You disable the VPN, they show “unprotected”, come on, I’m not really unprotected, why such a dramatic word, I just disabled the thing a little, I’m “disconnected” but it doesn’t mean I’m actually unprotected, the same way it doesn’t mean I’m actually protected if I’m using a VPN.
ITT: a lot of ignorant laymen who don’t understand the first thing about how the internet works.
If you’re using a VPN to protect the destination of your traffic from the prying eyes of your ISP or the state, then the VPN would absolutely be protecting it, and therefore when disconnected you are by definition unprotected.
Mullvad uses the term “Disconnected” in their apps, and their website header says “Not using Mullvad VPN”.
(I know that’s probably not a good reason to switch providers, but they are really good in other ways too)
I just saw that on Proton VPN but I remember seeing other services forcing this “unprotected” word as if it was the end of the world.
“Please you need us look how you need us now you’re unprotected holy shit”
It’s just fear-based marketing, which I have a strong distaste for as well
This confused my parents too. They saw a sponsorship for some no-name VPN, with a bunch of scare tactics, and were afraid they would get hacked without a VPN. I had to explain that the VPN was only the entrance to the internet. We already have plenty of encryption in place with https. Only time I really “need” a VPN is for hotel/airport/mall public Wifi.
This is inaccurate. See my other comments.
But VPN is not a privacy service.
It sure is. You get privacy from your ISP, or the network operator of what you’re connected to. Thats why people famously use them for things like piracy. If VPNs weren’t private, privacy wouldn’t exist.
Not necessarily. For example if your browser is fingerprinting you towards the webpage, a VPN will be useless when it comes to privacy.
Yes necessarily. What a VPN does to protect your traffic flows from your ISP or network operator is not affected by browser fingerprinting. On the contrary, this is something VPNs explicitly help with. Since web traffic is almost always encrypted, the types of limited traffic analysis they can normally do, they wouldn’t be able to do if all your traffic is going through a VPN. (Snooping on your DNS queries, looking at your TLS SNI, analyzing packet sizes and such)
Additionally, not all traffic you’re trying to protect with a VPN even uses a web browser.
I keep seeing this but I don’t understand. Does it not improve your privacy with respect to your ISP?
If your ISP tracks you, then yes; the VPN “tunnels” past the ISP. But keep in mind that the VPN provider can also sell your browsing history. And the ones suitable to work around DRM laws, usually don’t have strict data protection laws.
The issue is, that a lot of VPN providers sell their service as a privacy service, with loads of superficial bullshit or false promises.
“If” heh
I wouldn’t trust any ISP to not be tracking users
Laws.
Virtual Private Network?
Virtual wire from your PC to the provider. Nothing more, nothing less. And btw, the encryption of the “wire” doesn’t protect against online tracking (and https is already encrypted).
and https is already encrypted
But DNS is not, and even HTTPS is leaking info via the SNI
That’s what i meant, the encrypted traffic doesn’t help privacy.
that’s just outright bullshit.
it already helps that most of the data in HTTPS traffic is encrypted, otherwise your network provider would see freely what user account do you use, to post what content, on what subforums.
encrypting all traffic on the wire helps additionally to hide what websites you visit (DNS and SNI in HTTPS) and what kind of other web services you use. your local ISP will only see an opaque stream of data to a single VPN company.
Virtual wire from your PC to the provider. Nothing more, nothing less.
also wrong. It’s a virtual wire, that is significantly harder to be tapped, because signals on it are scrambled.
Au contraire:
A VPN, or virtual private network, helps protect your online privacy by encrypting your internet connection and masking your IP address, making it harder for others to track your browsing activity. It also allows you to bypass geographical restrictions, giving you access to content that may be blocked in your region.
The whole point of VPN is privacy.
youe internet connection is already encrypted if you are using https
You are right to push back on that guys comment, but I want to offer some more insight on this for you.
Https doesn’t necessarily encrypt your entire connection. While the traffic to that site is encrypted not everything is. I really wish more people were aware of DNScrypt. Which is a method for encrypting your DNS connection.
These things all have their uses.
HTTPS: Encrypts traffic to and from a given websites servers.
DNScrypt: Encrypts DNS queries between your device and the recursive resolver, so your ISP can no longer see those DNS lookups. However, the ISP can still see the IP addresses you connect to.
VPN: Routes your traffic through ANOTHER server adding a layer between your IP and the destination.
The guy you replied to said VPNs encrypt your internet connection. Some VPNs do use end to end encryption, but that’s not like a thing VPNs invented. Not sure why people think it is. VPNs can be unencrypted too. The main use case of a VPN is to act like you’re on another network. This is useful for torrenting to hide your IP, or for pretending to be in a different location. Also VPNs that are encrypted (which most are these days) only encrypt the connection from your computer to the actual VPN server. So if you aren’t using HTTPS then anything after the VPN server is unencrypted.
If the ONLY use case you have is encryption HTTPS + DNScrypt is all you need.
One note though is VPNs can actually protect against man in the middle attacks on public wifi. Where someone tricks you into connecting to their fake wifi pineapple and then shows you common sites as if they’re real, but typically this is not a threat on home wifi or a cellular network. Not a reasonable one anyway. At that point your dealing with state level actors and a VPN aint gonna do shit anyway.
DNScrypt can be subbed for DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS. Some browsers even have a DNS over HTTPS option in their settings. This is easier than setting DNScrypt up yourself, but you are also kind of relying on the browser to do a good job in this case. Plus any lookups outside the browser like for other apps or system updates are then not encrypted and would go to whatever the DNS is for your full system.
Even without DNScrypt or one of the alternatives one of the best things you can do is to simply manually choose a different DNS provider. Most ISPs will send you to their DNS provider and can see everything. You can manually select a different one. There are lots of options, Mullvad, Quad9, Cloudflare, Adguard Public DNS, etc. Some will even block ads for you. It’s super easy to do you just go into network settings and put in the IP to your chosen provider. You can look them up online to find a good one.
Oh man you haven’t seen avast then
You’ll know in about nine months, give or take, depending on when you went unprotected.
What a nice device you have got here. Wouldn’t it be a shame that something bad happened to you because you didn’t throttle your bandwidth or stopped paying your subscription on time?
What other terms could they use?
- Vulnerable
- Exposed
- In Danger
- At Risk
- Potentially Compromised
- Unmasked
- Uncovered
- Unhidden
- Discoverable
- Unpresentable
- Uncouth
- Unbecoming
- Indecarous (might be my favorite now)
- Indecent
- Immodest
- …
All substantially less likely to make me think of condoms
disconnected
They could just provide the facts: your connection is not protected by the VPN. The scaremongering is just marketing for the next renewal.
not protected
Even better…“not connected”.
Being on a VPN doesn’t mean your connection is protected, necessarily.
That could theoretically be misconstrued by some users as meaning “not connected” to any network, though. And explaining it might be a little wordy for a notification. Maybe “VPN disconnected” or something.
True. Users are able to misconstrue things well beyond my imagination
That’s no fun
Your data is leaking
Better simply “You’re Leaking”
It all depends on what you’re supposed to be protected from. Vpns protect your Communications from being intercepted and keeps your location anonymous.
So you are in fact unprotected from being located identified and tracked. You are also unprotected from having your Communications intercepted by a man in the middle.
If you’re on a public unsecured Wi-Fi network you are totally exposed. If you are on your own router connected through an isp, the ISP knows everything you’re doing, and attaches your billing information to that data and uses it.
So I really don’t think unprotected is a scare word. It is an accurate description of your situation.
VPNs don’t prevent a device from announcing its real location. And they protect you from a MITM at the ISP but not at the VPN provider, so you just switch who you trust. VPNs also don’t do anything to help with the browser fingerprinting that companies use to track you around the web. From the point of view of the services and sites you connect to, all a VPN does is change your IP address, and the IP address may not be a big part of how they track you in the first place. VPNs alone do not improve privacy much at all.
What VPNs do is shield your traffic metadata from inspection by the network hops between your client and the VPN provider (though the content is almost always enxrypted even without the VPN), and change your apparent location for any service that is exclusively using IP-based geolocation.
If you’re on a public unsecured Wi-Fi network you are totally exposed. If you are on your own router connected through an isp, the ISP knows everything you’re doing, and attaches your billing information to that data and uses it.
You don’t need a vpn to protect yourself over a public wifi network. All modern website have HTTPS with certificates so the website can’t get spoofed and no one knows what your doing on that website. Modern browsers will warn you before entering a website without https or a certificate. Using an encrypted DNS like nextdns further protects you so no one even knows what websites your visiting.
Ok I’m not 100% sure if using an encrypted DNS does fully protect you from outsiders finding out which website your visiting, hopefully someone can correct me if I’m wrong.
The only problem I see with public wifi is the peer-to-peer nature of it. You no longer have the protection of a gateway if somebody is trying to be nefarious. They won’t sniff https traffic, but might attempt to connect to open services like an unsecured listener for the cat feeder.
In that instance, locking down the internet connection with a VPN would prevent an attack.
I’ve actually never really considered that. I guess all other apps also need to be secure or sandboxed or lack permissions to do anything although even then it seems like apps can just escalate permissions on there own without you doing anything.
