✨CORRECTIONS! PLEASE READ FOR CLARITY! ✨ ▬▬ HTTPS Timeline ▬▬ HTTPS was around long before 2016! I poorly phrased this. As @Zekrom569 describes, "...in 2016 governments and institutions around the world stepped in to make regulations that protect the privacy of internet users by mandating clear privacy policies and cookie consent prompts.", and this included making HTTPS a requirement. You can still totally make an HTTP site today, but not if you're hoarding lots of user data! Also thanks to @Milan____ for also suggesting this correction! ▬▬ Public Wifi Security ▬▬ Hotel wifi can sometimes require you to agree to various terms, one of which can often be a content filter or similar tech, which can redirect your web traffic in such a way that the hotel can see the content of the pages you visit, which a VPN could bypass as advertised. Here is a resource that helps describe this tech and where it is normally implemented (schools, enterprise environments): blog.scalefusion.com/web-content-filtering/ Additionally, from a cybersecurity standpoint, if a hotel has bad security practices, and there is a very bad virus on their network (like a worm for example), a VPN that prevents local devices from talking to your computer will help protect that device. I don't know how I missed those facts while writing this, so sorry about that! I'll continue to update this as I come across possible missed information. ▬▬ Visibility of Services and Domains ▬▬ @ayden8901 left a great comment, "Most business grade and even some home routers or firewalls have DPI (deep packet inspection) which is able to associate services and domains with devices on the network. Also in enterprise networks there is SSL Inspection which decrypt the packets so the firewall can inspect everything", and additionally, as @schwingedeshaehers ponited out, "it can only do it, if it can write new certs for that domain". So it's certainly possible to see things with the right setup, but there is a "paper trail" of sorts. ▬▬ Location Accuracy ▬▬ Comment from @Lostboy811, "Just wanted to point out that it really isn't protecting you because in the end it does need to know the original location. The process is a little more complicated but really VPN are really only good to bypass regional restrictions on streaming sites". As we saw in my video about the Privacy Visualizer, this is true, location in this respect is generally "coarse" location. ▬▬ Contribute what you can! ▬▬ If any of you internet security nerds want to lend a hand in this conversation, feel free to leave a comment under this one, and I'll update this accordingly!
If a network has a captive portal, using a VPN will not bypass it unless it's implemented very badly. In any reasonable captive portal implementation, the router will simply not forward any traffic for any MAC addresses that have not submitted the required request to the captive portal. (there are tricks to maybe bypass some of these captive portals, but they are rather involved and not really related to the services VPN providers offer). In fact, a VPN could prevent you from accessing the captive portal, since it's an opaque tunnel that can't be intercepted and redirected to the wifi hot spot's landing page. some VPN providers have carve outs that bypass the VPN for certain IP address ranges associated with LANs, but this introduces a lot of security problems (See the Black Hat talk "TunnelCrack: Leaking VPN Traffic by Manipulating Routing Tables") However, once you've agreed to the terms or whatever, and the router is forwarding your traffic to the internet, then you are correct that the VPN will bypass any kind of content filtering in place on the network and largely work as advertised (unless of course they block the VPN traffic itself!)
also worth noting: captive portals are becoming less and less practical nowadays, since the way they work is that the router intercepts whatever web page you're trying to load, and replaces it with a HTTP redirect to the sign-in / accept-the-terms / whatever page. problem is, you can't intercept an HTTP response and modify its contents if it's encrypted, and more and more websites are using HTTPS so those connections will just fail with no explanation. a lot of device manufacturers now run a dedicated non-HTTPS website whose sole purpose is for devices to attempt to connect to them, get intercepted, notify the user, and direct them to the captive portal to complete the sign up process. hopefully the sheer rube-goldberg-ness of that process means it's gonna go away soon
I think the one use case no one ever brings up is forced rerouting. sometimes when you're trying to connect to, say a game server and need your packets to arrive on time and sometimes the "post office" will take a longer road with enough pot holes your "letters" fall off the truck. vpns changing your location will force that connect to use a different "road" to go back and forth and will tend to be faster ironically.
Speaking from past experience: don't get surf shark. In order to cancel your subscription you *actually* have to contact customer service. It's ridiculous
In canada its illegal to make it hard for someone to cancel a subscription service. Helpful advice for anyone struggling. Just threaten to report them for that. They instantly do ot
same with aura. i decided the scaremongering wasn't worth it for 20/mo and spent 30 minutes on the phone with a guy (just doing his job tbf) endlessly trying to negotiate keeping my subscription.
@@Sonamy5673I have used Surfshark for years and they're great. If you want to unsubscribe it's two clicks, no idea what OP is talking about. And I know because I always unsubscribe and then resubscribe with a different email to get another discount lol.
This is the reason most VPN ads focus almost exclusively on how you can watch movies only available in other countries with them. Bc that’s like their only real purpose for average ppl
Many countries without free internet exist, in Iran/Russia/etc if you want use Instagram, facebook, twitter, UA-cam, and many other service, you should pay for VPN or use another dpi pass methods, but VPN/proxy is easiest
@@rejectconvenience its weird that YT advertising is still extrapolating quite nichey stuff. Like, while this is the new television for everyone now, we keep seeing super random stuff with limited ubiquity
@@Th3SilentObserverI forget who it was, but I watched a video semi-recently on exactly why that’s the case. Think one of the big reasons is that word of mouth-and by extension being spammed to everyone on UA-cam through channels they watch and respect-is a big deal for niche stuff, in many ways to the point of being huge for them but negative if something mainstream tried it.
Their gaslighting is really effective. Every time I tell someone that VPNs are nearly useless for the average person they look at me like I'm crazy. They've heard the misleading scripts so many times, it's become fact to them.
@@amoru5898 It does help but vpn always feel like a bandaid solution, and usually most people out here would just use some browser with built-in vpn (or TOR browser if they don't mind the lowered speeds of internet on it) or a free vpn that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I don't think most russians, who are cheapskates on everything, would buy a vpn service (and im saying it as a russian person)
@@danielellis6327 people overuse and overblow nepo baby as a criticism nowadays. Yes, his family connections carved his path through the gaming and tech industry, but he's still pretty knowledgeable regardless. It wasn't *all* him, sure, but he still worked pretty damn hard and knows his stuff for the most part (dumb criticism towards Stop Killing Games notwithstanding) and tries to help others through his game jams and sound advice.
What's up with all these VPNs? Well, let me tell you. You register a company, start a few cheap VPS instances and sell their bandwidth to clients at a markup. It's literally one of the easieat products you can develop as a web engineer... That's why there's so many.
@@rejectconvenience Better yet, I could write connection tunnelling server in an afternoon. Use a few off the shelf libraries, build an electron app so it hogs your ram like a 800W vacuum cleaner in like a week and we're set. The only thing I would be lacking by that point would be the marketing... So I would pay a few UA-camrs for sponsorships and oh wait...
I am a Comp Sci student here and even I don't have a VPN (but I am considering one to watch some German movies on Prime). User data is a massive issue that I believe can only be solved by government action at this point. I would like to add that VPNs are great if you are in an unfortunate living situation, living in an apartment with a bad privacy policy, or traveling abroad. Also, I love how you made it look like there was actually a projector being used, and I definitely noticed the Wii face details. Nice touch :D
@@-yammie- A guy murdered two women, and the media wrote that he was an incel who was in incel servers on discord. Then the government banned the app to "protect children"
Is it too paranoid to think these vpn providers play a role in the “archive now, decrypt later” process awaiting the coming of viable decryption using quantum computers?
Probably not, which is why really your best and only defence in that sense is choosing a VPN company who are demonstrably trustworthy and transparent, and keep tabs on whether their policies move in unfavorable directions over time. If you're not self hosting, you're always going to someone in the middle somewhere
the amount of data sent is massive and 99.999% of the data by volume will be useless. it would be way too expensive for them to store that data for decades before finally getting a financial return. what are they gonna do with the data that could pay off the cost of storage? sell it to ad companies? hack peoples bank accounts? i could be wrong but just an average persons guess.
Truth is VPN is better for us outside of the US, Discord was banned in turkey recently, making it impossible to talk with friends and customers as an artist, but using a vpn (i use proton given it's free and open source) it's the only way to talk to people now Also it allows us access to sites or services that aren't available here
a great fear i have of capitalist solutions to privacy is how they will lobby in the future against congress passing measures to protect us from having our private information bought and sold so readily. the same way that companies like h&r block and turbo tax, which used to be capitalist solutions to the inconvenience of filing taxes, lobby against congress passing legislation so that a majority of americans wouldnt even need to file their own taxes (since the IRS already knows how much 90% of americans owe or are owed, for most filing your taxes is only necessary bc of laws that private tax agencies want kept in place for obvious reasons)
The fact that corporations can lobby is baffling to me, because they have vested interest in certain things for personal gain. I live in a country where doing your taxes is at best signing off on it. I find it insane that people have to pay to file their taxes correctly and that it's so complex that a separate payed for service does it for you. Especially because the people who will be hit the hardest by not having it correct are the same people who probably can't afford the service, at least not with out having to carve it out of the budget.
4:45 A little nitpick: a better analogy would be that your mail is now directed to the Canada address. Since your ISP sees that you want to send this packet into an address not in banned list (TikTok), then your ISP delivers that packet. That packet is opened by this Canada address resident (the VPN) and sees that you want the packet inside to be sent to tiktok. Since Canada ISP isn't legally required to ban TikTok, then the packet will be delivered.
They do need to open the "external envelope " of the packet, to see what is the actual address you want to send it to. Otherwise, how would they know where it is supposed to go? But your actual data is in yet another envelope, and that one is encrypted (and that one has even another envelope inside, and if the webpage is https, that is additionally encrypted by the website you are sending it to, and potentially even more envelopes inside of that). These "envelopes" can be roughly mapped to layers in the OSI model (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model).
I've thought of it like a flight layover. Whether you fly directly to Chicago or have to change planes in Denver, you're still ultimately arriving at the same place... (hopefully).
I appreciate you doing this, I wish this was something all YT videos had to provide since it can be a nightmare to find the music someone used in a video otherwise.
I would argue another reason for VPN companies to market so agressively is purely for marketshare. VPNs used in this way is a fairly new service, comparable to other services like food and grocery deliveries. Aggressive marketing and other ways to drive off competition are used in these markets to potentially obtain monopolies in their niches. The 'product' itself as described isn't too interesting, and the marketing may also be part of even creating a demand in the first place; but the omnipresent ads for a service that's an affordable 'luxury' (something not required) for most users does feel like the 'become monopoly' strategy common with 'new' companies.
The step by step pausing to comment on the VPN script was amazing! Rarely do I see that attention to detail, and it made it really easy to understand from the perspective of someone who’s trying to get a grasp on internet security to inform friends/family. Love the visuals too ❤
Next to VPN ads, those ads like Aura and Incogni also give me the heebie jeebies. It feels like those data brokers managed to extra money by monetizing getting removed off of their lists. At least if I were unscrupulous, that's what I would do.
I got one of those cease and desist letters from my ISP in 2005 for torrenting a copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High LOL - they even told my university and they said I’d be expelled if I did it again. Wild times. Also, it was a bad movie, definitely not worth it.
Ngl when I see a brand being promoted by so many influencers it's already a big no no for me. 😅 I really liked the video tho, the animations are so cool and interesting!
Great video!! Tom Scott's video about VPNs (as mentioned) should also be watched. As an information scientist, it's so important to fact check information using multiple sources. Now if only privacy policies were writrn in plain English instead of legal jargon. Also McAfee is something I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, all of the mentioned issues are true AND they have had hacking issues.
The reason why I distrust all VPN advertising is that their pitch is built on generating anxiety over nebulous improbabilities, and the strongest valid use case they present is the opportunity to watch moar TV! VPNs alone do not provide the most critical need for privacy, to shield speech from intrusive government.
are you American? because this is such an American take. people outside of the US use VPNs to access restricted services and to avoid government surveillance. "VPNs can only be used to watch more TV and nothing else!!!" is such a braindead american take
@gn4128 что? Осталось куча платных VPN, что ещё работают и добавляют новые протоколы. Появилось куча новых,которые специлизируются под Россию в принципе
Correction at 14:40 Most business grade and even some home routers or firewalls have DPI (deep packet inspection) which is able to associate services and domains with devices on the network. Also in enterprise networks there is SSL Inspection which decrypt the packets so the firewall can inspect everything.
Not sure about how that works as that'd be a pretty obvious Man in the Middle attack, and the firewall can't decrypt data as it doesn't have the private key for either end.
"if you liked this video consider subscribing" said after a video with incredible aesthetics, deep nuananced information, and little to no bloat regarding run time while nog sacrificing information. seriously though, great video, I love the 3d animations for it.
The problem is that in germany a lot of games have been decleared illegal due to being 'too violent' (for example dead islan afaik) so a vpn is the only thing that allows me to get those games
@@rainbowsorceress2082 that's because they're not. games can become indexed in germany which means they must not be advertised and only bought by adults but you still can buy them because they're not illegal.
Man, why tf are you still not popular yet The editing is sooo clean and the information you provide is kind of life changing I really hope you will blow up ❤
Love how this is animated and presented. I'm not guilt free, I've taken VPN sponsorships before, but I'm always picky about how I present their information, and if it doesn't work out, I don't take it.
Like I said, I'm far more critical of the companies than the creators. I mean, I get it, the excitement of someone wanting to pay you to make videos sounds like a dream come true, I totally see how some could miss important steps. Edit: Plus, VPNs aren't really like... bad. Sure, the bad ones do exist, but those aren't really sponsored spots
Great video! I also want to point out another use for VPNs. In countries like Iran, basically every website that doesn't end with a .ir is banned, not just sketchy sites. So all of us here need VPNs to access basically anything. I'm literally using a vpn to access youtube. Also if you know where to look there are a bunch of really good free vpns if you don't want to pay a yearly fee for one.
Really VPNs don't really do much nowadays. Https is enough for giving you privacy and even anonymity. But the real use case for VPNs is bypassing region locks in streaming services. But since this is kind of a thing that makes copyright holders angry, the VPNs don't relaly want to make this their main selling point, at least not in their advertisements. So the ads are all about anonymity, privacy, security, etc, etc. Meanwhile the main reason most pople are using it is to get netflix's Japanese lineup instead of the American one.
The copyright holder aren't really that angry about VPN because you still need the account to access their content. Yes streaming services are making it harder to use VPN on their sites but that just to make copyright holder content. Doesn't Nord VPN advertise bypassing Geo block content.
That specific use case was often actually part of the advert from youtubers, to which, yeah, bypassing region lock is definitely a reason to get one (don't need a paid one though. Lots of free ones with decent amounts of data per month). All I could think with those was "Well, at least they're honest about the use case."
The part 1 of the video misses the part where your DNS server would also send out a "letter" to UA-cam's records to get the Ipv4 / 6 addresses of the website, so your computer knows where the hell its going. Privacy friendly DNS is also a must have, their are many services, hell I even run my own privacy focused DNS service.
I definitely left DNS out of the explanation intentionally because I thought it might over-complicate things. I do feel like if I spent more time researching things, though, I could have made it work.
@rejectconvenience your explanation was more than fine. Going into extra detail, like DNS, doesn't add anything, other than confuse some of the less tech minded audience. Ignore kids like that ^ @Triro Trying to flex his 1st year community college knowledge.
That is a thing! It's pretty specific as far as use cases go, but you can totally build a personal VPN that allows you to connect back to your home network. It's what a lot of enterprise customers do, they have remote employees use a VPN to connect back to the office servers to keep things secure, regardless of what network the employee is on.
I had a different reason tu use a VPN: we had elections this year (I'm not living in the US, there were elections in the EU too...) and the campaign videos on YT and other websites were just so discuting, that I got fed up, asked my dad, who works with softwares which free VPN he would recommend (he also said Proton) and installed it immediatly.
I love the letters explanation, that's exactly how our computer science network professor explained it to us in 1st semester. It's so simple and easy to grasp.
I'm living in a country that has some restrictions on home internet and A LOT more restrictions on mobile data for whatever reason. VPS servers are really cheap. And there are a lot of guides/videos on how to easily do it. I suppose it can be "scary" for regular folk to work with Unix-based systems ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In my case I already had an Ubuntu VPS so why not also use it as a VPN? :D Anyways loved your breakdown and gonna check your other vids
never trust any service nor product that shamelessly spends majority of their budget on marketing and advertising. They're cutting costs somewhere to afford that, and it's not for your benefit. it becomes a yet bigger concern when it comes from these vpn company's who also use half truths and people's ignorance on internet privacy and how VPNs actually work.
Thanks for the video and breaking down the thing. I was initially interested, but then also noticed the massive campaigning, which raised my suspicions. Heavy advertising usually means the product has a problem. Especially when they advertise on channels unrelated to their product. My line of thinking was: Vpns are doing the exact same thing that crypto exchanges, daytraders and gatcha games are doing, and none of those do anything for you. So if something gives you bad vibes, it might actually be for a reason. Stay sharp!
Damn, you really one-upped yourself with this one dude! Fantastic work on those animations, the editing, scriptwriting-all of it, really. This is top-quality video essayage.
I've never used a vpn. You dont need one for privacy, unless you're doing something less than legal-but even then, most vpn companies have exceptions for that kind of thing, so they don't get in trouble with law enforcement. I've sailed the seas to get textbooks, but I I always use TOR for that, because while the method is still basically a VPN, it's still much more secure. As for the desire for gatekept media, I've never had that issue because my local library system has DVDs of any major shows I might want to watch, and having to have physical media means I'm more self-aware and less likely to binge my time away.
One of the best videos that says what VPN does in the most simple way. The post office analogy clearly explained how it works and I can finally understand fully its use. Thank you and I hope you will make more content like this!
Compliments to you and your videos. I got into them because at first I had a phone addiction and didn't want to, but I genuinly enjoy watching every single one that pops on my fyp. Your style is great, I love your focus on privacy and I love the way you rational and explain things. I'm currently studying IT so I try to watch as many programing, security, AI and tech videos as I can, and I gotta say, from all the youtubers and videos I've watched so far, you and The Coding Sloth are my favourite. keep up the good work
VPNs exist for the sole purpose of connecting two individual networks over the internet with a secure encrypted tunnel virtually making them one network. Businesses do this to connect branches to one network and allow people to log in remotely as if they are at the office. The only thing a vpn can do for the average persons use is location spoof and maybe mask your IP if they are handling the routing properly, and maybe if you are on public wifi, but honestly i dont know anyone that ever uses public wifi anymore. It is NOT end to end encryption, you are not VPN tunneled into website or service you are accessing.
So for me personally the only use I have ever gotten out of a VPN is region blocking and dirty cheap fast port forwarding Related note from my understanding of VPNs - this before watching the video - it just lets the VPN see what you're doing instead of the ISP seeing what you're doing it basically just changes who you gave your privacy to Honestly this may sound weird but I do not have very much download speed and no one near me has anything above five megabits/sec... I only have 25 megabits/sec Side note every byte is 8 bits, so 25 MB is 8 times as fast as 25 megabits
Mullvad and Proton both I'd say, as Proton is more accessible (though may generally be worse, I haven't used Mullvad). Mainly because with them you get proper privacy, not just your data stolen and seld. So glad that companies like Mullvad and Proton exist
@cassandradawn780 All it needs is an e-mail and a password. E-mail you can just make a throwaway one, and password, just make a different one as you would anywhere else, and their privacy policy states they never share anything with anyone. Though if that is still too bad for you to be considered private anyway, then I can't really stop you if you're using Mullvad, that's completely fair
@@cassandradawn780Having used both yeah Proton does require significantly more information and can keep your credit card information. It's a matter of picking your battles, if you use a VPN for.........sharing cool things with others then proton is ideal now since they allow port forwarding. Mullvad unfortunately doesn't do this anymore which means download and upload speeds could be slightly worsened, but if you're not concerned with that and don't spend time sharing files Mullvad is extremely safe and a great product
Honestly, i genuinely only use my VPN because i swear the place i work at throttles connections to any site that isnt the business' website (and the occasional sports blackout bypassing, shoutout Major League Baseball). Idk if its just pure copium or an actual thing but i do notice my connection speeds improve with nord vs without, at least at work. So that + aforementioned blackout bypassing, i think i got my 80 bucks worth for the 2 years i got it for
I scrolled through most of the comments, and even after a quick CTRL+F, there was one very common use case of VPN's that has apparently gone unmentioned: Gambling.
I appreciate videos like this because, while I do have a VPN thanks to my husband who is way more tech savvy than I ever will be,I've always had doubts of sorts on them. This broke it down easy enough to where even someone like me can understand it. I mean I understood the s part in https before this but you explained it in a way that I could figure even if I didn't know about it Much appreciated ♡
Love that song at the end. Will a VPN subscription help me identify what it is? 😏 Excellent points tho. I've often been baffled by how prevalent this stuff is given that it's really only useful for niche cases
Very helpful! I appreciated the analogy and visuals. I've watched videos about this many times before but never "got" it. This really helps!🎉 Thank you!
Very good video. I could not find any incorrect statment and it was well explained with the analogies. One point I want to add to the note that you need to understand and agree with the privacy policy. You also need to trust the company to actually live up to the privacy policy. There have been instances where companies have claimed they did not keep any logs and it was later found out they did, when those logs where leaked.
I had a use case for VPN that was very specific for me. For years, in a specific online game I played, there was a bad node in the connection somewhere between me and the game servers and I'd constantly get packet loss. I ran trace connections to their sever and was able to locate the faulty node, and reported it to the game devs and my ISP, but that didn't really go anywhere. Tried several different DNS servers with no luck, until I realized I could use a VPN to intentionally avoid that node by picking a path around it. It added a bit of latency, but eliminated the packet loss, which was great since it took another 2 years before the issue was resolved on the backend.
even US have banned tiktok imagine how many sites are banned worldwide in different countries by the government or service itself that is a reason why vpns are getting popular
@rejectconvenience ah yea a download hoster could see your IP from the connection request. Shoulda been more clear, direct downloads cannot be tracked BY your ISP specifically. Theyre not allowed to look at what you're downloading specifically. which is why downloading Pirated content via DDL is fine (copyright wise) with no VPN but torrenting isnt.
With 40$/year price tag, which is what I pay for NordVPN, to achieve 350B revenue, literally every single person on Earth would have to have a subscription.
That is one company to be fair, those insights were based on a combination of all the VPNs, including enterprise, which the biggest UA-cam sponsors (like NordVPN) are also a part of (even if they're not the biggest name in the enterprise world, I suspect Cisco is MUCH higher in that rank, and also produces a ton of that revenue estimate)
@@rejectconvenience OK, but enterprise VPN is about providing a single entry into the corporate systems, which makes it much more difficult for an attacker to access these systems. That is a completely different use case and a very different product than what is advertised on UA-cam.
Thank you! I decided to mix things up and built it all out in 3D (using Blender), and I'm happy to hear you like how it looks! I put a lot of effort into it :)
@@rejectconvenience searching "NordVPN data breach" on google brings up lots of results (second try at leaving this comment, first attempt disappeared for some reason???)
Thank you so much for the video! I haven't been fully confident on what a VPN does and whether it would help me with online security and this was extremely informative! :D Also good to know that Proton is a fairly trustworthy free one. ^^ Great video, love the corrections in the comments as well. But also can I just say the Crane Sisters in the ending credits took me out. I wasn't expecting it at all. Beautifully, lovely, I am subscribed now. Great job. 👍
I so use a VPN, mostly because I'm a university student. My university can freely look at my online activity, and in some technical senses, can even claim ownership over things I create using their internet service, since I used school resources to create them. A VPN does help protect me from this.
My huge problem with VPNs has to do with their advertising having huge asterisks attached to what they promise. Security? Privacy? Sure, it can technically achieve that, but it's not always guaranteed. If you're still logged onto all your usual sites while browsing, data consolidators can still build an accurate profile on you and sell that data to advertisers so they can serve you targeted ads. Not to mention, if you're not changing which tunnel you use so that your location keeps changing, you can be moving from network to network, place to place, but all your stuff is coming from one tunnel. Really, just a glorified proxy at that point. But that might actually make building a profile on you easier. You're not paying a VPN service to have a VPN. You're paying them to rent a tunnel. And what if all your devices are sharing the same tunnel? It's like walking around with a mask on, but still having your ID on you and showing it to anyone to needs to ask for it. And what gets me going even more is that major channels are still promoting and shoveling this garbage. The money must really be that good. And it's mostly channels that should know better, channels that work in the tech space and should know to do their research. VPN companies are spreading a script that begs people to be paranoid but sells them a half-answer to the paranoia. The only people you're really hiding from is your ISP.
It was something from Storyblocks, the file I had saved was titled "thinking-over-the-idea-minimal-documentary-marimba-cinematic-SBA-346702173.mp3" (I'm glad I've been saving all those raw assets so I could answer your question!)
Great vid. I genuinely only use my VPN to watch movies/shows I can’t watch in the US lol. Plus, it comes with a solid ad-block, so that’s a nice bonus. My opinion, as someone who grew up with the internet, has always been this: the second you log onto the internet, someone, somewhere, is watching you. It’s just like when you leave your house and go into public; someone, somewhere, is watching you, because you left your house and headed out into the public eye. You can try to cover yourself up however you want, but that won’t stop people from watching you and what you do. That same thing applies to the internet. If it’s really THAT much of a concern for you, then I’m sorry to say, but your only real option is to stay off the internet.
As someone who's a movie fan (especially old cinema, which is never on streaming sites) I exclusively reccomend VPNs for accessing content in a way that might get you in trouble. Especially since many HUGE free movie sites have been taken down by government agencies recently and if you made an account with any of them (which. Dont.) you really don't want said agency knowing where you live, unless you like paying fines for fun.
Just got recommended your video and I ABSOLUTELY love your channel name and content. People have been caught up in the lies of hyperconsumption for toooooo long!! VPNs, and other sponsors of items that “create a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” have been pushed so hard and it makes me mad to see it happen so much nowadays
0:31 Why on earth would VPNs stick out to you and make you feel more uneasy than dodgy online therapy? How did you write those two sentences back to back and think, yeah that sounds right
I think it’s just the huge amount of them. BetterHelp and maybe one other service that I don’t know the name of are the only sponsors I’ve really seen, and VPN companies definitely sponsor the most and the biggest youtubers
I’ve had a Nord account for like five years now, overall I’ve been really happy with it. Their password manager has been a game changer for me personally. But that is just me. Had I seen this video back then I might have looked further into it and researched for a different password manager, but I am just a regular consumer.
Thankyou. This is just about my biggest pet peeve on UA-cam right now. I am so tired of creators, including those who DEFINITELY know better, lying to people about what VPNs are capable of.
✨CORRECTIONS! PLEASE READ FOR CLARITY! ✨
▬▬ HTTPS Timeline ▬▬
HTTPS was around long before 2016! I poorly phrased this. As @Zekrom569 describes, "...in 2016 governments and institutions around the world stepped in to make regulations that protect the privacy of internet users by mandating clear privacy policies and cookie consent prompts.", and this included making HTTPS a requirement. You can still totally make an HTTP site today, but not if you're hoarding lots of user data! Also thanks to @Milan____ for also suggesting this correction!
▬▬ Public Wifi Security ▬▬
Hotel wifi can sometimes require you to agree to various terms, one of which can often be a content filter or similar tech, which can redirect your web traffic in such a way that the hotel can see the content of the pages you visit, which a VPN could bypass as advertised. Here is a resource that helps describe this tech and where it is normally implemented (schools, enterprise environments):
blog.scalefusion.com/web-content-filtering/
Additionally, from a cybersecurity standpoint, if a hotel has bad security practices, and there is a very bad virus on their network (like a worm for example), a VPN that prevents local devices from talking to your computer will help protect that device. I don't know how I missed those facts while writing this, so sorry about that! I'll continue to update this as I come across possible missed information.
▬▬ Visibility of Services and Domains ▬▬
@ayden8901 left a great comment, "Most business grade and even some home routers or firewalls have DPI (deep packet inspection) which is able to associate services and domains with devices on the network. Also in enterprise networks there is SSL Inspection which decrypt the packets so the firewall can inspect everything", and additionally, as @schwingedeshaehers ponited out, "it can only do it, if it can write new certs for that domain". So it's certainly possible to see things with the right setup, but there is a "paper trail" of sorts.
▬▬ Location Accuracy ▬▬
Comment from @Lostboy811, "Just wanted to point out that it really isn't protecting you because in the end it does need to know the original location. The process is a little more complicated but really VPN are really only good to bypass regional restrictions on streaming sites". As we saw in my video about the Privacy Visualizer, this is true, location in this respect is generally "coarse" location.
▬▬ Contribute what you can! ▬▬
If any of you internet security nerds want to lend a hand in this conversation, feel free to leave a comment under this one, and I'll update this accordingly!
If a network has a captive portal, using a VPN will not bypass it unless it's implemented very badly. In any reasonable captive portal implementation, the router will simply not forward any traffic for any MAC addresses that have not submitted the required request to the captive portal. (there are tricks to maybe bypass some of these captive portals, but they are rather involved and not really related to the services VPN providers offer).
In fact, a VPN could prevent you from accessing the captive portal, since it's an opaque tunnel that can't be intercepted and redirected to the wifi hot spot's landing page. some VPN providers have carve outs that bypass the VPN for certain IP address ranges associated with LANs, but this introduces a lot of security problems (See the Black Hat talk "TunnelCrack: Leaking VPN Traffic by Manipulating Routing Tables")
However, once you've agreed to the terms or whatever, and the router is forwarding your traffic to the internet, then you are correct that the VPN will bypass any kind of content filtering in place on the network and largely work as advertised (unless of course they block the VPN traffic itself!)
also worth noting: captive portals are becoming less and less practical nowadays, since the way they work is that the router intercepts whatever web page you're trying to load, and replaces it with a HTTP redirect to the sign-in / accept-the-terms / whatever page. problem is, you can't intercept an HTTP response and modify its contents if it's encrypted, and more and more websites are using HTTPS so those connections will just fail with no explanation. a lot of device manufacturers now run a dedicated non-HTTPS website whose sole purpose is for devices to attempt to connect to them, get intercepted, notify the user, and direct them to the captive portal to complete the sign up process. hopefully the sheer rube-goldberg-ness of that process means it's gonna go away soon
Also, _DNS Poisoning!_ That is another one to be wary of.
I think the one use case no one ever brings up is forced rerouting.
sometimes when you're trying to connect to, say a game server and need your packets to arrive on time and sometimes the "post office" will take a longer road with enough pot holes your "letters" fall off the truck. vpns changing your location will force that connect to use a different "road" to go back and forth and will tend to be faster ironically.
Even thought surfshark is bought by nordvpn, surfshark still operates separately from it's parent company.
Speaking from past experience: don't get surf shark. In order to cancel your subscription you *actually* have to contact customer service. It's ridiculous
In canada its illegal to make it hard for someone to cancel a subscription service. Helpful advice for anyone struggling. Just threaten to report them for that. They instantly do ot
@lunaloveless7234 same in US now. Good luck enforcing that on non-US or Canada based companies like you get with most VPN companies.
Just a week ago i was thinking of getting surfshark. I’m glad i camr across this video and this comment
same with aura. i decided the scaremongering wasn't worth it for 20/mo and spent 30 minutes on the phone with a guy (just doing his job tbf) endlessly trying to negotiate keeping my subscription.
@@Sonamy5673I have used Surfshark for years and they're great. If you want to unsubscribe it's two clicks, no idea what OP is talking about. And I know because I always unsubscribe and then resubscribe with a different email to get another discount lol.
This is the reason most VPN ads focus almost exclusively on how you can watch movies only available in other countries with them. Bc that’s like their only real purpose for average ppl
Many countries without free internet exist, in Iran/Russia/etc if you want use Instagram, facebook, twitter, UA-cam, and many other service, you should pay for VPN or use another dpi pass methods, but VPN/proxy is easiest
@@ОбычныйЧеловек-щ7м still, not average people.
Except all the big VPN software IPs are blocked anyway.
Yeah i only got NordVPN on a heavy discount to watch soccer 😂
@@ProctasisLimerna Yeah, hundreds millions of people isn't average. US/EU isn't all the world.
I don't trust anything from a UA-cam sponsored segment anymore...
That's why I use ✨ s p o n s o r b l o c k ✨
I never trusted them to begin with
@@rejectconvenience sponsor block is just the absolute best on par with Adblock
@@rejectconvenience SponserBlock 😂
@@rejectconveniencesponsorblock + ReVanced is an unparalleled mobile experience.
YT advertising is generally shady
It's always weird seeing an ad for a thing I had used in the past and thought was fine, it makes me second guess things lol
@@rejectconvenience its weird that YT advertising is still extrapolating quite nichey stuff. Like, while this is the new television for everyone now, we keep seeing super random stuff with limited ubiquity
All advertising is shady.
@@Th3SilentObserverI forget who it was, but I watched a video semi-recently on exactly why that’s the case. Think one of the big reasons is that word of mouth-and by extension being spammed to everyone on UA-cam through channels they watch and respect-is a big deal for niche stuff, in many ways to the point of being huge for them but negative if something mainstream tried it.
Advertising period friend, local commercials are some of the only exceptions and even then...
Their gaslighting is really effective. Every time I tell someone that VPNs are nearly useless for the average person they look at me like I'm crazy. They've heard the misleading scripts so many times, it's become fact to them.
Say it to russians
@@amoru5898the average person isn't Russian
@@amoru5898In Russian?
@@amoru5898 It does help but vpn always feel like a bandaid solution, and usually most people out here would just use some browser with built-in vpn (or TOR browser if they don't mind the lowered speeds of internet on it) or a free vpn that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I don't think most russians, who are cheapskates on everything, would buy a vpn service (and im saying it as a russian person)
Say it to chinese
As Pirate Software has said, VPNs aren't security, they're anonymity.
Bro really quoting the nepo baby
@@danielellis6327 least he’s saving ferrets and making a game, the other nepo babies are actively making the world a worse place
I use vpn only for pron , because pron is banned in my country
@@SonnyModi-gm7bkget help
@@danielellis6327 people overuse and overblow nepo baby as a criticism nowadays. Yes, his family connections carved his path through the gaming and tech industry, but he's still pretty knowledgeable regardless. It wasn't *all* him, sure, but he still worked pretty damn hard and knows his stuff for the most part (dumb criticism towards Stop Killing Games notwithstanding) and tries to help others through his game jams and sound advice.
What's up with all these VPNs?
Well, let me tell you.
You register a company, start a few cheap VPS instances and sell their bandwidth to clients at a markup.
It's literally one of the easieat products you can develop as a web engineer...
That's why there's so many.
It's easy and profitable!
@@rejectconvenience Better yet, I could write connection tunnelling server in an afternoon.
Use a few off the shelf libraries, build an electron app so it hogs your ram like a 800W vacuum cleaner in like a week and we're set.
The only thing I would be lacking by that point would be the marketing... So I would pay a few UA-camrs for sponsorships and oh wait...
@@shapelessedjust use openvpn or something like that, and fork the client, make it your own
I am a Comp Sci student here and even I don't have a VPN (but I am considering one to watch some German movies on Prime). User data is a massive issue that I believe can only be solved by government action at this point. I would like to add that VPNs are great if you are in an unfortunate living situation, living in an apartment with a bad privacy policy, or traveling abroad. Also, I love how you made it look like there was actually a projector being used, and I definitely noticed the Wii face details. Nice touch :D
I didn't care about using VPNs before but now that my country has banned discord I have to. A new monthly expense, great 😢
@@beren171that’s sad. What’s their reasoning for banning discord?
@@beren171 is this for turkey or russia? crazy that its a question i have to ask
@@-yammie- A guy murdered two women, and the media wrote that he was an incel who was in incel servers on discord. Then the government banned the app to "protect children"
@@retro_aqua_ Turkey
I use my VPN EXCLUSIVLY to pirate content.
Yarr
the first rule of doing crime. . .
@@ariabkI mean hey he said it
Can't you do that without it?
@@wisteriiiiaa Not if you don't want to have your ISP cutting your service!
btw, not all browsers display the "" part of the url
So you may instead just see a lock icon.
Great call out!
Thank you stranger (*‘ω‘ *)
I mean you'll see the full addresses in wherever your browser shows the sequence of network requests, though.
Is it too paranoid to think these vpn providers play a role in the “archive now, decrypt later” process awaiting the coming of viable decryption using quantum computers?
I'm normally on the "too paranoid" side of tech these days haha
depends on the country the company is founded in
Why wouldn't they just decrypt on the out going? Unless their trying to strip https.
Probably not, which is why really your best and only defence in that sense is choosing a VPN company who are demonstrably trustworthy and transparent, and keep tabs on whether their policies move in unfavorable directions over time. If you're not self hosting, you're always going to someone in the middle somewhere
the amount of data sent is massive and 99.999% of the data by volume will be useless. it would be way too expensive for them to store that data for decades before finally getting a financial return. what are they gonna do with the data that could pay off the cost of storage? sell it to ad companies? hack peoples bank accounts? i could be wrong but just an average persons guess.
Truth is VPN is better for us outside of the US, Discord was banned in turkey recently, making it impossible to talk with friends and customers as an artist, but using a vpn (i use proton given it's free and open source) it's the only way to talk to people now
Also it allows us access to sites or services that aren't available here
Russians and Chinese also have this exact problem
VPN sales will go up in the US just because of TikTok soon.
@@williammiller3277sadly
I live in the south vpns help with getting over 🌽hub 18+ verification and free movie websites
Bro I'm gonna visit Istanbul soon any tips
The internet is not a big truck; it's a series of TUBES! MILES AND MILES OF TUBES!
If you think too much about it, everything is tubes
a great fear i have of capitalist solutions to privacy is how they will lobby in the future against congress passing measures to protect us from having our private information bought and sold so readily. the same way that companies like h&r block and turbo tax, which used to be capitalist solutions to the inconvenience of filing taxes, lobby against congress passing legislation so that a majority of americans wouldnt even need to file their own taxes (since the IRS already knows how much 90% of americans owe or are owed, for most filing your taxes is only necessary bc of laws that private tax agencies want kept in place for obvious reasons)
I love oligarchies!!
@@MissBeloved__ don't we all?
Ah yes, because privacy invasion doesn’t exist in any other economic system
The fact that corporations can lobby is baffling to me, because they have vested interest in certain things for personal gain.
I live in a country where doing your taxes is at best signing off on it.
I find it insane that people have to pay to file their taxes correctly and that it's so complex that a separate payed for service does it for you. Especially because the people who will be hit the hardest by not having it correct are the same people who probably can't afford the service, at least not with out having to carve it out of the budget.
@@vixxcelacea2778 corporations are people so said our supreme court, i agree it's wrong, but any manufactured consent is at the end of the day
4:45 A little nitpick: a better analogy would be that your mail is now directed to the Canada address. Since your ISP sees that you want to send this packet into an address not in banned list (TikTok), then your ISP delivers that packet. That packet is opened by this Canada address resident (the VPN) and sees that you want the packet inside to be sent to tiktok. Since Canada ISP isn't legally required to ban TikTok, then the packet will be delivered.
Ohh yes I agree, this is much better. Thanks for the feedback!!
dont count me on this but im pretty sure vpns wouldnt "open the paket" in this case, just change the address on it
They do need to open the "external envelope " of the packet, to see what is the actual address you want to send it to. Otherwise, how would they know where it is supposed to go?
But your actual data is in yet another envelope, and that one is encrypted (and that one has even another envelope inside, and if the webpage is https, that is additionally encrypted by the website you are sending it to, and potentially even more envelopes inside of that).
These "envelopes" can be roughly mapped to layers in the OSI model (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model).
I've thought of it like a flight layover. Whether you fly directly to Chicago or have to change planes in Denver, you're still ultimately arriving at the same place... (hopefully).
I like when people just say the same thing said in a video.
The song in the background of the video is called "Paris" by Else
Edit: Just putting it here in case someone is curious
I appreciate you doing this, I wish this was something all YT videos had to provide since it can be a nightmare to find the music someone used in a video otherwise.
@@Jazdude123 This is a fantastic point, I've never thought of this before. I'll start adding the music I use in the description! Thanks!
Thanks man!:)
I would argue another reason for VPN companies to market so agressively is purely for marketshare. VPNs used in this way is a fairly new service, comparable to other services like food and grocery deliveries. Aggressive marketing and other ways to drive off competition are used in these markets to potentially obtain monopolies in their niches. The 'product' itself as described isn't too interesting, and the marketing may also be part of even creating a demand in the first place; but the omnipresent ads for a service that's an affordable 'luxury' (something not required) for most users does feel like the 'become monopoly' strategy common with 'new' companies.
This is a great point, I agree.
luckily VPNs are too easy to create which means that the market is extremely competitive for the benefit of consumers
ВПН в на западе: Ой, зачем он мне нужен
ВПН в Европе и Азии: Без него я бы тут не сидел
The step by step pausing to comment on the VPN script was amazing! Rarely do I see that attention to detail, and it made it really easy to understand from the perspective of someone who’s trying to get a grasp on internet security to inform friends/family. Love the visuals too ❤
Next to VPN ads, those ads like Aura and Incogni also give me the heebie jeebies. It feels like those data brokers managed to extra money by monetizing getting removed off of their lists. At least if I were unscrupulous, that's what I would do.
I actually reviewed the Incogni privacy policy in my video about data breaches! I agree, however, it's suspicious to see it at all.
@ going to look at that video
Duuude!! The production quality is top notch, keep rocking my man
I got one of those cease and desist letters from my ISP in 2005 for torrenting a copy of Fast Times at Ridgemont High LOL - they even told my university and they said I’d be expelled if I did it again. Wild times. Also, it was a bad movie, definitely not worth it.
Dont use public trackers.
Ngl when I see a brand being promoted by so many influencers it's already a big no no for me. 😅 I really liked the video tho, the animations are so cool and interesting!
Great video!! Tom Scott's video about VPNs (as mentioned) should also be watched. As an information scientist, it's so important to fact check information using multiple sources. Now if only privacy policies were writrn in plain English instead of legal jargon.
Also McAfee is something I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, all of the mentioned issues are true AND they have had hacking issues.
The reason why I distrust all VPN advertising is that their pitch is built on generating anxiety over nebulous improbabilities, and the strongest valid use case they present is the opportunity to watch moar TV! VPNs alone do not provide the most critical need for privacy, to shield speech from intrusive government.
are you American? because this is such an American take.
people outside of the US use VPNs to access restricted services and to avoid government surveillance. "VPNs can only be used to watch more TV and nothing else!!!" is such a braindead american take
Watching from Russia, couldn't watch this video without VPN
But good video, bro!
Только в видео речь про коммерческие впн, а их постепенно блокируют по ip
@gn4128 что? Осталось куча платных VPN, что ещё работают и добавляют новые протоколы. Появилось куча новых,которые специлизируются под Россию в принципе
Correction at 14:40
Most business grade and even some home routers or firewalls have DPI (deep packet inspection) which is able to associate services and domains with devices on the network.
Also in enterprise networks there is SSL Inspection which decrypt the packets so the firewall can inspect everything.
Not sure about how that works as that'd be a pretty obvious Man in the Middle attack, and the firewall can't decrypt data as it doesn't have the private key for either end.
rhat fully depends. it can only do it, if it can write new certs for that domain
"if you liked this video consider subscribing"
said after a video with incredible aesthetics, deep nuananced information, and little to no bloat regarding run time while nog sacrificing information.
seriously though, great video, I love the 3d animations for it.
Omg I have loved the song at 16:33 for a while, and it was really funny when you started floating up
bro not only was this a really fun video breaking down a complex topic but also you played the crane wives at the end?? subscribed
So Onavo is an example of "if the product is free, you are the product"? Yeesh
The problem is that in germany a lot of games have been decleared illegal due to being 'too violent' (for example dead islan afaik) so a vpn is the only thing that allows me to get those games
And that's a viable reason for using a VPN. Privacy isn't really.
imagine declaring a game illegal because it depicts fake violence lol
@rainbowsorceress2082 welcome to europe (more specifically germany and the UK)
@@rainbowsorceress2082 that's because they're not. games can become indexed in germany which means they must not be advertised and only bought by adults but you still can buy them because they're not illegal.
waaaait germany bans games? thats sad i was considering moving south :(
16:47 the crane wives mentioned WOOOOOOOO
Actually peak band
I just love them!!
Man, why tf are you still not popular yet
The editing is sooo clean and the information you provide is kind of life changing
I really hope you will blow up ❤
It's certainly been changing recently haha I really appreciate it!
Love how this is animated and presented. I'm not guilt free, I've taken VPN sponsorships before, but I'm always picky about how I present their information, and if it doesn't work out, I don't take it.
Like I said, I'm far more critical of the companies than the creators. I mean, I get it, the excitement of someone wanting to pay you to make videos sounds like a dream come true, I totally see how some could miss important steps.
Edit: Plus, VPNs aren't really like... bad. Sure, the bad ones do exist, but those aren't really sponsored spots
I never trusted those VPN sponsors. There was already something off about them.
Great video! I also want to point out another use for VPNs. In countries like Iran, basically every website that doesn't end with a .ir is banned, not just sketchy sites. So all of us here need VPNs to access basically anything. I'm literally using a vpn to access youtube. Also if you know where to look there are a bunch of really good free vpns if you don't want to pay a yearly fee for one.
i really like the 3d visuals here. good job!
Really VPNs don't really do much nowadays. Https is enough for giving you privacy and even anonymity. But the real use case for VPNs is bypassing region locks in streaming services. But since this is kind of a thing that makes copyright holders angry, the VPNs don't relaly want to make this their main selling point, at least not in their advertisements. So the ads are all about anonymity, privacy, security, etc, etc. Meanwhile the main reason most pople are using it is to get netflix's Japanese lineup instead of the American one.
The real enlightened ones are putlocker soldiers. Shame they killed her but u cannot kill an idea... there will always ve another
The copyright holder aren't really that angry about VPN because you still need the account to access their content. Yes streaming services are making it harder to use VPN on their sites but that just to make copyright holder content.
Doesn't Nord VPN advertise bypassing Geo block content.
That specific use case was often actually part of the advert from youtubers, to which, yeah, bypassing region lock is definitely a reason to get one (don't need a paid one though. Lots of free ones with decent amounts of data per month). All I could think with those was "Well, at least they're honest about the use case."
11:44 well, that explains how tomska could get away with a joke about nord in *that* infamous sponsorship segment...
got absolutely jumpscared by The Moon Will Sing at the end LMAOO crane wives>>>
i thought spotify had somehow turned on during the video, jumpscare fr
🤝
Op has a taste in music basicly
@@deltamico It was either this or Weird Al
The part 1 of the video misses the part where your DNS server would also send out a "letter" to UA-cam's records to get the Ipv4 / 6 addresses of the website, so your computer knows where the hell its going. Privacy friendly DNS is also a must have, their are many services, hell I even run my own privacy focused DNS service.
I definitely left DNS out of the explanation intentionally because I thought it might over-complicate things. I do feel like if I spent more time researching things, though, I could have made it work.
@rejectconvenience your explanation was more than fine. Going into extra detail, like DNS, doesn't add anything, other than confuse some of the less tech minded audience.
Ignore kids like that ^ @Triro Trying to flex his 1st year community college knowledge.
I’d rather find a way to make my own rather than rely on some corporate vpn.
That is a thing! It's pretty specific as far as use cases go, but you can totally build a personal VPN that allows you to connect back to your home network. It's what a lot of enterprise customers do, they have remote employees use a VPN to connect back to the office servers to keep things secure, regardless of what network the employee is on.
I had a different reason tu use a VPN: we had elections this year (I'm not living in the US, there were elections in the EU too...) and the campaign videos on YT and other websites were just so discuting, that I got fed up, asked my dad, who works with softwares which free VPN he would recommend (he also said Proton) and installed it immediatly.
Crane wives!? That was an unexpected but
much appreciated outro pick
Wait! I love The Crane Wives!!
I love the letters explanation, that's exactly how our computer science network professor explained it to us in 1st semester. It's so simple and easy to grasp.
I'm living in a country that has some restrictions on home internet and A LOT more restrictions on mobile data for whatever reason.
VPS servers are really cheap. And there are a lot of guides/videos on how to easily do it. I suppose it can be "scary" for regular folk to work with Unix-based systems ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In my case I already had an Ubuntu VPS so why not also use it as a VPN? :D
Anyways loved your breakdown and gonna check your other vids
never trust any service nor product that shamelessly spends majority of their budget on marketing and advertising.
They're cutting costs somewhere to afford that, and it's not for your benefit.
it becomes a yet bigger concern when it comes from these vpn company's who also use half truths and people's ignorance on internet privacy and how VPNs actually work.
5:26 In simpleton terms: "I totally endorse this, but for legal reasons you didn't hear that from me."
"The law requires that I answer 'No'."
wacthing this from the DPRK. It wouldn't be possible without a VPN
Are you there to visit or do you live there??
Thanks for the video and breaking down the thing. I was initially interested, but then also noticed the massive campaigning, which raised my suspicions. Heavy advertising usually means the product has a problem. Especially when they advertise on channels unrelated to their product.
My line of thinking was: Vpns are doing the exact same thing that crypto exchanges, daytraders and gatcha games are doing, and none of those do anything for you. So if something gives you bad vibes, it might actually be for a reason. Stay sharp!
Damn, you really one-upped yourself with this one dude! Fantastic work on those animations, the editing, scriptwriting-all of it, really. This is top-quality video essayage.
Thank you! Took a couple months to get it all figured out, but I'm glad it turned out how it did!
Privacy... Traffic that would be visible to you, ISP and end server, is now also seen by fourth party, the VPN provider. Yeah...
I've never used a vpn. You dont need one for privacy, unless you're doing something less than legal-but even then, most vpn companies have exceptions for that kind of thing, so they don't get in trouble with law enforcement. I've sailed the seas to get textbooks, but I I always use TOR for that, because while the method is still basically a VPN, it's still much more secure. As for the desire for gatekept media, I've never had that issue because my local library system has DVDs of any major shows I might want to watch, and having to have physical media means I'm more self-aware and less likely to binge my time away.
One of the best videos that says what VPN does in the most simple way. The post office analogy clearly explained how it works and I can finally understand fully its use. Thank you and I hope you will make more content like this!
Compliments to you and your videos. I got into them because at first I had a phone addiction and didn't want to, but I genuinly enjoy watching every single one that pops on my fyp. Your style is great, I love your focus on privacy and I love the way you rational and explain things. I'm currently studying IT so I try to watch as many programing, security, AI and tech videos as I can, and I gotta say, from all the youtubers and videos I've watched so far, you and The Coding Sloth are my favourite. keep up the good work
VPNs exist for the sole purpose of connecting two individual networks over the internet with a secure encrypted tunnel virtually making them one network. Businesses do this to connect branches to one network and allow people to log in remotely as if they are at the office. The only thing a vpn can do for the average persons use is location spoof and maybe mask your IP if they are handling the routing properly, and maybe if you are on public wifi, but honestly i dont know anyone that ever uses public wifi anymore. It is NOT end to end encryption, you are not VPN tunneled into website or service you are accessing.
1:52 woah woqh WOAH. I have been _reliably_ informed that counter to your _propaganda, SIR,_ the internet is in fact _not_ a big truck.
So for me personally the only use I have ever gotten out of a VPN is region blocking and dirty cheap fast port forwarding
Related note from my understanding of VPNs - this before watching the video - it just lets the VPN see what you're doing instead of the ISP seeing what you're doing it basically just changes who you gave your privacy to
Honestly this may sound weird but I do not have very much download speed and no one near me has anything above five megabits/sec... I only have 25 megabits/sec
Side note every byte is 8 bits, so 25 MB is 8 times as fast as 25 megabits
Mullvad is the best!!
Mullvad and Proton both I'd say, as Proton is more accessible (though may generally be worse, I haven't used Mullvad). Mainly because with them you get proper privacy, not just your data stolen and seld. So glad that companies like Mullvad and Proton exist
@@Fafr doesn't proton require more info than mullvad (which requires none)? so it's inherently worse in privacy terms?
@cassandradawn780 All it needs is an e-mail and a password. E-mail you can just make a throwaway one, and password, just make a different one as you would anywhere else, and their privacy policy states they never share anything with anyone. Though if that is still too bad for you to be considered private anyway, then I can't really stop you if you're using Mullvad, that's completely fair
@@cassandradawn780Having used both yeah Proton does require significantly more information and can keep your credit card information. It's a matter of picking your battles, if you use a VPN for.........sharing cool things with others then proton is ideal now since they allow port forwarding. Mullvad unfortunately doesn't do this anymore which means download and upload speeds could be slightly worsened, but if you're not concerned with that and don't spend time sharing files Mullvad is extremely safe and a great product
One time, express vpn charged us double, then refunded us double, then took that extra money back -.-
Another QUALITY vid from the boiiii
Thank you! I learned a lot with this new animation style, I hope to be able to put videos out more often as a result!
I spat my lunch on my monitor at "show me why I should drink your smelly water". Thanks
Awesome and detailed information about the VPN services. I kinda feel like most promotions are not great with everything I noticed.
Honestly, i genuinely only use my VPN because i swear the place i work at throttles connections to any site that isnt the business' website (and the occasional sports blackout bypassing, shoutout Major League Baseball). Idk if its just pure copium or an actual thing but i do notice my connection speeds improve with nord vs without, at least at work. So that + aforementioned blackout bypassing, i think i got my 80 bucks worth for the 2 years i got it for
Watched for the very well made and informative video subscribed for the crane wives song at the end. You got me.
I scrolled through most of the comments, and even after a quick CTRL+F, there was one very common use case of VPN's that has apparently gone unmentioned:
Gambling.
ooooo good catch, I didn't even think of that
I appreciate videos like this because, while I do have a VPN thanks to my husband who is way more tech savvy than I ever will be,I've always had doubts of sorts on them. This broke it down easy enough to where even someone like me can understand it. I mean I understood the s part in https before this but you explained it in a way that I could figure even if I didn't know about it
Much appreciated ♡
Love that song at the end. Will a VPN subscription help me identify what it is? 😏
Excellent points tho. I've often been baffled by how prevalent this stuff is given that it's really only useful for niche cases
I love it too, it's called The Moon Will Sing by The Crane Wives (I put it on the screen but it might have gotten covered by my face)
I wasn't expecting The Crane Wives at the end but it was a nice surprise. ☺
You are not alone.
I have been hearing these Vpn sponsors too!
Very helpful! I appreciated the analogy and visuals. I've watched videos about this many times before but never "got" it. This really helps!🎉 Thank you!
Very good video. I could not find any incorrect statment and it was well explained with the analogies.
One point I want to add to the note that you need to understand and agree with the privacy policy. You also need to trust the company to actually live up to the privacy policy. There have been instances where companies have claimed they did not keep any logs and it was later found out they did, when those logs where leaked.
That is very true, and I dive into that in a couple of my other videos
I had a use case for VPN that was very specific for me. For years, in a specific online game I played, there was a bad node in the connection somewhere between me and the game servers and I'd constantly get packet loss. I ran trace connections to their sever and was able to locate the faulty node, and reported it to the game devs and my ISP, but that didn't really go anywhere. Tried several different DNS servers with no luck, until I realized I could use a VPN to intentionally avoid that node by picking a path around it. It added a bit of latency, but eliminated the packet loss, which was great since it took another 2 years before the issue was resolved on the backend.
even US have banned tiktok imagine how many sites are banned worldwide in different countries by the government or service itself that is a reason why vpns are getting popular
Dodging censorship is a fantastic use case for VPNs
Fantastic video production quality, particularly for such a small channel! Great job!
"A common use for VPNs is for piracy"
*me with harddrive filled with a tera's worth of old roms*
Wait, were we supposed to use that the entire time
😂😂😂😂😂
Direct downloads cannot be tracked. Only matters if youre torrenting
@MrGameSecrets can't they be tracked server-side?
@rejectconvenience ah yea a download hoster could see your IP from the connection request. Shoulda been more clear, direct downloads cannot be tracked BY your ISP specifically. Theyre not allowed to look at what you're downloading specifically. which is why downloading Pirated content via DDL is fine (copyright wise) with no VPN but torrenting isnt.
Watching this and getting an ad for a VPN was too funny, they’re breaking in!
With 40$/year price tag, which is what I pay for NordVPN, to achieve 350B revenue, literally every single person on Earth would have to have a subscription.
That is one company to be fair, those insights were based on a combination of all the VPNs, including enterprise, which the biggest UA-cam sponsors (like NordVPN) are also a part of (even if they're not the biggest name in the enterprise world, I suspect Cisco is MUCH higher in that rank, and also produces a ton of that revenue estimate)
@@rejectconvenience OK, but enterprise VPN is about providing a single entry into the corporate systems, which makes it much more difficult for an attacker to access these systems. That is a completely different use case and a very different product than what is advertised on UA-cam.
I love the style of this video, the visuals are really slick
You never miss! Also, I really like how this video looks. How did you make it?
Thank you! I decided to mix things up and built it all out in 3D (using Blender), and I'm happy to hear you like how it looks! I put a lot of effort into it :)
@@rejectconvenience It really shows. i'm still astonished with your viewcount. You deserve a lot more. Definitely keep at it!
This is my first video from you & I enjoyed how accessible your content was! Subscribing!
NordVPN's had multiple data breaches, which doesn't get talked about nearly as much as it should.
I didn't find that in my research at the time, do you have sources so I can add them to the pinned comment?
@@rejectconvenience Plenty of results when typing "NordVPN data breach" into google
"Military grade encryption"
@@rejectconvenience searching "NordVPN data breach" on google brings up lots of results (second try at leaving this comment, first attempt disappeared for some reason???)
Thank you so much for the video! I haven't been fully confident on what a VPN does and whether it would help me with online security and this was extremely informative! :D Also good to know that Proton is a fairly trustworthy free one. ^^ Great video, love the corrections in the comments as well.
But also can I just say the Crane Sisters in the ending credits took me out. I wasn't expecting it at all. Beautifully, lovely, I am subscribed now. Great job.
👍
I so use a VPN, mostly because I'm a university student. My university can freely look at my online activity, and in some technical senses, can even claim ownership over things I create using their internet service, since I used school resources to create them. A VPN does help protect me from this.
Yep, I called this kind of tracking out in my correction comment - I can't believe I forgot to mention it in the video haha
My huge problem with VPNs has to do with their advertising having huge asterisks attached to what they promise. Security? Privacy? Sure, it can technically achieve that, but it's not always guaranteed. If you're still logged onto all your usual sites while browsing, data consolidators can still build an accurate profile on you and sell that data to advertisers so they can serve you targeted ads. Not to mention, if you're not changing which tunnel you use so that your location keeps changing, you can be moving from network to network, place to place, but all your stuff is coming from one tunnel. Really, just a glorified proxy at that point. But that might actually make building a profile on you easier. You're not paying a VPN service to have a VPN. You're paying them to rent a tunnel. And what if all your devices are sharing the same tunnel? It's like walking around with a mask on, but still having your ID on you and showing it to anyone to needs to ask for it.
And what gets me going even more is that major channels are still promoting and shoveling this garbage. The money must really be that good. And it's mostly channels that should know better, channels that work in the tech space and should know to do their research. VPN companies are spreading a script that begs people to be paranoid but sells them a half-answer to the paranoia. The only people you're really hiding from is your ISP.
What music is being used at 12:20?
It was something from Storyblocks, the file I had saved was titled "thinking-over-the-idea-minimal-documentary-marimba-cinematic-SBA-346702173.mp3"
(I'm glad I've been saving all those raw assets so I could answer your question!)
Great vid. I genuinely only use my VPN to watch movies/shows I can’t watch in the US lol. Plus, it comes with a solid ad-block, so that’s a nice bonus. My opinion, as someone who grew up with the internet, has always been this: the second you log onto the internet, someone, somewhere, is watching you. It’s just like when you leave your house and go into public; someone, somewhere, is watching you, because you left your house and headed out into the public eye. You can try to cover yourself up however you want, but that won’t stop people from watching you and what you do. That same thing applies to the internet. If it’s really THAT much of a concern for you, then I’m sorry to say, but your only real option is to stay off the internet.
5:08 *cough cough* Nintendo *cough*
As someone who's a movie fan (especially old cinema, which is never on streaming sites) I exclusively reccomend VPNs for accessing content in a way that might get you in trouble. Especially since many HUGE free movie sites have been taken down by government agencies recently and if you made an account with any of them (which. Dont.) you really don't want said agency knowing where you live, unless you like paying fines for fun.
any gay pirate assassins around?
Just got recommended your video and I ABSOLUTELY love your channel name and content. People have been caught up in the lies of hyperconsumption for toooooo long!! VPNs, and other sponsors of items that “create a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” have been pushed so hard and it makes me mad to see it happen so much nowadays
0:31 Why on earth would VPNs stick out to you and make you feel more uneasy than dodgy online therapy? How did you write those two sentences back to back and think, yeah that sounds right
I think it’s just the huge amount of them. BetterHelp and maybe one other service that I don’t know the name of are the only sponsors I’ve really seen, and VPN companies definitely sponsor the most and the biggest youtubers
Maybe because Betterhelp already has tons of videos about how bad they are and that's not the point of the video. Hope this helps!
@@Cupppppsit doesn’t, no. But I appreciate how polite you’re being
I think you’re taking the phrasing of a single sentence in 16 minute long video way too seriously, man.
lol theres already tons of videos on "betterhelp" subject if you want
very off topic from the video but I absolutely love seeing you use crane wives at the end, they are amazing! also absolutely amazing video
I have never used a VPN. and you know what? I’m just fine.
Got an automated VPN ad before this video
So glad I'm not alone in thinking this way- its so awful to scare someone into buying something.
omgosh! i love the ending song ♥
I’ve had a Nord account for like five years now, overall I’ve been really happy with it. Their password manager has been a game changer for me personally. But that is just me. Had I seen this video back then I might have looked further into it and researched for a different password manager, but I am just a regular consumer.
Thankyou. This is just about my biggest pet peeve on UA-cam right now. I am so tired of creators, including those who DEFINITELY know better, lying to people about what VPNs are capable of.
5:31 amazing callback to that anti piracy ad, well done my dude! You’ve earned a sub!