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.
It depends what are you doing. Torrenting child porn? A VPN won’t change anything because they’ll hopefully collaborate with law enforcement to track you down.
Torrenting a tv show? Usually the vpn company will ignore any requests from law enforcement as it’s not a real crime
Loving the nonchalantness.
Copyright infringement is not a crime. It’s grounds for a civil suit, but it looks really bad for Sony entertainment to try to bleed tens of thousands of dollars from a poor family trying to watch a movie they couldn’t afford to watch in theaters.
Possessing or viewing CSAM is so severe a crime, you need a lawyer to dispose of it. To not do so is to stay in possession of it, which is a felony. To destroy it is destruction of evidence, which is a felony. Your only recourse is to stuff it in an unmarked box, and ask your lawyer to anonymously hand it over to the local precinct. It is essentially social toxic waste.
ETA [rant] Note that a) Sony (and all the other major studios and publishers and record labels) gladly pirates IP that is not theirs, and also underpays the people that produce their content. And b) Sony freely engages in dark patterns and odious TOSes which is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to play Sony games in years. So it is actually more ethical to pirate Sony content (or again, that of any major studio, record label, publishing house or AAA game company) than it is to pay the company and support their ongoing abuse of workers, end consumers and the market.
Also there is one thing you can do to them that is worse than pirating their content, and that is not pirating their content. [/rant]
I’m not against pirating, I’m all for it. But copyright infringement is a crime (it might not be the case for all countries though!) Companies might not necessarily act on it on an individual level, but they still can put pressure on ISPs to track this kind of traffic. Either way, it’s better to use a VPN than not using one just to be safe!
You’re right that I should have specified the US, and will edit my original comment.
It’s not a crime in the US that has state-served sentences like fines or imprisonment, rather is a civil infraction. Granted, the media trade organizations like the MPAA and RIAA would very much like to make copyright infringement felonious, but that could easily lead to overenforcement and filling our already impacted prisons even more.
I’ve heard the European watchdogs are more severe and will go after grandmothers who play radios too loudly regarding public performance regulations.
But we’re in an era in which states are passing laws to make persons illegal or strip them of their rights, so we can’t rely on the state (any state) to fairly assert how their populations should behave, and Disney has been an IP-maximalist shit since the mid 20th century.
So our respect of legality should only extend to what can and will be enforced. The Sheriff of Nottingham does not deserve our obedience. (Prince John neither)
Me too! The world would be worse without free TV/movie/software.
Unlikely - most of the time they won’t have any logs anyway.
People get caught for CP and other crimes due to lapses in their own security usually - reusing user names across sites, details in photos that can be identified, or simply using a non encrypted connection one time.