Do you use a VPN?

[malistix1985]

vivster said:

A few clarifications.

Masking your identity:
Your anonymoity is at the mercy of the VPN host as much as it is at the mercy of your ISP when you don't mask it. If someone is determined to track you, they have the ability to find you depending how much the VPN host values your anonymity. It certainly blocks individuals but it won't do too much against bigger corporations and the government. Again, really depends on the ethics of the VPN provider. If you don't do anything illegal and you have data protection laws in your country then your ISP is as strong as a protection as any VPN host.
Add to that, that your IP is just one part of the huge amount of information you leave on the internet. Trackers and cookies work in your browser, so VPN does nothing to protect your identity here.

Protection against attacks:
No one will DDoS you. No one will directly hack you. So it's protection against a non-existing threat. And if someone DDoS attacks the VPN provider you will still be affected because you have to use a diffrent one.

Add to that the drawback of increased latency and incompatibility with some applications makes this  an unnecessary hassle, especially for gaming.

But if it at least gives you a good feeling I guess it's worth it for you.

Ofcource you are at the mercy of a VPN host and it has to do with their reputation if they do/don't share. For many people when downloading or being active on the internet however their data can be traced even with no data from their ISP. The most usefull thing a good VPN does is encrypt your data and share a IP adress over multiple users of the VPN making it only trackable when your VPN host does decide to share information, which would make them lose any credibility to all their users.

Your ISP cannot track the encrypted data once you use a VPN, in details this:

"A VPN accomplishes two things: first, it re-routes all your internet traffic through a server in a location of your choosing, which changes your IP address to one used by hundreds or thousands of other people (assuming your VPN uses shared IP addresses, which most do). This adds a significant layer of anonymity and makes it much more difficult for anyone to track you. Second, a VPN encrypts all your traffic before it leaves your computer. That means your ISP cannot monitor your activity, nor can anyone else. And because all your traffic heads to the VPN server first, ISPs can’t even tell where it’s going.

Using a quality VPN is key; don’t settle for a “free” service or VPNs that log your activity, cap your bandwidth and data, or don’t provide sufficient DNS leak protection. "