Stand corrected, I thought this was about anonymity, didn’t realise you could dictate the datapath when using debit/credit cards.
You’ve hit the nail on the head, though you may not use Maccas for doing your banking you might wish to use the free wifi provided by hotels to contact your bank while you are travelling. VPN gives you security no matter where you are.
wow is this the end and all happened at the speed of the internet!! OR did human dialogue slow us down?
We do this too and pay by the month direct debited. It’s great to be able to watch the BBC programs, both the ones that haven’t been here yet and some that never do. We usually watch them on BBC catch up but sometimes in real time.
This is now hitting the nail on the head Bruce? It didn’t say this was the main point of setting the VPN up to start with. It was to sometimes try and hide identity from the government. Later pointing out that it was also possible to use it for bypassing whatever measures are deemed fit for a country regarding the pricing of software/itunes/Netflix etc. Might that be a grey area legally (genuine question)?
Being ‘anonymous’ has huge advantages and shouldn’t be discounted. If you can stop Google and all the rest from getting their greedy paws on your online info then all well and good. You have to be very careful these days.
Or what though MKJ? Our details and information are already known by various authorities and businesses in our countries. All related to our real names and street and address. Perhaps on computers that all talk to each other for all we know. Yet we don’t worry half as much about this as we do about businesses knowing of our harmless activities on the Internet. Something just seems out of proportion there to me. As I said earlier:
I’d have thought that something untoward would have happened by now if it was going to. Not being totally anonymous on the Internet doesn’t seem to be harmful. I’m certainly not anonymous in any other aspect of life and don’t really expect to be. Why expect it on the Internet?
Looking at all the companies and government departments who sell our details I am not sure any of us are very anonymous or private anyway these days.
I can understand the need we all have for a certain amount of privacy, but the longer I live the more I see that being taken away, not only on the internet but even now on census forms more and more personal questions are being added to the list, and as we all know filling in a census form is compulsory. Everyone wants to know more about us these days, buy something online and they want you to write a review, advertisements following you to every site you land on, tracking every post you make to wherever etc. As I see it the more people there are in countries and the world the greater the need by the authorities to keep tabs on everyone and what better and cheaper way to do this than on the internet? we all feel intruded on but it makes economic sense to them now that they are hell bent on reducing the armed forces and police. Come the future and there will be absolutely no such thing as privacy for the masses, big brother sneaked in the back door and we didn’t see him coming it seems, I’m afraid the bottom line is we’re stuck with it now whether we like it or not so we’ll just have to get used to it.
Wheels within wheels, those who accrue the data are having theirs accrued also.
, presumably.
Bruce will know for sure.
Behind you! behind you!
Big brother is watching there
Behind you! behind you!
Big brother is watching there
Don’t look now
Don’t ask why
don’t ask how
don’t even try
The little black box has recorded it all
Good things, bad things, big and small
As for myself I’m on my second collection
of errant matters of omissions & observatioons
when at the pearly gates
had I had what it takes
did I do a good job
“Yes I think you did Rob”
“Now its time for a replay”
the internet is coming
the internet is born
it’s snapped ya photo honey
why the look so forlorn?
What’s this VPN I hear
is it a badge that I can wear?
can I hang it 'round me neck
and show the world how I’m bedecked?
What a good idea, here’s a badge just for you. Wear it with pride.
Hey! A poetic computer thread. 
When you have a VPN at home
You can appear as if you’re not
You can seem to be in Iceland
Or somewhere that is hot.
You can try to foil Big Brother
from Nineteen Eighty-Four
Although he is a little late
By thirty years or more.
Your search for garden tools
Can be from Timbuktu
You can search for anything you like
They’ll never know it’s you.
So wear the badge from VPN
It’ll make you feel protected
Your shopping list at Amazon
Will never be detected.
I am the Cisco Kid
Who works for powers unseen
I know the Net is just a grid
Of routers live and keen
T’was Cisco made each one
And on them all was grown
A spiders web so vastly spun
Once those small seeds were sown
Now traffic wends its way
From places far and wide
Yet through our routers every day
Each mega-byte must glide
Information big or small
Encrypted well or raw
It matters not we see it all
As it comes through our door
I am the Cisco Kid
My doors are open wide
No single byte that’s sent is hid
Though many they have tried
Where then to place your bet?
What truth should you believe?
That somehow you can beat the Net
Or that people are naive?
Wow the spiders are emerging - we have a plethora of budding limerists - and all it took was a VPN! - great stuff - perhaps we do need a Poets Corner after all?
Agree with Bruce or not, the topic sparked some interest leading to 56 replies (so far) and spreading over 6 pages. That can be a rare thing in computer related discussions.
There was a VPN brucie ban ong
Used to fight for the dreaded Vietcong
Couldn’t break his defenses
VPN don’t relenteth
Lives deep in his nets I hear say
He keeps changing his looks and his guises
Designed by Ho Chi Minh wises
They’re the VPN Cong
And their badge is a gong
Watch out you don’t get gonged dead or alives
Just for your interest these are the claims made by the VPN service I use. Most of the top 5 have similar claims.
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We absolutely do not log any traffic nor session data of any kind, period. We have worked hard to meticulously fork all daemons that we utilize in order to achieve this functionality. It is definitely not an easy task, and we are very proud of our development team for helping Private Internet Access to achieve this unique ability.
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We operate out of the US which is one of the few, if only, countries without a mandatory data retention law. We explored several other jurisdictions with the help of our professional legal team, and the US is still ideal for privacy-based VPN services.
We severely scrutinize the validity of any and all legal information requests. That being said, since we do not hold any traffic nor session data, we are unable to provide any information to any third-party. Our commitment and mission to preserve privacy is second to none.
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We do not monitor any traffic, period. We block IPs/ports as needed to mitigate abuse when we receive a valid abuse notification.
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We do not host any content and are therefore unable to remove any of said content. Additionally, our mission is to preserve and restore privacy on the Internet and society. As such, since we do not log or monitor anything, we’re unable to identify any users of our service.
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Once again, we do not log any traffic or session data. Additionally, unlike the EU and many other countries, our users are protected by legal definition. For this reason, we’re unable to identify any user of our service. Lastly, consumer protection laws exist in the US, unlike many other countries. We must abide by our advertised privacy policy.
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We do not discriminate against any kind of traffic/protocol on any of our servers, period. We believe in a free, open, and uncensored internet.
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Bitcoin, Ripple, PayPal, Google Play (Mobile), OKPay, CashU, Amazon and any major Gift Card. We support plenty of anonymous payment methods. For this reason, the highest risk users should definitely use Bitcoin, Ripple or a major gift card with an anonymous e-mail account when subscribing to our privacy service.
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We’re the only provider to date that provides a plethora of encryption cipher options. We recommend, mostly, using AES-128, SHA1 and RSA2048.
If I wanted to be anonymous, those are more or less the claims I’d expect. If Realist is right and tracing is still possible, it’s probably at least going to be more difficult to break the anonymity than if the service wasn’t in place. I don’t feel there’s a need for it though and even think there should be some transparency on the Internet. I can’t see that it is necessary for a law-abiding home computer user to be anonymous to that degree.