Hacker News Reader

Comment by frakt0x90 | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong, but origin and destination are still visible to your ISP and any snoopers on your network. The content is encrypted, but not the origin and destination of the request. I use Mullvad because they seem to be a company with insanely good ethics and it's only $5/month. Mozilla VPN uses the under the hood I think.

View on HN

Your ISP doesn't get the full URL: they can tell which website you're visiting, but not the specific content you're accessing. The amount of information that is leaked by this, depends on which kind of site you're visiting. In the end, I occasionally use a VPN only if I'm connected to a public hostspot.

With a VPN your origin and destination are visible to your VPN provider. You're just moving the point where your metadata can be grabbed. I don't particularly trust my ISP, but I don't see a reason to trust any VPN provider any more.

I mean, I generally trust Mozilla + Mullvad a lot more than Spectrum. The only reason Spectrum wouldn't be selling or otherwise mishandling every bit of data about me they can is if they're too incompetent to realize they have the data. Mozilla has a good track record; they could always become compromised or make other mistakes, but Spectrum fucking sucks.

That's right, origin and destination are still visible. Even if you use encrypted DNS to hide hostname to IP lookups, your actual traffic has to be routed somehow by someone. Whether that's your ISP or a VPN provider + their ISP.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com