- Joined
- April 12, 2009
- Messages
- 23,459
True, but thanks to Switzerland (and I suspect China) concerns:A VPN will do you no good against an OS that's snooping on you - the OS knows your real IP, can connect it to your VPN IP, and also identifies you by a unique token that MS assigns to you.
http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-avoids-swiss-showdown-by-making-privacy-changes-to-windows-10/
All true but I don't care much about browser advertising schemes (ublock origin for Firefox) and I don't use social networks. My problem with browsers are security holes that allow cryptolockers to pass through. All of that can be solved by two means (or their alternatives):The VPN can help to protect you from advertising, Google and Facebook trackers, etc, but you also need to configure your browser securely. If a tracker can run javascript in your browser, it is trivial to discover your real IP address. On top of all that, we have to contend with browser fingerprinting. I'm afraid many people have a false sense of security in this regard.
- vmware
- sandboxie
I'm lazy however and still playing a risky game by running browsers without putting them into virtual space, not using Flash any more though.
I have to add here that my provider rotates IP addresses so any user gets a different one often. This means any database that analyzes what was happening on a certain IP address I had just for a few hours will draw wrong conclusions. Sure, with a court order the provider would have to give out data what IP addresses I had at certain time intervals, but if that happened I wouldn't mind as that's a legit thing and not some Facebook spying con job.
Not sure why in some countries providers assign just one IP address on a user which cannot be changed till the user dies - this can be abused in so many ways by different Facebooks.
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2009
- Messages
- 23,459