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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

Asking for a friend: don't most people use a VPN when they watch porn?

You think most people have a VPN subscription?

If most people did, VPNs would either be illegal or extremely heavily regulated. Just like they are in countries where VPNs are almost mainstream.

Replying for a friend: "No"

Aren't you just shifting the problem somewhere else? I assume VPN providers have to keep effectively the same records as ISPs so you've just created an extra hop to get the data?

BitWiseVibe has the answer below.

Yes, you have created an extra hop. One that bottom feeders will not take. The NSA or CCP might, though.

opsec is a constant battle. You are using the VPN, but you have to ensure that you have

1) no other traffic going over that VPN at the same time, so the IP can't be linked to you at that time

2) ensure all your porn traffic goes over the VPN, and never accidentality over your actual IP, keeping an eye on things like dns leaking

You have to be lucky every time, they have to be lucky once.

It certainly won't hurt mask your online presence, but it's not the end of the story, or even the end of the beginning

There's a difference between "they could, theoretically" and "they do."

How much effort are these bottom feeders going to put in, when there's so many hapless imbeciles to exploit with no effort?

We're not talking about the NSA here. We're talking about copyright trolls trying to pick up low-hanging fruit with a dragnet of lawsuit threats. If they can't pick up your information from subpoenaing the ISP that manages the offending IP, then I doubt they'd go to further effort to hunt you down.

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