this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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I'm super confused by the FUD spread in nearly every comment here.
Pretty much every argument boils down to "we don't trust google does what they say", which is funny because I'd like to challenge anyone to provide evidence that google actually sells any of your data. They sell advertising slots that they promise will find the right people, but your data never leaves google. No advertiser gets to see it.
This VPN service promises and has been independently audited to never log or analyze your traffic and even has built in provisions to anonymize your traffic within Google so they can't reconstruct it.
So apart from the questionable assumption that google is blatantly lying, what's the argument here? Apart from maybe missing some popular VPN Features like country selection.
Also this is for people that already pay for Google storage anyways, so I don't see the problem for the intended target audience, it's sticky an improvement in privacy for them and they get it for free. It sure as hell beats getting your traffic intercepted and ads injected into random http pages like some ISPs do.
Bruh, I can go to cybersecurity school, study it for a lifetime, audit this service myself, find that it does anonymise and does everything right, and STILL refuse to use it, simply because this just isn't who you get a VPN service from.
You don't buy your meat from the town gravekeeper, atleast not as long as there are other butchers, and especially not if the meat comes cheap.
So your argument has nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with "hurr Durr Google bad".
Which is fine, and a valid opinion, but has nothing to do with the product.
I'm annoyed because 90% of the comments here imply or outright state that google will use this data for ads or other means, which has no basis in reality.
It’s the basis of their entire business model???
THIS IS A PAID SERVICE.
Dude, they don't only do ads. Google has a whole bunch of payed-for services that are never touched for ad-tracking. This is one of them. You are implying that Google Cloud would also use ad-tracking based on customer data, which is absurd.
Please stop spreading this FUD. Just because the free services are payed for by ads does not mean that everything they do is.
(edit: Paid, not Payed)
So question. If google puts the tracking in chrome like they are supposedly going to do. The vpn won't protect you (assuming you use chrome)... they don't need to snoop on it, they already have it from another source.
No VPN ever protects you from ad-tracking. Like literally none. That's not what they are for. VPNs protect you from someone intercepting your traffic on the way to the websites you want to visit. It protects you from malicious public wifi or a malicious ISP. It does not anonymize you in any meaningful way.
Addition just to explain: Google is tracking you on the website you visit, with the help of said website. So no matter whether you use a VPN or not, if you visit that website with or without a VPN, with all the fingerprinting that happens nowadays, they would probably just get a datapoint like "Oh, user X just moved from home internet to VPN" and that's it.
Like it literally does nearly nothing if you don't ALSO do 100 other important things to anonymize yourself. A regular user has nearly no chance to stay anonymous the moment they use a regular browser and a VPN would not help them at all.
@exi
What do you make of PIA MACE?
https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/kb/articles/what-is-mace
@Modern_medicine_isnt @privacy
^paid*^
^sorry^
No need to be sorry. English is not my first language. I appreciate the correction.
It has everything to do with it. If you had money and needed to, would you buy a Porsche from a dodgy backstreet garage that had so many red flags on the way in?
Trust is everything. If I don't trust you, why would I believe your marketing bumpf?
Why are you shilling for google in a privacy community, anyway?
You sound an awful lot like an abused spouse
"Oh sure, All those other times were bad, but she swore she wont hit me this time.. and she means it this time, honest!"
Terrible analogy
My man, this is nothing like an abused spouse, dubious fart
They don't sell directly. But they sure sell.
This explains it better: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and
Of all the replies, this is the first one to actually make a good point instead of random google-bad handwaving.
Thank you
Google is an ad company first, and everything else later. There are countless examples of them pushing tracking technologies that nobody wants - AMP, FLOC/Privacy sandbox, manifest v3 to kill adblockers. The list is just too long. At this point, any argument in favor of Google is just astroturfing.
Apple provides exactly the same service(s) and now with their advertising division, ad slots to the higher bidder too.
But they are portrayed as Jesus while Google is Lucifer.
The default has become Google = bad. It's also fashionable to blame them for all evils . 🤷
I won't be using their VPN because I already paid someone else for a 3 year plan, not because Google is bad.
I don't like Apple either.
Anecdotally: i got Google VPN free w my Google one sub, used it to pirate some movies. still got a warning from Comcast (for one of the star wars movies, iirc).
Went right back to Mullvlad. Speeds were better anyway.