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<blockquote data-quote="MacDefender" data-source="post: 988241" data-attributes="member: 83059">As others have said, ultimately I&#039;m not afraid. A VPN just moves that problem to somewhere else -- now I&#039;m not afraid of others on my wifi network but I am concerned if my VPN provider is trying to see my data. Furthermore, the mall and coffee shop don&#039;t share data about me or know who I am (nor can they thanks to iOS random MAC addresses), but every time I authenticate to my VPN I am trusting them to not track me or associate me with the credit card I used to pay.Some people run their own VPNs, but I honestly find that even more problematic on an untrusted network. If I run a rogue Starbucks wifi, and I see you connecting to a residential IP address via OpenVPN and successfully authenticating, I can tell what city you live in, who your ISP is, etc. And next time you connect to an OpenVPN server presenting the same public certificate, I&#039;m pretty sure that&#039;s you.Once you reach this level of paranoia, these are the considerations you have to keep in mind. There&#039;s certainly a time and place to use a VPN, but it&#039;s more important to ensure most of your services are end-to-end encrypted (which is generally the case)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MacDefender, post: 988241, member: 83059"] As others have said, ultimately I'm not afraid. A VPN just moves that problem to somewhere else -- now I'm not afraid of others on my wifi network but I am concerned if my VPN provider is trying to see my data. Furthermore, the mall and coffee shop don't share data about me or know who I am (nor can they thanks to iOS random MAC addresses), but every time I authenticate to my VPN I am trusting [B]them[/B] to not track me or associate me with the credit card I used to pay. Some people run their own VPNs, but I honestly find that even more problematic on an untrusted network. If I run a rogue Starbucks wifi, and I see you connecting to a residential IP address via OpenVPN and successfully authenticating, I can tell what city you live in, who your ISP is, etc. And next time you connect to an OpenVPN server presenting the same public certificate, I'm pretty sure that's you. Once you reach this level of paranoia, these are the considerations you have to keep in mind. There's certainly a time and place to use a VPN, but it's more important to ensure most of your services are end-to-end encrypted (which is generally the case) [/QUOTE]

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