Hacker News Reader

Comment by ziddoap | Hacker News Reader

>It's either your ISP or the VPN provider

That answers it for many people, I would guess. Even without censorship, many ISPs have a much worse track-record for gathering and subsequently selling information than, say, Mullvad does.

Is it an absolute that Mullvad doesn't log/sell information? No, of course not. But they make a much more convincing case than my ISP does.

Geoblock avoiding is another common answer. My ISP also sends out letters if you torrent, which can be annoying to receive - Mullvad alleviates that.

View on HN

Here in Germany the rights of ISP users are supposedly better protected than in other jurisdictions. At least that's what I heard on this podcast [0], latest episode iirc.

[0] https://www.stitcher.com/show/cypherpunk-bitstream

Yet you can't watch age restricted youtube videos without giving them your ID or credit card information. In the name of "protecting children".

The German government also threatened to ban Telegram which would have put them in line with places like China, Russia, Cuba and Iran. I think Telegram folded and now removes channels at their request in order to avoid being fully censored.

None of this is relevant to the point that ISPs have more privacy protection in Germany than elsewhere.

> Is it an absolute that Mullvad doesn't log/sell information? No, of course not. But they make a much more convincing case than my ISP does.

That's not the only deciding factor though, is it? Mullvad (not singling them out, but just for sake of illustration) is in many ways is more attractive to bad actors because it centralizes users seeking privacy. On top of that, you're adding additional software and network complexity which equals attack surface. There's more to consider than what appears at face value when considering whether a VPN is appropriate.

Of course there is more to it than a single dimension, I just didn't think it necessary to write out each and every consideration as the risk analysis will change per user.

The trade-off is worth it, for me personally, including when those other factors are considered.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com