Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, are popular services for (supposedly) increasing your security and privacy on the internet. They are often marketed as all-encompassing security tools, and something that you absolutely need to keep hackers at bay. However, many of the selling points for VPNs are exaggerated or just outright
  • @helenslunch
    21•4 months ago

    Gonna have to disagree here. The article’s main point seems to be “privacy is impossible” because there are other ways to track you that it assumes you’re not accounting for:

    It’s true that your IP address is your main identifier on the internet. However, there are many other identifiers that are used for tracking your activity across the internet. Most advertising networks, including Google Ads, primarily use cross-site cookies (eventually to be replaced by the Privacy Sandbox) to keep track of you across the web. Google uses an advertising ID for the same purpose on Android devices, and Apple has a similar ID for iPhone and iPad devices. VPNs do not change any of those identifiers.

    There are also other browser features that can be used for tracking you across the web, such as the User Agent and HTML5 <canvas> element, in a process called fingerprinting. Web browsers have been reigning in this behavior over the past few years.

    These are all true but there are also ways to circumvent (to some degree) all of those other tracking methods and doing so in conjunction with a VPN will give you a more private and secure browsing experience.