YT recommended this... I just canceled my ExpressVPN membership...
VPNs Aren't What They Seem...
- Thread starter Nyghtfall3D
- Start date
Meta is behind an invasion of privacy and data stealing scheme, well slap me with a fish tail! How many times are we fucking going to let them get away with that?
I only watched the first section, got things to do, I'll come back and watch the rest of it. But yeah, all VPN's are not alike just like all email providers are not alike. If you want real privacy, you better choose carefully. I find a general rule of thumb is: "If it's free, you're the product"
I only watched the first section, got things to do, I'll come back and watch the rest of it. But yeah, all VPN's are not alike just like all email providers are not alike. If you want real privacy, you better choose carefully. I find a general rule of thumb is: "If it's free, you're the product"
The vid starts getting into independent VPNs at the 4:41 mark, and talks about ExpressVPN, which is what I've been using. This is what the vid taught me and why I canceled:
ExpressVPN is owned by a company called Kape, which used to make ad-injection malware. They started buying VPNs in 2018, and bought ExpressVPN in 2021. They also own a bunch of VPN review sites, the same sites that frequently list ExpressVPN among the most recommended. Kape's founder and majority stockholder is an Israeli billionare with past convictions for fraud and documented ties to Israeli surveillance firms.
Watched the whole thing, and just to start, I use ProtonVPN and mail simply because I did my homework. I used Mozilla's VPN before that, and wasn't particularly happy with it, but the Mozilla Foundation is public, privacy oriented, and of course makes Firefox, which is what I use as my primary browser. I don't use Chrome or Edge except for site testing (to see if a site I maintain works properly on them). I also don't use Meta anything except where work requires it.
And I basically have the same philosophy she does, which I stated in my first post: "If it's free, you're the product"
If a company offers you a "Free" Internet service, they are making money off you in less apparent ways. That does include browsers, Mozilla, while free, does periodically ask for donations, they are a non-profit organization. They also make money from the search engine, it was google, I think it is Yahoo at the moment but since I use Duck Duck Go, I'm not sure.
And I basically have the same philosophy she does, which I stated in my first post: "If it's free, you're the product"
If a company offers you a "Free" Internet service, they are making money off you in less apparent ways. That does include browsers, Mozilla, while free, does periodically ask for donations, they are a non-profit organization. They also make money from the search engine, it was google, I think it is Yahoo at the moment but since I use Duck Duck Go, I'm not sure.
Chrome was my default until last night, when it inexplicably stopped working - kept loading a white screen with no UI - so I removed it and switched to Edge.
After reading your reply and finishing the video myself about an hour ago, I joined ProtonVPN and switched to Firefox. Still using GMail for now, but I might look into ProtonMail.
I'm not anti-Google, they do a lot of cool stuff and give us some really useful free tools, Google Maps for instance. They are a for profit company though, and you better believe they are making money from you. And they did something Microsoft never could, they came up with a decent browser. With Microsoft everybody used IE simply because it came "free" with the O/S. It always sucked, and it never adhered to any standards. Websites had to be written to specific browsers and let me tell you how badly that sucked.
And I would point out Edge uses Chromium, which is the basis for Chrome as well as Opera, which also is a cool browser.
But essentially Firefox is the only one that really cares about your privacy, to the point I can't use it for any site running ads - it shuts them all down because they track you, if I really want to use the site I need to use a different browser.
Microsoft wants to monetize you also, Windows 11 is pretty bad about it (Windows 10 too), but you can shut that crap off if you know how, and it isn't the core of what the software is about. It also helps that Linux desktop is still not for everybody, Windows is way ahead of it in usability. And Linux buffs can refute that if they like, but I'd have to point out that I like to spend my time creating things, not tinkering with my O/S, and getting Linux to run Windows native applications is one hell of a lot of work.
Meta is an entirely different kettle of fish. The company's business model from day 1, the Farmville days, was to exploit its users, that's all it ever did, and it never is going to stop. You don't actually need anything it has to "offer", you can live without all of it, and the number of different times and variations Meta has used to fuck everybody over are just legion at this point. I won't use any Mastodon server that has Threads on it. Wanna know why?
What to know about threads
To paraphrase a Steppanwolf song: "Goddanm the Zuckerman"
And I would point out Edge uses Chromium, which is the basis for Chrome as well as Opera, which also is a cool browser.
But essentially Firefox is the only one that really cares about your privacy, to the point I can't use it for any site running ads - it shuts them all down because they track you, if I really want to use the site I need to use a different browser.
Microsoft wants to monetize you also, Windows 11 is pretty bad about it (Windows 10 too), but you can shut that crap off if you know how, and it isn't the core of what the software is about. It also helps that Linux desktop is still not for everybody, Windows is way ahead of it in usability. And Linux buffs can refute that if they like, but I'd have to point out that I like to spend my time creating things, not tinkering with my O/S, and getting Linux to run Windows native applications is one hell of a lot of work.
Meta is an entirely different kettle of fish. The company's business model from day 1, the Farmville days, was to exploit its users, that's all it ever did, and it never is going to stop. You don't actually need anything it has to "offer", you can live without all of it, and the number of different times and variations Meta has used to fuck everybody over are just legion at this point. I won't use any Mastodon server that has Threads on it. Wanna know why?
What to know about threads
To paraphrase a Steppanwolf song: "Goddanm the Zuckerman"
MCDesigns
Well-known member
Yeah, I am dreading setting up my new PC because it's windows 11. I have been on 10 for so on and have it tuned perfectly and after doing research on 11, it's going to be a huge pain in the ass and probably a shit show
It turns out to not be all that bad. Aside from the safe boot requirements, which actually are pretty helpful to prevent being pwned, and the insistence of setting up a Microsoft account to set it up, which can be circumvented by setting up a local admin account as usual after the original set up and never using the Microsoft one, it's pretty usable.
Wind11 really is pretty nice. I don't miss 10. The only reason I built my current PC three years ago was because my old one wasn't Win11 compatible, so while shopping for parts, I deliberately picked a mobo that was compatible. It was even advertised as Win11-ready.
Sigh.... YT recommend this... It's a point-by-point rebuttal of the vid in my op.
Incidentally, I was born in '71, and was perfectly content with life sans the internet. As much as I've enjoyed the net since my wife and I joined our first ISP in '94, I could survive without it.
That said, ever since the OSA went live last month and I've started encountering a growing number of sites requiring ID, I've been feeling a tinge of desire to just unplug and go back to spending most of my free time on interests that don't require the net.
Incidentally, I was born in '71, and was perfectly content with life sans the internet. As much as I've enjoyed the net since my wife and I joined our first ISP in '94, I could survive without it.
That said, ever since the OSA went live last month and I've started encountering a growing number of sites requiring ID, I've been feeling a tinge of desire to just unplug and go back to spending most of my free time on interests that don't require the net.
MCDesigns
Well-known member
There have been a few times I have lost my ISP and while i was able to keep busy, I couldn't live without it. Then again, I am NOT giving anyone my ID so if it comes down to it, I might have to go back to no internet.
Nyghtfall, I don't know either of these people, and I am uninterested spending time doing any research on them, but this is my take.
In the first video, she isn't telling me anything I don't already know about VPN's, so her information as far as I'm concerned was pretty on target. The one accusation the person in the second video made, that she's trying to sell a security course, that's probably the one thing he said that was accurate, she is up front about it.
Now about that second one, and you're probably already getting the idea of what my impression was.
- I am not terribly impressed by his hiding of his identity. What's he afraid of?
- He actually didn't refute her main points, the sites that sell the VPN's bought the main review sites. He couldn't refute that because it's public record. So instead he tried to show they were neutral. Nice try, but no, not buying it
- He tried to refute the business practices of the company by saying they didn't actually inject ads. This is like the people that sell ransom software on the black market that use "we never actually put ransom software on anybody's computer. Yep, you just sold it to people that did. So eventually their business got shut down? I'm weeping.
- While repeatedly saying he didn't care, he was repeatedly trying to say she was pro-Palestinian. I don't see that. Being against unethical business practices of a company located in Israel isn't even anti-Israel. Now she may be, I don't know, but he showed no proof of that, and he was constantly saying it didn't matter. When obviously he thought it did to somebody. I'm anti-Facebook, it doesn't mean I am anti-US, or even anti Social Networking. I have problems with Meta's business practices.
I think that asshole was paid by the very company she's talking about to do a hit piece, and furthermore, I think they paid Google to place it in the feed of anybody that viewed her video, because that's how Google sells advertising.