Personal VPN services are snake oil

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall View of Personal VPNs

  • Many agree commercial VPNs are often mis-marketed as all‑purpose “security/privacy” tools, which is misleading given HTTPS’s ubiquity.
  • Others argue calling them “snake oil” is too strong since they clearly solve some real problems, even if not the ones in the ads.
  • Core idea repeated: VPNs are a trust shift from ISP/local network to VPN provider, not magic anonymity.

Common Use Cases Highlighted

  • Geofence bypass: region‑locked streaming, pricing differences for flights/cars, accessing services blocked in certain countries or U.S. states (e.g., porn, crypto, some media).
  • Piracy: torrenting without DMCA notices or landlord/ISP trouble.
  • Censorship/blocks: bypassing DNS or IP‑based blocks on campuses, hotels, public Wi‑Fi, national firewalls, and ISP “nanny” filters.
  • Throttling/peering: avoiding ISP shaping of YouTube, Plex, streaming, torrents, games; working around bad peering (e.g., specific ISPs vs certain backbones or game servers).
  • Misc: safer use of sketchy public Wi‑Fi, remote work/“second jobs,” accessing home/company networks (though the article excluded those).

Privacy, Trust, and Law

  • Debate over whether hiding from ISPs is meaningful:
    • Pro‑VPN: ISPs in many places log and monetize traffic; VPN market competition and “no logs” claims (sometimes court‑tested) may make some providers preferable.
    • Skeptical view: you just add another entity with the same incentives; some prefer regulated ISPs to opaque offshore companies.
  • Some jurisdictions mandate ISP metadata retention, pushing users toward VPNs.
  • Legality of region bypass is contested in the thread; some claim it’s clearly illicit, others note lack of enforcement and call it “digital jaywalking.”

Free VPNs and Abuses

  • Several comments describe free VPNs turning users into exit nodes for residential proxy networks, effectively “botnets for rent” and tools for scalpers/scrapers.
  • Other documented abuses: traffic inspection/analytics, possible ad injection.

Technical Points and Alternatives

  • DNS over HTTPS/TLS helps against DNS‑only blocking but doesn’t hide IPs or TLS SNI; Encrypted Client Hello is noted as not yet widely deployed.
  • Tor is seen as stronger for anonymity but slower, more heavily blocked, and overkill for many.
  • Kill switch issues are discussed; some propose OS‑level or network‑hardware “slugs” to enforce “fail closed.”