that you cannot trust.

This video is a little biased. You spend a lot of time telling us about how a VPN is bad and a false sense of security, then at the very end spend like ten seconds telling us that they're good for a handful of circumstances, which are likely the main circumstances that a VPN is used for. Instead of going for a clickbait title it would have been better to approach it as a "when a VPN is needed and when they are not", maybe with a guide on how to set one up yourself.

This is hokum. One VPN service or server being compromised by a hacker does not negate the usefulness and security of most VPNs

people never consider the fact that i want whoever is spying on me to see the horrible things i say

I feel like I've got the last puzzle piece to see a whole picture about VPNs) Thank you

There's a difference between wanting privacy and wanting anonymity. Anyone who uses a VPN for anonymity is not getting what they paid for, but VPN's are more than proxies. They specifically encapsulate your traffic inside of another protocol (the tunnel) so that it cant be inspected by any intermediary until its unpackaged at terminus.

VPN's are nice to have when you're on a school network that monitor every site you go to and give you a heavy-handed firewall blocking

Currently there is no way shape or form in the USA for anybody to speak freely without censorship ON EVERY PLATFORM.

Thank you for this!

A better bit of advice would be to state that a VPN isn't a magic wand, but it is a legitimate privacy tool. Make sure that your privacy toolbox contains the right tools, that your tools are of high quality, that you know how to use them properly, that you know what each tool's limitation is, and how to combine your tools to provide adequate privacy coverage. This will vary from person to person, depending on their threat assessment. For Joe Six-pack who just wants to stream or torrent without getting nasty letters from their ISP, pretty much any VPN will do. For journalists living under a hostile dictatorship, they'll need a safe and solid VPN in addition to several other necessary tools and steps. And of course there is everything in between.

feel like this video's title is wrong and misrepresented

I like how he mentions you might be a security conscious law abiding citizen or you could be a hacker, drug dealer, activist, or journalist. Hahahahaha! They are all criminals! This guy is clever and I love it!

my often accurate paranoia says: If I were a govt agency or govt employee whose job it was to track people's activity online, specifically people who attempt to hide their activity (meaning they are likely doing something they dont want the govt to see), I would create a vpn service. It would work perfectly, a vpn service run by the govt, disguised as an 'anti establishment' 'anti-govt' service that "keeps your data private", and people who want to hide their activity would voluntarily sign up for this vpn/trap, and would function as a pipeline of data to the govt, specifically from people trying to hide their data from the govt. i see youtube/google as part of the establishment, and if mainstream youtubers with big channels, who get paid by youtube, are advertising nordvpn, that is sketchy to me

If you want to stop me you'll have to find me first! **disappears into encrypted cyberspace*

Real title: "Don't use VPNs based in the US and don't use VPNs for things that VPNs aren't actually good for."

Finally someone speaking sense while many other youtubers have commercials and sponsorship from vpn all the time... almost can't see any video related to tech without its sponsored by a vpn or the like Good this video 👍

Hello Wolfgang, thank you for sharing your knowledge around VPN's! Do you have any thoughts on Orchid (OXT) crypto based VPN regarding the points that you make in this video?

Today’s sponsor: “Nord VPN” I would have died if he said that XD

VPN's are fine for privacy, to be anonymous however use tails/tor etc. Privacy and anonymity are two very different things, you take your threat model into consideration and decide how much work and care you need to put in for whatever you're doing. This is pure clickbait.

those lights on ceiling dope may i ask where can i get some love em

IT'S ALWAYS THE UNDERRATED VID THAT'S LEGIT! THANK YOU!

Basically: Passwords have been hacked before. So stop using passwords.

I'm only using VPN so I can pirate shit without my ISP telling me I can't do that

In a nutshell: Don't try to protect your privacy because everything can be hacked.

Me who still using vpn: "bruh I need that for crunchyroll...≥3≤"

I literally got an ipvanish VPN ad right before this.

Love your honesty and your concern for other people's privacy🔐. Refreshing to say the least. "Subbed 👍🏽"

Me reading the title: "Stop using VPN's for piracy" *panic* Me reading again: "pRIVacy not pIRacy" *calm*

Me: *Clicks the video* The start ad: "EXPRESS VPN HELPS YOU BY..."

I used ExpressVPN for a while. I primarily only used it in public wifi areas, at hotels, conferences, etc. My initial concern came from people at tech conferences that I saw actively hacking the routers at the conference centers and just sitting and watching internet traffic. Some conference centers were either using outdated firmware with known vulnerabilities or in some cases setting ridiculously simple administrator passwords. Many people at conferences I have been do just to very blatant network scans as well, just trying to connect directly to shared drives over the network, over-trusting bluetooth devices, etc. A VPN won't protect you from direct attacks like that. I've heard a lot of people trying to use VPNs on public wifi for that reason, to which I always say to make sure you have a personal firewall or detection service on your machine. What I have found useful is having my own cloud account. Because I do a lot of cloud development, I have accounts on multiple cloud providers. I created a "hopping VPN" of my own that just jumps between clouds, services, regions, etc. with ephemeral IP addresses. Still limited range of IPs, but it's at least somewhat helpful. Through use of Terraform and a couple other tools, it's easy to get everything you need set up **FAST**.... but I'm also a software architect. I keep the Docker containers I use up-to-date with security patches, etc, which is part of my day-to-day job anyway. It's easier for me than the general public, but I am trying to think of ways to OSS my solution to help. I know it's only a small layer of protection, but when I'm in a public space I get paranoid about some of the bizarre things places do and restrict. We're in a state right now where privacy is a big concern, but there's also not much we can do about it. Everything has vulnerabilities and holes. I try to explain to corporate clients that even things like firewalls are merely a deterrent and not perfect, security and penetration scans only work for known things, etc. but it's rare people will listen. Many times, even for PCI compliance and other things, people scan once and never scan again nor set up active monitoring/logging for potential violations. Some new, innovative idea is needed - and I haven't seen one and haven't been able to think of one on my own... yet.

You basically only make two arguments, and they are really weak. *Logging* - Sure, your VPN may be logging your traffic. Maybe. One thing is for certain. Your ISP is _definitely_ logging your traffic. So in this situation, a VPN may help, but it certainly won't hurt. VPN companies stake their entire business on their reputation for providing privacy. When that is compromised, their business falls apart. This is a huge incentive for them to actually do a good job here. Yes there are perverse incentives like you mentioned, but those only pay off in the short term. Reputable companies that have been around a while and are based in countries that respect privacy are likely to have good privacy and security practices. *Identification* - You say that as soon as you use the VPN to access something like facebook, it reveals everything else you do from that IP address. This is not true. That IP address is likely shared by many other people so there is far too much noise to distinguish the users. Rolling your own VPN on a VPS does not give you anonymity. That IP address can be directly linked back to you, just like your normal IP.

The main reason I use VPNs is because of geo-locked websites that normally can't be accessed in my country, plus it's more recommended that you use one for "pirating" while torrenting.

Tldr: your ISP will see "vpn mysterious activity?!?!" Instead of knowing what you're doing, and you can simulate being somewhere else in the world. But other than that, vpn isn't going to magically protect you.

Thanks, Wolfgang. Also I'd like to add that hosting your own VPN is a good method of reaching your localhost from anywhere in the world securely (through VPN split-tunneling) at a multi-layer service (bare-metal, VM and cloud) as long as you have ssh and a VPN client running.

There wasn't anything presented here to deter me from using a VPN. Hopefully, anyone using a VPN understands what it offers and those that don't know what is being offered are probably not being harmed.

I had Zero idea! Thank you 😊❤❤❤

I like how "journalist" got lumped together with "drug dealers"

Blanket statements like "Stop using VPN for Privacy" are not helpful, and are not based upon accurate network security fundamental principles. It really depends upon what you are doing at any given moment on your system, whether or not a VPN service is the correct choice to protect your privacy. If you want to protect your internet activities from the the prying eyes of your ISP then a reputable, stable, regularly audited VPN service is a good choice. It is not advisable to run the service all the time on your primary system but when you want your activity to encrypted, turn it on, and turn it off when you are done. Other options like proxy etc... will not shield you data from your ISP or the many routers your data will travel through during your internet session. All you have to do to confirm that is take a look at your own router traffic history logs when connected to VPN and when not connected to vpn. If your own personal router can identify your data traffic, so can your ISP. Simple as that. NordVPN experienced a hacking event, and they adjusted their practices based upon that event, and many other VPN providers followed suit, and now openly share security audit reports regularly to assure their customers they are doing everything they can and should do to protect their data. That said, I'm not advocating for or against any particular VPN provider. The choice of a provider is something an individual should research for themselves. Bottom line is network security and privacy are complex subjects and valid recommendations cannot be made with over-broad statements like the title of this video. How you protect your data, and/or your user's data (if you are an admin or engineer) really depends on the nature of the data, how it's being accessed, and who you are trying to prevent from seeing the data traffic.

Omfg, I love the background music, where can I download it? 🥺

I don't live in the US and when using a VPN I think about whether I can access the site at all, not about how anonymous it will be :)

Thanks for the video! Here is another use case, your ISP throttles your connection based on what you are doing... with a VPN they can't use this technique to throttle your connection because they don't know what you are doing.

"Stop using VPNs" just don't use the Internet at all Edit: Thanks for the 400 likes

Great video apart from the fact that you don't give a solution? How about Tor?

Nord actually got audited to verify their “no logs” claim as legit.

Appreciate this candid tutorial on VPNs ...I currently live abroad in a controversial country where one should cover their tracks when navigating online...being careful has become an established habit.

Does it count if I use Phone Guardian👀 I can't let go of ma boi Max!

The VPN Server still dumps all of the traffic onto the VPN Server's ISP network. So if you self host a VPN Server, that traffic is still being dumped on your ISP's network as if they were on the same local home/office network.

that's it, I'm gonna set my PC on fire

God no. They know what Netflix shows I watch.

I only used VPN when I sometimes needed use school Wi-Fi lmao.

We used to manually bounce through anonymous servers back in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Video: "Stop using VPNs" RU-vid: *Gives me an ad for a VPN service*

The thing about having your password stolen that, sure you might have your whole bank account robbed and lose everything, but you have to remember is that money isn't everything. The thing that matters most in life is having strangers like your comment on the Internet. That's what real happiness is and no amount of money can make up for that.

All I know is when my VPN is on my isp stops complaining about my eye patch and peg leg.

A VPN with a fixed IP is also useful for getting into firewalls that you can lock down with an IP restriction.

7 minute video why you shoukdn't use a VPN Piracy: "i'm about to end this man whole career"

Great video. I use expressVPN from Europe to access some of the geolocated content from my US streaming providers. While I think this is a good use case, sending all your traffic through a single point is a bit concerning. The things that people do for HBO!

@Wolfgang I was looking at getting a VPN to protect against DDoS attacks while gaming on XBOX. What do you recommend for that?

Thank you for the information. But bro your style has changed so much compared to now😂

When you show your viewing audience something on the screen TO READ, perhaps you could possibly flash it even faster so there is absolutely no time to read what you have presented for them TO READ! Thanks.

Man I accidentally bought a nord VPN because i didn't cancel the free trial, so I thought "welp Maybe I can get something out of this" and I see this video. Pain

Love the breakdown. What about Getting a VPN for Geo-spoofing reasons alone? lol Are there any other non-VPN options to stream content from the other side of the globe? :)

Great video. Js curious, how come I have my VPN connected on my cell phone but when I open a mobile app say like to get something to eat that food app knows which restaurant is closest to me? 🤔

Your into is simply fire.

I need them for TOR, Torrenting, and Zeronet hosting. VPNs are not for you average users

Basically, VPNs are just classic tunnels, with some added security based on the config. The most common use case ? Being able to reach other networks without sending traffic unencrypted. For corporates that is both remote access VPNs and S2S tunnels (when they cheap out on leased lines) and for consumers, remote access. So as Wolfgang said - use it to access services that would normally not be available from your network (country), as that is and always was the intended use of a VPN. VPNs were never meant to be a privacy tool, although they can be used as such to a degree - aka Tunnel > Jumphost > tunnel > jumphost > etc etc. But then you're just reinventing the wheel of TOR.