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Comment by dcormier | Hacker News Reader

https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29#file-v...

Although not entirely false, this post is a bit too defeatist. "Don't use a VPN because they may be lying about not logging connections" is the same as saying "Don't get on an airplane because the pilot may be suicidal".

I'm not going to stop using vpns nor flying on airplanes because of that.

You typically get on an airplane because you have to travel someplace. With VPNs I fail to see a reason beyond circumventing geo-blocking.

Whereas the VPN provider might do something with your data, your ISP most definitely does.

Does it? I don’t recall giving A&A permission to deal with my data in any nefarious way, i’d doubt they would anyway.

https://www.aa.net.uk/

ISPs monitor and modify your internet traffic in America (perhaps that's different in the UK?). My American ISP absolutely spies on me. So rather than accept that guarantee, I can use a VPN like Mullvad who at least promise not to do this, and whose entire business relies on keeping that promise.

> whose entire business relies on keeping that promise.

That "you should not use a VPN" link someone posted elsewhere explicitly disproves that claim, saying that HideMyAss were caught breaking their privacy promises and have yet to go out of business.

The prices of VPN services also don't make sense and potentially suggest something nefarious is going on (not saying Mullvad is doing this, but any VPN advertised on YouTube is very likely to do so). It's difficult to imagine that they can afford such bandwidth/hardware and the amount of support/abuse cases (remember that VPN services will attract scum as a side-effect of their privacy/anonymity claims) for such a low price.

Virgin, who are the only ones who can provide decent speeds at my address most definitely spoof DNS and record traffic.

This may be very different in countries different than yours.

I wasn’t making a blanket claim. Op told me my isp is bad. My isp is not bad. I’m certain that a vpn provider would be less trustworthy than my isp.

So maybe you don't have to worry about the ISP itself, but your government:

https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/23/13718768/uk-surveillance....

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/why-taking-government-court-mass-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26050877

TL;DR: My bank wouldn't let me use their online banking because I had run a Tor service sometime in the past.

This isn't a persuasive argument for not using a VPN, it's a strongly-worded reminder that using a VPN means you're trusting your VPN provider. That's a big difference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com