VPNs for internet access, at least the way they are advertised
I'm sure plenty of them have nice little deals with the NSA lol
Most of them are owned by one company. The only independent ones are Mullvad, Proton, and IVPN. For the most part, you want to Tor and never sign into anything if you are being ultra private about your browsing.
What about airvpn ?
AirVPN are probably the best. They're independent, more transparent than the other providers, and support port forwarding.
They don't give you complete privacy, no. On the other hand, if what you're concerned about is your workplace seeing that you're fucking off at work, or a Hollywood studio suing you for pirating a 20 year old television show that isn't available to buy or stream, well, a VPN is just fine. In regards to piracy, it obfuscates a lot of your internet behavior from your ISP, so they aren't able to easily track what you're doing either.
If I was worried about gov't level threats, Tails, Tor, and public, unsecured WiFi would be the only thing I'd be using.
I hate that these commercial providers are the first thing people think of when they hear "VPN" these days, rather than the actual main use case for a VPN (connecting to a remote network, like a work network, from another location).
VPNs for internet access, at least the way they are advertised
I'm sure plenty of them have nice little deals with the NSA lol
Most of them are owned by one company. The only independent ones are Mullvad, Proton, and IVPN. For the most part, you want to Tor and never sign into anything if you are being ultra private about your browsing.
What about airvpn ?
AirVPN are probably the best. They're independent, more transparent than the other providers, and support port forwarding.
They don't give you complete privacy, no. On the other hand, if what you're concerned about is your workplace seeing that you're fucking off at work, or a Hollywood studio suing you for pirating a 20 year old television show that isn't available to buy or stream, well, a VPN is just fine. In regards to piracy, it obfuscates a lot of your internet behavior from your ISP, so they aren't able to easily track what you're doing either.
If I was worried about gov't level threats, Tails, Tor, and public, unsecured WiFi would be the only thing I'd be using.
I hate that these commercial providers are the first thing people think of when they hear "VPN" these days, rather than the actual main use case for a VPN (connecting to a remote network, like a work network, from another location).