My people, we’ve heard you. We will no longer be promoting VPNs. All right, let’s go. What, that’s it? Yes, KingLinus, that’s it. But as short as the outrage cycle was, that doesn’t mean that people’s concerns about the VPN industry were invalid. Tom Scott did a great video back then covering a lot of them, and we’re gonna touch on some of his more nuanced points later. But the big one that really ignited the wave of distrust was his takedown of the inaccurate fear-mongering VPN talking points that your nana’s favorite podcaster was parroting without the slightest understanding of them. That was a big problem, but the thing is, none of that was ever part of our deal with Private Internet Access and even Tom worked with a VPN provider recently before he went on hiatus earlier this year. So I think it’s time for us to take another look at what VPNs do. What they don’t do, and whether they’re worth it in "insert current year". Now to keep things clean, this video will NOT be brought to you by a VPN, but rather by our sponsor, DeleteMe. DeleteMe helps protect you against the risks of identity theft, phishing, and even robocalls and other scams by removing your data from hundreds of data broker websites. We’ll talk more about them later. A VPN or Virtual Private Network does exactly what it says on the tin. It establishes an encrypted tunnel between your computer and a remote server, allowing some or all of your network traffic to be routed through that server before it goes to its destination. That’s about it. But don’t let the simplicity fool you. A VPN can be an incredibly powerful and versatile tool, which is why Virtual Private Networking has been built into Windows for almost 30 years. Now back in those days, the server you were connecting to was probably run by your work IT department, and enabled you to do exciting things like connect to shared drives and internal servers, as though you were physically in the office when you were actually working from home or abroad. And another big one, at least for young me, was gaming. See, in the early days, many games supported LAN multiplayer, but didn’t necessarily support internet multiplayer. So virtual private networking was a way for me and my friend, who were actually many miles apart, to play LAN games together. Now, both of those are still common use cases, but they aren’t the ones that get a lot of marketing. So when the average consumer thinks of a VPN, it’s more likely that they’re thinking about a commercial VPN provider, who has servers all over the world to give your internet traffic, let’s say, a British accent, so you can watch your favorite baking program without getting burned by a location check. Now most commercial VPN providers also offer extras like ad blocking, antivirus, password managers, remote access, and even dark web monitoring. But none of that is the VPN. It’s just add-ons to entice you away from the competition in a very competitive marketplace. So at the end of the day, the VPN portion does two things. It obscures your IP address, helping hide your physical location from the sites and services that you use online. And if it’s properly configured, and that’s a major if, it encrypts all of your internet traffic, including services like DNS, concealing your browsing habits from your internet service provider, and by extension, any entity like a government or special interest group who might compel them to share that data. What a VPN isn’t, though, is some kind of all-in-one solution for online safety, security, and privacy. And this was, and continues to be, a major contributor to the backlash surrounding VPN marketing. See, a VPN doesn’t prevent you from punching your credit card number into a sketchy website, and it doesn’t prevent you from giving your real personal information to that Mysterious cutie that you met on a dating app for the personal data that’s already out there You need something completely different like from our sponsor. Delete me data brokers collect massive amounts of personal information from anywhere They can get it and they sell or rent it to anyone that pays their fee Now you could go to each broker’s website and follow their opt-out process Then go back and do it again every so often to make sure your info stays offline Or delete me can do the work for you getting your data removed from hundreds of online data brokers Back to VPNs though. Let’s look at a scenario where it wouldn’t help you one bit You sign into Netflix through a Japanese server in order to get access to your favorite anime that still hasn’t made it to the US There’s a couple small problems for one thing your IP address might be obscured But your VPNs IP address is visible to the service that you’re using and they can tell that Hey, that’s not a residential IP. That’s coming from a data center and you’re watching Netflix You’re probably using a VPN. The other thing is that okay while your ISP might not be able to see what data you’re downloading Netflix absolutely knows what you’re up to because you’re signed in with your Netflix account that has your credit card info and your billing address attached which might not be a big concern with Netflix, but Let’s be real here. Many of you are relying on VPNs for media acquisition on other services and the truth is that a VPN can be an extremely powerful tool for such endeavors. But it still isn’t a silver bullet and depending on the laws in your jurisdiction, there are a number of other protections that you should absolutely have in place before sailing the high seas. For one thing, you should be using a throwaway email, ideally from a provider with strong privacy protections like ProtonMail. Use a fake name or the real name of someone you hate. and don’t enter any payment information that can be traced back to you. PIA, for instance, takes cryptocurrency for payment, though that’s probably not as untraceable as we once thought it was. And finally, choose a VPN that has a long history of not just refusing to provide data logs to entities who demand them, but being unable to. ‘Cause that’s kind of an inconvenient truth of the VPN industry. Without additional layers of protection, like torrent protocol encryption, your VPN provider. Has a pretty good idea of where you go and what you’re up to and all of that is only as secure as their willingness and ability to protect you, which requires a lot of trust without much ability for the average person to verify. So how do we choose a VPN to partner with? I mean that VPN is owned by so-and-so and those guys own all these other VPNs and those guys hired that sketchy dude, you know the one. But the fact of the matter is guys, in the cutthroat world of online security and privacy, you’re gonna find sketchy characters who came over from the other side, unscrupulous crypto bros, and conspiracy theories galore, some of which turn out to be a lot more than just theories. And, depending on who’s doing the spinning of the facts, the same developer could be a nefarious former hacker with ties to the Middle Eastern intelligence community, or they could be… a computer nerd that served the mandatory time in their country’s armed forces when they were a teenager. Another concern is that, according to VPN Pro, at least 105 VPN providers are owned by just 24 corporations. And making it worse, many VPN review sites, and even giants like PC Magazine and IGN, are owned by umbrella corporations that also own VPN companies. So with so many conflicts of interest everywhere, it’s hard to trust pretty much anything that you read about this industry. So for me, what it ultimately comes down to is my personal experiences and who’s got the provable track record. Which is why, more than six years after we first partnered with them, I’m still happy to tell you guys that we’re going to be sticking with Private Internet Access, who, again, is not the sponsor of this video, but we do have an affiliate relationship with them. I use them. Luke uses them, and a bunch of other folks here at LMG do, too. "But Linus, how can you trust them?" I hear you asking. Well, they had me at Bro. Too soon? Okay, to start with, PIA’s no-logs policy has been tested in court multiple times. They have never produced logs in response to a government’s demands for data. I mean, you can’t hand over logs if they don’t exist. And depending on where you live, in the 100-acre wood or beyond, that can be the difference between freedom and imprisonment. Or worse. On top of that, their RAM-only server architecture, their logging prevention architecture, and even their anonymous dedicated IP offering have all been independently audited by one of the big four professional services networks multiple times, with the most recent audit results released just a few weeks before shooting this video. The Android app has been independently reviewed with a mobile application security assessment, something only a handful of VPN apps can boast, and if all of that still isn’t good enough for you, all of their clients are open source and you can go over every line of code for yourself, or you can even just not use them and connect to their servers with a generic open VPN client. PIA has also removed their physical servers from a number of countries in response to changes in legislation, law enforcement action, and other threats to customer privacy. When they removed their servers from Hong Kong back in 2020, they stated that PIA will not operate servers in locations that have enacted anti-privacy internet laws or who have proven to not follow the rule of law. They also publish quarterly reports detailing government requests for data, bug bounty submissions, along with some company and industry news. Their blog archive goes back more than a decade, and in between general industry news and security tips, you’ll find explanations for controversial hiring, and policy decisions, and some excellent essays on digital privacy. Most importantly though, while I have acknowledged in the past that VPN deals can be pretty lucrative, and the more subscri- The more subscriptions you drive, the more money you can make, PIA doesn’t push us to say anything that is misleading whatsoever. In fact, they give us zero guidelines other than to say, "Hey, don’t say the product does something that it can’t do, and don’t drag us into any of your endless controversies." They actually didn’t even say that second part, which leaves us free to keep the BS completely out of our talking points and stay focused on real-world benefits for our audience. Like the aforementioned privateering, for which- PIA, uh, definitely works pretty well. So if you guys evaluate things for yourself and decide PIA is for you, we’re gonna have an affiliate link to PIA in the description. But whatever you decide, just remember that a VPN, any VPN, doesn’t give you some kind of digital diplomatic immunity, and they don’t make illegal activities any more legal. They’re just one piece of your broader digital privacy toolkit. Just like our sponsor. Delete me. Your personal data is already out there, getting gathered up by countless data brokers and putting you at increased risk of identity theft, online harassment, and even good old fashioned spam and robocalls. Delete me saves you time while helping reduce the risk of your data getting into the wrong hands by removing your data from hundreds of data broker websites. But they don’t stop there. Delete me actively monitors data broker websites, making sure that your personal info stays removed. For 20% off all US consumer plans, just follow the link in the video description. If you guys liked this video, maybe check out our "How to Browse the Internet Anonymously" video from a few years ago. It’s got a few more things that you might want to add to your privacy toolkit, and some of them are free, so there’s no reason not to do it.

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