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19 points

How does it work?

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7 points

Didn’t watch the video, but… Traffic is often already encrypted with TLS or other encryption & you don’t have to use the ISP for DNS. This would cover a lot of the data you would be discussing. Instead if using these advertized commercial VPNs you are giving the data to those corporations instead which is hardly better in many cases—luckily most of your traffic is encrypted with TLS & you don’t have to use them for DNS …which takes us back to the previous statement for concerns.

There’s still value in VPNs for a several online activities (censorship, piracy, activism, etc.) & threat models to certain folks, but assuming the ISP is the bogeyman in most common scenarios for non-niche use cases is incorrect—but it isn’t how these commercial VPNs are selling themselves. If the ISPs possess the ability to break TLS encryption we’d have bigger issues to worry about & VPNs wouldn’t help. I would assume the video goes in this route but chooses the clickbait title for views.

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3 points
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If possible, I don’t want my ISP to know, trade, and sell as little data about me as possible.

FTC Staff Report Finds Many Internet Service Providers Collect Troves of Personal Data, Users Have Few Options to Restrict Us

T-Mobile Employees Across The Country Receive Cash Offers To Illegally Swap SIMs

I know VPNs often exaggerate or outright lie, but they still benefit me in ways I consider valuable.

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1 point

If it’s all encrypted & they don’t have the DNS requests, all they can see is that you sent X bytes to some IP which isn’t very helpful. Who’s to say these VPNs aren’t selling their data back to the ISPs anyhow?

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-1 points

You are handing your data over to the VPN. However, with https only and encrypted DNS there is a lot less data to hand over

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