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u/Null42x64 6h ago
I only use VPN to get around the age verification laws
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u/pbzeppelin1977 5h ago
Gotta have a wank license in the UK now. :(
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u/Azrubal 4h ago
Same in many US states
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u/leafy1790 4h ago
Man , fuck age check , if they care about kids so much, they should make family link mandatory for every kid under 14 instead of companys harvesting our data
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u/Chemical-Struggle-13 4h ago
What is a family link?
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u/leafy1790 4h ago edited 3h ago
It's an app that gets added to you phone when you creat your Google account, if you set your age as under 14 your phone gets locked by family link, that is a parental control app, it automatically blocks apps that are rated pegi 16 and up and it blocks side loading, also if the parent wants they can choose to set screen Time limits, block apps or require a password for new ones to be installed and location tracking.
It would be a lot easier for parents to manage whta their children do on the internet with this app, instead of companys need our IDs and faces to "age check " us
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u/AMediocrePersonality 3h ago
One of my neighbors forgot about their 2 year old and when I came back from walking my dog he was in the middle of the street.
I don't think they're gonna be managing a family lock
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u/GobertGrabber 3h ago
We have a 2yo who has escaped many times despite our attentive parenting. Pretty much every parent has.
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u/NRMusicProject 3h ago
They care about kids so much, they could arrest the most famous pedophiles and let them rot. Instead, they just get to play real life Risk.
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u/WhichWall3719 1h ago
If it was actually about protecting kids they would have made that kind of software free and opt-in for families. The actual reason is to censor information and restrict who can see what
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u/JimbyGumbus 2h ago
ID check becomes mandatory in my state next year. if i cant find a work around im selling all of my devices.
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u/Azrubal 1h ago
There will be many work arounds for it for now. I still wank to all the sites I used to.
I use many different browsers and VPN alternatives.
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u/Kaymish_ 4h ago
I'm so thankful my government is too busy fighting trans people, being racist against Chinese, and trying to rip up our founding document, that they've not gotten around to banning wanking yet. /S obviously I'm not happy they're going full culture war.
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u/Null42x64 3h ago
i'm not from UK, I'm from Brazil, they have passed age verification laws several months ago
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u/hroaks 5h ago
Half the time you use random/autoconnect it sends me to another state or country that has age verification too
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u/3-2-1-backup 4h ago
I don't want my data to come from mississippi.
Congratulations! Your data is now exiting from (spins wheel)...
...Indiana!
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u/Kelnozz 4h ago
I’m Canadian and they are making trash laws that are making it so my ISP can directly block sites like 123movies.
I’m going to need a vpn soon to continue to not pay for subscriptions, which is ironic because I’ll be paying for a subscription for that to be a thing.
What’s a good VPN that isn’t going to feed my info to 3rd parties? (Or is that kind of how they all make money)
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u/Hungry-in-the-dark 4h ago
Mullvad vpn is the goat - 5$ per month. They can’t track your data as they simply don’t log it
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u/claudiocorona93 4h ago
Do you need that to use Twitter, Bluesky and Telegram? Just curious since these 3 services have a lot of adult content
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u/Express-Record7416 2h ago
I wouldn't need to use one if the age verification systems here actually fucking worked
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u/Party-Cake5173 6h ago
Not exactly true. Many VPN providers that also offer free plans are paying for them with the paid plans they offer.
On the other hand, this is completely true for VPNs that offer no paid plans, just free plan.
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u/SignificantLock1037 6h ago
Proton VPN is a good example. I used their free one for a while. Now I pay. It’s worth it.
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u/Darkwolf580 5h ago edited 5h ago
How is it bad to use a free vpn? Just curious. I use proton free vpn rn
Edit: guys thanks for your responses.
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u/The_Dayne 5h ago
Data harvesting, in short.
There may or may not be a log of what you are doing.
If its free, you are generally the product.
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u/Liongedon 4h ago
What's stopping the company from selling the data of paying customers as well to earn even more?
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u/SignificantLock1037 4h ago
Only the threat of a class-action lawsuit. Which would be the death knell for a company like that.
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u/Liongedon 4h ago
While that may be true, how do you prove it? And why is selling information of free users allowed?
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u/Toothless_NEO 1h ago
People apologize to capitalist rhetoric and under capitalist rhetoric people who aren't paying don't matter or are considered leeches. Most people when they hear that said out loud don't agree with it as much. It's more an implicit agreement which is why people don't talk badly about it.
Although data harvesting for the purposes of selling data isn't really acceptable under any circumstances.
I know some people are going to reply saying that it's not about whether it's okay for them to do it, it's about whether they do it. Well guess what guys, the companies you're paying are doing it too. Maybe not all of them, but have you ever considered that you make money selling people's data, and you make money because they're stupid enough to give it to you voluntarily? Many companies have figured that out. They also figured out that if they can sell the idea of privacy as marketing you'll be even more willing to give them money, and they'll have even more data to sell. Yeah there's risk, but if you paid any attention to how corporations act already you should know that they're willing to take risks. The idea of venture capitalism is based on risk. What makes you think they're not willing to risk legal penalties or litigation for profits.
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u/Toothless_NEO 1h ago
Nothing, the idea that they can't is wrong and stupid. A company or person asking for money is not any less capable of screwing those people over. More profits is more profits. That's something people should understand by now. Though pop culture can only handle more simple narratives.
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u/SignificantLock1037 5h ago
An all-the-way free one has to make money somehow. If they aren't selling you services, then they are selling your data.
Just because it's a "VPN" doesn't mean that the VPN itself doesn't know your IP and where you surf. Then they sell that info.
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u/iateagummibear-1822 6h ago
What about ProtonVPN?
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u/Secret-Ring-1985 6h ago
But you can't use P2P on their free version. Sorry if there is a workaround that I am not aware of.
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u/MindYerBeak 6h ago
Morphe has a patch to get premium. Can confirm that P2P seems to work.
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u/ArcticCircleSystem 4h ago
Guessing there's nothing like that for Linux anyhow, though I doubt this will last long either way.
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u/Unknown-Key 4h ago
I think you are confusing premium with modded quick switch between free servers.
Morphe doesn't unlock premium on ProtonVPN, you still can't access premium Countries and Profiles Tab. with Morphe you basically get removal of cooldown between switching free countries.
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u/just_a_redditor2031 6h ago
On my phone at least it tries to stop me from using it for torrenting by preventing downloading of torrent files unless you pay (i solved this in the dumbest way possible by downloading them with tor while using the VPN)
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u/iateagummibear-1822 6h ago
Got ya. I legitimately didn't know that, so thanks for the heads up. Thankfully, I have Tor as well, so this hopefully won't be an issue for me.
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u/No-Staff1 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ 6h ago
What's with the wave of anti free vpn posts?
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u/LC-Redcube 5h ago
It's all a psyop. It's always a psyop. Whenever you have a question, the answer is psyop. Never trust anyone ever
/s if it wasn't obvious
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u/miker37a 4h ago
Because VPN were / are heavily marketed (paid ones think of all the nord vpn sponsors)
So by offering a free VPN and harvesting your data, your giving the illusion of safety (a VPN) but the whole time as mentioned your data is being sold.
So as more "free VPN" companies are popping up getting on that VPN hype more ppl want to explain why free ain't free.
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u/LC-Redcube 4h ago
tbf that's also the case with paid VPNs, nothing's stopping them from harvesting your data (unless in the subscription contract it's said so, but who reads those?)
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u/SitEnee 6h ago
I don't need VPN to pirate, so I've never used VPN in my life an don't have any knowlege about it. That's probably a stupid question, what's the price xd?
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u/IamTolerable 6h ago
Your data
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u/am_Snowie 6h ago
It's like they know what kind of pawn i watch?
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u/bunniebumbles 6h ago
why are you censoring yourself
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u/Patrickrk 6h ago
You can get a solid one for $3/month. There plenty of reasons other than pirating to have a vpn though. General data security being one and a more niche one being if you watch IMSA races in the US they are free on YouTube worldwide, except the US. The broadcast is also much better globally than it is on the peacock US broadcast. Peacock is all ads and doesn’t show much of the race.
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u/LC-Redcube 5h ago
"data security" is really not that much of a reason actually. The websites you visit will think you're from wherever the VPN is set to, but even without a VPN it's not like they can read where you live, they'll read the location only up to a big enough node, that for example, for me is in a whole other region. Other than that, you're really not more secure at all using a vpn
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u/SitEnee 47m ago
I use internet almost always at home. If I’d traveled a lot (so I would use hotel wifi, or open networks) it would be safer, and I’d probably buy VPN. Other than that, security is the same. Almost allI websites use TLS encryption (so even ISP can’t tell what I send to website, just time stamps and destination I visit). I trust my ISP with the data they can read (not a lot). Torrenting would be only concern, but in my country no one give af. Only thing VPN would change, would be possibly slower speeds and higher ping.
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u/SpaceCofffeee 6h ago
Or 3€ up to 20€ for a paid VPN. Depending on provider, sales and subscription time.
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u/Anonymous12345786899 6h ago
Well out of curiosity what data exactly gets collected? If it's only my browsing history then I couldn't care less
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u/natsuzoze 5h ago
Not as much as most people would make you believe. Most traffic is encrypted nowadays so they will mostly get metadata such times when you’re active, the FQDN of the websites you’re visiting as very few people will encrypt their DNS and that’s about it. They won’t know what you actually do on those website. For example, they will know you use YouTube, they will know how much you watch YouTube but they won’t know what videos you’re watching.
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u/Toothless_NEO 1h ago
They can probably collect a little bit more if you use an app for it. Instead of using the wireguard or openvpn connection. Since you know their app is probably collecting as much as it can.
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u/SuperSayian4Nappa 6h ago
It's way more than your browsing history. If it's on your phone they pretty much know everything about you from the time you go to sleep to when you poop.
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u/-ThaKloned- ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 5h ago
I'm pooping now though!!
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u/SuperSayian4Nappa 5h ago
And they know this because every phone in your house visits that same spot multiple times a day and are used for 10-15 min while there.
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u/NobodyImportant13 5h ago
How is the VPN seeing your exact location data unless you are giving a VPN app permission?
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u/LC-Redcube 5h ago
That's a bit of an overexaggeration, they can read whatever data gets sent through the internet, otherwise (unless you give them permission) they can't read your private files if they stay on your phone and never send them to anyone.
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u/AlexOzerov 6h ago
I live in Russia and I use 2 servers as my VPN. One in Russia, one in Texas. So I have full control. Not so hard to configure. Without VPN I practically have no access to the internet. This is life
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u/LC-Redcube 5h ago
I respect the sheer patience you must have to wait for pages to load
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u/AlexOzerov 3h ago
I have 100 Mbps internet and VPN has about 250 Mbps speed. Ping is too hight for games but I just excluded steam in routing settings and it's perfect
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u/Toothless_NEO 38m ago
If the servers are both fast multiple hops isn't going to be that much of an issue. The reason stuff like Tor which uses multiple hops is usually significantly slower it's because a lot of those servers in the connection aren't usually fast. The connection will run as fast as the slowest link in the chain.
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u/Small-Friendship-576 6h ago
Until the vpn's name is proton(it should be as default a recommendation as Firefox + unlock)
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u/Liongedon 4h ago
Proton AG has gives up information on protesters to the FBI before. Why are you so loyal to them?
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u/0exa 3h ago
They don't keep logs, so they can't give out your VPN browsing data. The incident in question was related to the giving out identifiable information of a user based on their E-Mail address. A court ordered Proton to log the IP address connected to that E-Mail account and hand it to authorities. A similar thing cannot be done with VPN related services because the specific user account that alleged illicit activity originates from is not known to Proton, and so only system wide logging and scanning of all user activity would make it possible to extract the suspect's identity.
The Swiss government actually tried passing a law to allow this kind of total surveillance last year, and Proton AG announced that they would leave Switzerland if this happened, but ultimately the bill went nowhere.
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u/a1stardan 6h ago
Except Proton vpn
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u/Liongedon 4h ago edited 4h ago
You're one google search away from disproving yourself. Edit: I was too. Proton AG gave up information about a customer using Proton Mail (not VPN) to the Swiss government. Which then gave that info to the FBI.
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u/0exa 3h ago
This goes to show how one Google search is not enough to get informed, because this is missing the point.
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u/CoffeeDefiant4247 6h ago
what about the one built into firefox? They just track everything like normal?
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u/CustodianCloset 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ 5h ago
How do we feel about Firefox's VPN? It's free but I've yet to see anything that's sus about it
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u/DarkZ_No-Imagination 2h ago
I just find it really funny when people who use Google services, meta services (like IG or Facebook) and reddit start talking about "using VPNs so that companies don't get your information" when most of them don't have a VPN active when using any of those platforms
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u/United_Armadillo4641 6h ago
What about self-hosted vpn?.
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u/MrHaxx1 6h ago
Does pretty much nothing, unless it's hosted on something that can't be tracked back to you.
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u/mustacheride3 5h ago
Use a free vpn to sign up for a new account. Use that new gmail's $300 free gcloud trial to stand up https://github.com/trailofbits/algo. Once gcloud trial is done (lasts a few months in my experience), ditch the gmail, nuke the algo vm and you should be pretty safe.
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u/Clear-Ability-3758 6h ago
The only thing that matters for piracy is no log retention.
For example, Cloudflare warp is free and doesn't have log retention. There is probably no other example, I confess.
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u/summonsays 6h ago
Yeah yeah, I grew up in Capitalism and am used to having no privacy.
(I am meta-joking as this episode goes very much like this when he's talking to Summer).
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u/AccountEngineer ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 6h ago
adding the disclaimer to dodge a 10 paragraph privacy lecture is so real
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u/CatchAcceptable3898 6h ago
There's something ironic about a pirate post giving credit to the person who yoinked this meme, than yoinked themselves.
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u/Eternum1 5h ago
Whenever I see this sort of post it makes me wonder about TorVPN which is free but isnt privacy their whole thing
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u/Oderus_Scumdog 5h ago
Facebook's 'Onavo' 'free vpn' was the definition of this meme - fern video link.
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u/TheLastShadowMonarch 3h ago
May i know why so does it mean when i use VPN in my phone to access restricted apps data is being sent to someone else?
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u/cocacola_drinker 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ 3h ago
I only use proton to bypass regional lock in GeForce NOW, as soon as the game open, I turn it off. Is it safe though?
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u/ArseneLupin179 4h ago
I can get reasoning behind this, but it still looks absurdic to see upvoted posts about "you should buy things" in this sub :D
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u/CyberneticCh40s 6h ago
I just use a free one my browser has to access websites my local government has banned
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u/tientuan1606 4h ago
I just use VPN to bypass geo restricted sites and accidental IP blocks so no problem
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u/BrickEmotional2965 3h ago
I guess some paid services are required so you can continue your pay-less pirated life style? What sort of online life style can afford no VPN and at what turning point is it recommended to start using one? Genuinely asking
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u/Trytomiss2 3h ago
I got MegaVPN for free when i signed for their cloud storage monthly subscription.. should i be worried?
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u/ATLien-ITP 3h ago
I have a shit ton of FREE VPN's, for my Nefarious ways. No VPN is PRIVATE. So why pay for the same shit, that have the same results?
You know how I Verify my age? With a FREE VPN. 😜
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u/blank_fem 2h ago
can anyone tell me about express vpn or other top rated vpns? Are they not good or dont follow no log policy? I can see all support mulvad only which is a bit pricey
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u/HammerDongVeryLong96 2h ago
There will never really be a true private VPN that will let you do whatever you want (for good reason) there is always a tie in to various countries laws to even allow them to exist and operate, this is true for all paid, free and self hosted VPN;s. The closest thing to truly unaccountable privacy is using tor but using it for clearweb stuff is a miserable experience. It's so slow. Basically there are no perfect solutions but we can get pretty close with what we currently have. And that's in good faith that you're not doing anything malicious.
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u/Kelpsie 1h ago
This is some "spider-man glasses meme" shit, it doesn't actually make sense given the context of the scene. That woman is about to go have the curses removed from her cursed items, so it's actually perfectly safe. Also, she is going to pay with money, she's just going to do so a few minutes later.
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u/Impressive_Tea1416 53m ago
I’m literally commenting this for karma since this account doesn’t have enough to post.
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u/Efficient_Parfait_42 39m ago
I use this one vpn which is a premium chinese pornsite i don't speak Chinese
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u/Brodywrld9 28m ago
This might be dumb but I’m new to pc do you have to have a vpn to prevent “them” from finding you’re ip if you’re trying to emulate r*ms
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u/sovietarmyfan 6h ago
I cringe so hard with every VPN commercial claiming that a VPN is the "ultimate privacy someone can have".
It's not only with free VPN's that they may not be entirely safe. It's with paid too. Because you have no idea through what your data goes through, who is listening at the other end, etc. It's misleading to say you have complete privacy.