So I’m pretty recent to the high seas but I’ve seen a few posts now about “stop relying on your VPN” and “people that think VPNs will protect them are naive” and so on.

So since I believe knowledge is our greatest weapon/tool/super-power, can we get some answers regarding what exactly the doomsayers are getting at? ELI5 why VPNs wouldn’t protect your anonymity.

Is it about logging? The country your end-point is in? Something more technical?

Ultimately I’d like to be fully armed in order to keep making the best choices for my fledgling ship as it navigates the vast, stormy seas.

  • @plexnose@geddit.social
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    142 years ago

    There’s often a lot of bad information about VPNs which is never backed up with any actaul evidence.

    Sure, you have to make sure its working properly and bound to your torrent client, but if it is, then that’s enough to protect you from copyright claims.

    There is no evidence of any commerical VPN provider ever responding to a copyright notice. People mistakenly think this, when all that’s really happened is they were not connected properly and their ISP got the notice direct. There is no situation where the copyright troll contacts the VPN provider, find the real user, then somehow makes the ISP send a notice to them. Doesn’t even make sense.

    • @hardypart@feddit.de
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      222 years ago

      There is no evidence of any commerical VPN provider ever responding to a copyright notice.

      Because doing so would put them out of business faster than you can say “fuck Spez”.

      • @plexnose@geddit.social
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        142 years ago

        Exactly - snd yet people still claim their ‘VPN ratted them out’ - it didn’t - it might hve failed, or the user never turned it on, but the VPN provider didn’t get a copyright notice from Disney and forward it an ISP.

        • Takatakatakatakatak
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          82 years ago

          Spot on. All you need to do is change adaptor in your torrent client so that it is only allowed to work with the virtual network adaptor set up by your VPN software. That way even when your connection falters, it’s never allowed to send a single packet via your raw network adaptor.