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It is privacy with respect to your ISP. A lot of ISPs are pretty shitty. Some will rat out their own customers to copyright mongrels and threaten to disconnect you - which is important when there's a local monopoly.

Things you connect to or log in to are clearly going to be able to ID you at least with in the context of the login that you use regardless of what the VPN does.

I'm logged into HN through Mullvad as it happens. I usually leave it on regardless of what I'm doing because what I'm doing isn't my ISP's business even though I'm pretty happy with them.

by SXX7 hours ago|

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But what privacy do you think majority of people who not doing something badly illegal expect from VPNs?

Most likely these people just look to hide their torrenting, saying political shit on Twitter from employer and not share their choice of porn with local ISP. Also just adding one more layer between them and occasional scammer who can sometimes infer more broad geodata from their IP leaked from yet another database. Oh and now to avoid "Show your ID" page on the same porn sites.

It works well enough for this goal. Not everyone needs NSA-proof solution.

PS: Obviously more tech savvy people understand importance of hiding traffic on public WiFi, but I doubt average Joe the VPN user will buy VPN for this.

by illiac7866 hours ago|

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Source? Why not “I don’t want to get profiled”?

by SXX3 hours ago|

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We're talking on website with one of highest concentration of tech savvy IT professionals, programmers, cyber security experts, etc.

What percent on people on Hacker News who say they care about privacy live without Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook accounts?

How many people outside of HN do you think care about privacy for real? Like about adtech surveillance and not about their naked photos leaking?

I doubt either % is very high sadly. We tend to say we care, but very few people actually do anything or use self hosted solutions or not tied to Apple or Google ecosystems.

by illiac7863 hours ago|

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I mean, there’s a lot of products out there marketed around privacy. I really doubt the HN readers are the sole source of income for all these products… I do agree, it’s a minority, but within the VPN using population, I don’t think it’s a minority. Average Joe watching porn doesn’t give a shit about someone knowing about this (except, and that’s new, if you’re lucky enough to live in a place where VPN has become mandatory for this).

by SXX3 hours ago|

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VPN market is huge, but in my opinion majority of people who buy it "for privacy" dont really care about privacy and just use the same Google services or other accounts registered using a mobile phone number.

You really cant blame VPN providers for selling on "privacy" hype and not delivering because most people dont care either way.

Might be I wrong, but I feel in west for most normal people use VPNs for torrents, watching porn and hidding activity from school or employeer. Small subsets are also sport fans who bypass geo blocking and people scheming for cheaper regional prices on netflix / steam / consoles.

by illiac7862 hours ago|

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I would definitely blame a VPN provider if: 1. Only a minority of users care about privacy 2. VPN provider still advertise for “privacy”, even though it only target a minority of users that care about it 3. VPN provider doesn’t deliver on said privacy.

I blame mullvad for messing up, but I do not suspect them of working with some state sponsored surveillance programme at the moment.

by hdgvhicv6 hours ago|

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The mass surveillance industry doesn’t rely on ips or even cookies to track you.

by illiac7865 hours ago|

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That seems like a huge bet. I don’t bet on this, I am careful about cookies and my source IPs.

Do you have any facts? I know they really on _additional_ stuff, but do you have sources showing that they never use cookies or source IPs?

by schubidubiduba4 hours ago|

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He said they don't rely on it. They can use fingerprinting. Obviously they'll still use any other data you give them, including IP addresses or cookies.

by illiac7864 hours ago|

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Ok, what was his point then? “They don’t rely on it, so it’s useless to obfuscate it”, or “but you should keep obfuscating it” or something else? I am missing the relation to my original comment then.

by fragmede4 hours ago|

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That's a different claim though. Obviously they'd use cookies and source IPs when they're available, because why not use all of the information available to you. That browser fingerprinting is good enough that neither of those sources are necessary is for you to decide on whom to believe.

On that topic, though, is the Mullvad Browser, who's entire intention is to defeat browser fingerprinting.

by illiac7864 hours ago|

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I need to test it, that reminds me, thanks. So many browsers. Does it support multiaccount containers?

by vintermann7 hours ago|

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"Not knowing who a user is" privacy may still be useful even if you don't have, "not knowing two users are the same user" privacy.