VPNs, Your Privacy, and the VPN Difference

How private is your browsing? What part of it is relevant in marketing?

If I browse to shop, my cookies will contribute profile information about my geographic location.

Data mining? Maybe you've seen this term around. It makes this aspect of 'Marketing' sound fancy.

But it isn't Astrophysics.

Let's use a scenario!

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Suppose you are shopping a barbecue. Then your wife logs into Amazon and buys a watch and a Samsung smart-ring that will monitor your heartrate when you sleep, count your steps when you exercise, notify your physician in the event of cardiac arrest, call an ambulance via Bluetooth to your Skype and/or cell phone, and notify her when you take off the ring to shower and watch naughty web videos; see! You're busted!

Each of these websites will administer a tracking 'Cookie'!

Before you can click refresh in your history, Amazon has stored the barbecue cookie. And when you log in there, they stand a 27.21% greater chance (as shown in the years Amazon has researched the use of this Marketing practice) of successfully selling you a barbecue.

What were the prices of the barbecues you viewed? There's a cookie for that! And so, the cookies stored in your browser (which is on a sliding scale; you can shut it off but some sites won't let you view without cookies enabled, which may be unethical for privacy reasons...) convey to Amazon how much were the barbecues, perhaps for how long you shopped, how many you clicked (which may read as how serious you are about finding a barbecue, which type, etc.) and so on.

As for your Aura ring (Samsung's competitor), that is between you and your heart health!

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Fast forward (and be kind rewind) to 2024! What if I'm ok with my heart health, but I don't want Amazon to know that I looked at the Swimsuit Issue?

Enter the VPN!

If I have enabled a VPN on my PC, it has typically added another location to my browsing; it sends my browsing to a server somewhere else and at a minimum it separates the browsing I do normally and without any effort at privacy from the browsing I'd prefer not to communicate via browsing history or cookies or tracking and so on.

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There are free VPNs and there are paid VPNs. I read an article today asking whether or not there's a difference. It suggested that free VPNs have incentive to sell your data. Who's buying?

Usually that sort of 'data mining' is free simply by access to someone's cookies. Some places you are prompted to sign-in, like Edge browser or Chrome. And they are pretty transparent that they collect data and tell you that they sell it to their partners or use it for their own reasons.

I'd like to think that VPNs are in the business of protecting your privacy. The article is suggesting the possibility of VPNs contributing their data to a clientele; perhaps a conservative group who targets individuals for harassment (conspiracy?).

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If you're like me, you have possibly looked into ID Theft Protection. I haven't seen a company that offers ID Theft Protection that doesn't also protect your browsing privacy via VPN.

My thinking is that I wish free VPNs were a safe bet. In reality, your data could be sold to someone (unless they're promising otherwise) either lumped together with everyone else in an effort to understand where people looked when they had VPN-style privacy, or for example on a geographical basis maybe to see what people from different areas were looking at, let's say paid for monthly by a large data mining operation or on an as needed basis privately using the "dark web".

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Two free VPNs that I know of have provided me with free ID Protection in terms of private servers aside from my service provider.

Proton VPN: Secure, fast VPN service in 100+ countries
Hotspot Shield: Fastest VPN for Streaming, Gaming & More

I also tried Kaspersky and Aura (maybe same as the Aura ring) and saw there were similar paid platforms by Norton and McAfee, and lesser-known ones but I don't remember them all. This site has compiled a list, but I don't know if they're all reliable:

Top VPN Services for 2024 (top10vpn.guide)

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It seems like the best practice is transparency. But what are they doing with my cookies?

One thing I noticed is when I browse something, sometimes my home page uses that to conduct advertising. This can be turned off in the browser and during the set up for Windows (I don't know how other OS are for this) or simply tolerated. I don't like to adjust my browsing to avoid aggressive advertisers, so I tend to use a hybridized approach that incorporates some VPN usage. And some advertisers are helpful (thank you 'helpful brand advertising'!) on the homepage or on Amazon or eBay.

In some cases, I found HF had an issue with my IP Address. That is one of the main things I use the VPN for; to access HF because there is an issue with my IP Address.

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In summary, to prioritize 'Privacy' maybe shouldn't be on our minds. But the landscape may provide reason for a VPN.

 

The 'maybe not prioritize privacy' in that way is a real issue! Why do I mention that here? One of the things to be aware of (if you travel, or if for example your CEO, boss, or supervisor is tuned into that) is that a company, service provider, or country can disable the ability to use a VPN.

Why would they do that?! That's my privacy!

Because they may have done some research and determined that whatever you are doing on the internet that you want kept private can likely be kept private another way, or that the higher priority is moral integrity. This mantra/ethos/moral/value/virtue has its basis in the same line of thinking; whatever you are doing either doesn't require privacy, is not within the realm of moral and social normalcy, isn't socially acceptable, or may be something to reconsider.

And what are we not saying? Mature content on the internet could be sidelined as a separate issue. I feel like the two are related, and I've opened the discussion about how legislation can reshape our relationship with this element by requiring the service provider to offer us a choice anytime we sign up for internet or phone; with or without mature content, or none, some, or all like a movie ratings G, PG, PG-13, R, NC, etc.

The current arrangement gives us the smorgasbord by default. Cable TV isn't like that. You have to buy in if you want movie channels like Showtime, and back when there was Spice or The Playboy Channel you weren't given these by default along with your ESPN.

In some places they have barred adult content. I think for other places it will be more priority to freedom and less to a virtuous decision from leadership to eliminate what seems out of place. And to encounter that without blocking of VPNs would be less effective.

 

One thing that many people forget is that you are actually paying that nice friendly virus protection company to sell all your history and details.
I assumed that the nice friendly local company (McAfee) would be busy walking through the glens playing the pipes when they were not murdering my viruses.
Hang on a minute, they are not in Scotland, they are based in India.

They changed all my Windows defaults and my browser to Yahoo for added safety. The spam doubled within a few weeks, LOL
Microsoft who host our email domain servers were far from happy.

 

It is good practice to automatically delete cookies after each browser session. It's amazing what a sea of cookies can be found on the computers of unsuspecting housewives. IIf it is only a matter of isolating the tabs, these measures are sufficient:

Some container solutions, here for Firefox:

Temporary Containers
Easily open disposable containers that isolate attached data and are deleted after usage: Fully automatic, based on navigation-target, for certain websites, with configured mouse clicks on links or just by using the toolbar icon.
Temporary Containers – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)

Containerise
Automatically open websites in a dedicated container. Simply add rules to map domain or subdomain to your container.
Containerise – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)

Firefox Multi-Account Containers
Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple accounts and integrate Mozilla VPN for an extra layer of privacy.
Firefox Multi-Account Containers – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)