[dba-Tech] Mozilla VPN for everyone.

[John Colby]

 >but the vast majority of people don't bother checking into anything 
anymore.

Of course you are correct.  However (I believe) the truth is that most 
of the VPNs strive for what they claim to be doing, assisting in 
reducing the public facing info available on a person.  And truth be 
told, anyone actively participating in Facebook, twitter and other such 
things is giving away all the personal stuff that a VPN is designed to 
hide.  For the "average" person I think this is all an exercise in 
futility for that exact reason, and an exercise in selling paranoia to 
make money.

As for me...

While a despise warrentless anything, I nevertheless hold a position of 
"I'm of no interest to the intelligence community". So while I 
acknowledge that such stuff goes on, and I don't like it on an ethical 
level, I don't particularly worry about being picked up in a sweep and 
charged with anything because I don't do bad stuff.

Which brings us to the "swept up and charged without valid reason".  I 
believe that happens as well.  It's kind of like being hit by a drunk 
driver.  It happens. But again I'm not living my life in fear of the 
"might could" mentality.

So I personally have just started (in the last year) started using a 
VPN.  I have reduced my facebook posts to a crawl, though what is 
already there already forms a valid outline of who I am. I don't do any 
of the other such things.  Which leaves web crawling and such.  Google 
and chrome are hellholes of such marketing intel gathering.  For me, 
getting a VPN up and running reduces that as far as possible and is my 
main focus in using a VPN.

I am working on getting my home router hooked up to the VPN I have 
selected.  Not a trivial task but doable.  Once that is done, all 
traffic from my home automatically goes through my VPN.

After that it is what to do and how convenient is it for my travel and 
personal devices "out there".  Phones, tablets on my personal wifi 
hotspot on my phone.  My laptop which I carry. Again this is really 
about marketing rather than criminal activities.  Just trying to reduce 
my footprint out there.  For that, the stuff from Firefox is another tool.


On 10/30/2018 2:44 PM, John Bartow wrote:
> Well, that kind of makes my point, if you think that but don't check it, you don't know. I know this most likely doesn't apply to any of the extremely intelligent people who subscribe to these lists but the vast majority of people don't bother checking into anything anymore. Or. Maybe worse yet, take advise from a quick spot on a television show.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Colby <jwcolby at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2018 10:28 AM
> To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>; John Bartow <jbartow at winhaven.net>
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Mozilla VPN for everyone.
>
> I think if your reason to exist is to hide a user's identity, then collecting information about said identity is going to be discovered and no one will use your service.  Even the CIA and NSA can't keep their secrets.  A VPN has to keep no logs and allow auditing to clearly demonstrate that fact.
>
>

-- 
John W. Colby