I understand using a VPN on public WiFi or mobile data may be useful in terms of privacy, but is there any point in using one at home? I live in Canada and don't have issues with ISP throttling, so I actually end up losing a bit of speed with PIA, albeit minimally. Is there any point?
Your ISP could be looking into your data and/or logging it. It's also absolutely necessary if you use any torrent services for downloading movies/music/series or are in any way concerned about your privacy.
It's also a good option to get around geo restrictions.
I'm concerned about privacy but moreso in a paranoid ignorant kind of way, I don't know that much about networking or how it all works. I know that the packets sent to the VPN server from me are encrypted, but then from them to the WWW is unencrypted essentially leaving me anonymous, but you also have to wonder how sending your data to a VPN company is any different than it going to an ISP.
Not necessarily. Any traffic can be encrypted. Web traffic if you use a plugin like HTTPS Everywehre will always try to force a encrypted connection even if you go to the encrypted site. This assuming it has an encrypted site.
There are many useful reasons for a VPN, ill focus on one since I get the idea that its more about the ISP you want some privacy from.
ISPs even with encrypted connections to a website (https) can still record things like session times, the traffic its self (to decrypt later), and things like DNS requests which will show what site you went to but not the content that was transmitted.
A VPN will as you know make a tunnel from you to an exit point. Your ISP will see nothing but the initial connection to the VPN, and nothing but encrypted traffic.
Keep in mind, that the VPN would have the same issues as the ISP. But that if Canada has laws regarding data gathering by ISPs, your ISP will be required to gather certain types of data, your VPN likely wont without a warrent.
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I'm with Eastlink here in Canada and have never been too concerned about them snooping as they're a fairly small ISP in one region of the country with what I assume are limited resources for that kind of thing, if I was with Bell it'd be a different story. I'm honestly more concerned about just having my habits snooped on and data collected in general, whoever that may be (government etc).
also, pia does not log your data so even if they got a warrant, their would be very little data to give out.
The things I found out when I went to a VPN is better Internet, When I am on the VPN and using Kodi to watch movies and tv the stream fast and I have no problems. With out VPN I was finding that everything was slow my provider is seeing what I am doing and they crap out my internet. Youtube and just browsing the internet is faster downloading steam games faster. When the internet providers computers can not tell what you are doing they do not adjust the speed of my data.
Now that I am using linux I need to find out how to put in my VPN.
VPN at home is not as important as on a wifi in the wild where it is a must. Just like your ISP you pay, you have to trust the VPN provider as much and if the VPN is in a totally different country too you so international laws kind of add a new layer of protection.
I would never use a US VPN service. Whats the point.
Also you have to remember wherever the VPN terminates they will have different laws ( or was that the point you were making )
I say no, but I've had private internet access for 3 years (every since the Tek mentioned it with a promo code) and have it on 100% of the time on every workstation (home and work) and on my cellphone. It's nice to know that no one can log my internet traffic.
What Eden said.
Its so funny, when I read VPN at home, I don't think of it like you guys do. I assume you need a secure entry point into your home network and you've chosen a home VPN to do so, but you guys obviously mean encrypting traffic coming into your home.
Most people use the internet very day without a vpn and they're just fine. you don't need one and its not necessary.
But I personally use one as it adds another layer of security and privacy
If you use a VPN service don't forget to switch off IPv6 unless your VPN provider also defends ipv6.
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best to start new topic with that as subject.
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Your VPN provider can see everything as well. Better be sure you trust them.
it depends what your doing if your just playing some games or looking up YouTube you don't really need a vpn unless your isp limits access to specific sites such as prioritizing Netflix over YouTube.
but using a vpn can have some advantages and disadvantages such as
1. You can set a vpn up at home or work so you can access the internet network when your away
2. It protects you from people that are trying to attack or monitor your home or work connection
3. If your using a company or untrusted service they could monitor and log your vpn traffic as a vpn acts more as a redirect rather than a 100% secure system.
4. It protects you or makes it harder for you to get doxed as when people try to trace your ip it will show the vpn's ip so its safer for livestreamers to avoid getting swatted or ddosed
VPN's are a great idea when you set them up right and when you trust the provider.
People like to mention is ISP snooping, but you do have to remember there are typically millions of individual accounts, each with an account holder then possibly many people using that same account ( family, business, cafe ) in this day of internet activity thats a mega shit tonne of traffic to monitor, so unless your really looking at things outside the arena of acceptability you might actually ( as a home user ) put yourself in a much smaller pond of people to be looked into, especially in countries with less technologically savvy populations you might be in the region of mere thousands or hundreds of home VPN users. i.e the Spartacus effect.
Ditto to what everyone said except we skipped one minor detail.
There is some overhead to this. So technically there are a few bits?bytes? per packet that handles the vpn encryption, so your preceived speed could be slower, but it all depends on how the ISP meters your usage and/or throttles.
Latency and bandwidth?
If not torrenting a vps running an openvpn server might be an interesting alternative to a VPN service
Bandwidth on shaw is about 170/17 on a good day and their dns servers tend to be the fastest to my box. It's hard to accept giving up fast for privacy from my isp.
I will be playing with moving my http/s and torrent traffic to a VPN but I expect to be disappointed.
VPN between peers would be very nice with coworkers but again I have traded any hope of privacy by using Skype. Properly secure video conferencing would be nice but there isn't a lot of people buying or selling it. The same issues exist with email and cloud storage.
Convenience trumps privacy on almost every point.