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Comment by GameOfFrowns | Hacker News Reader

I love Mullvad, but I fear that they will become a victim of their own success. The more prominent the service becomes, the bigger priority it will have for intelligence agencies, despotes and ad companies to undermine/hack/subpoena it.

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You shouldn't use a vpn to protect you from 3-letter agencies. Assume they already have the access they need regardless. You should be using this to protect you from private companies hoovering up your data, for that, a vpn is essential.

I've always assumed that a VPN is a honeypot already, especially the bigger ones that advertise a lot.

What is a VPN doing that protects me from private companies?

Your ip address is hidden. For the case of my ISP (which I trust as far as I can throw them), my traffic is end to end encrypted. This also applies if you're using someone else's internet connection and do not trust them not to snoop on you (such as your employer's BYOD wifi, or a starbucks wifi, etc)

Your IP address isn’t really a primary fingerprinting method for anybody these days. People and devices are overwhelmingly mobile, and many users will connect via the same IP.

Starbucks snooping is resolved by more ubiquitous technologies like HTTPS, DOH, and encrypted SNI.

> Your IP address isn’t really a primary fingerprinting method for anybody these days.

It narrows things down immensely, and many IPs will not have many users.

This isn't true in my experience at least for ad tech. Finger printing has moved from a deterministic process, to probabilistic models and IP plays a meaningful role in that. I believe it is why Apple spent the time building Private Relay for instance.

If your threat model includes 3 letter agencies then you are fucked. Don't be a child pornographer or a terrorist I guess.

You are being downvoted but this is exactly my fear. They're almost too good, they're now the obvious best choice for a public VPN service and therefore an obvious target for the TLAs.

Assuming they weren't founded by said agencies.

You need to chain vpn:s and hope you hit different ones, as said agencies hate eachother.

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