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Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

Any american-based VPN company should be assumed to be a honeypot—use it to dodge your ISP, not governments.

While I don't wholeheartedly agree with the honeypot allegation, I do agree that you should take most VPN providers with a grain of salt, be it that they are in fact a honeypot, occasionally leak data, or do shady things like actually inspect traffic.

An additional use, and the one I use VPNs for from time to time, is to throw off ad-network information and avoid over-disclosing information about myself.

I'm quite sorry, I didn't intend to imply that PIA is a honeypot. I use PIA every day (I'm using it now!). My point was to say that at the end of the day, we must assume the government has access to all servers and services potentially subject to National Security Letters until proven otherwise.

If the government wants to snoop on you, a VPN is one NSL away from having full access to all future use unless you hide your identity and money trail very carefully.

So run your own on ec2 or similar

...because there is no way that Amazon would be working for the US government, right?

If you want some basic security, like when your on a public wi-fi network it is a good idea. If you are a person of interest, say for example the prime minister of Germany, there is a whole lot more you will need to do besides having a non-US based VPN.

Amazon provides infrastructure for ("security") government agencies (NSA included, if remember correctly).

But given Snowden's work, we'd be foolish to assume the collaboration is limited to this fact.

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