What is VPN security?

Question

VPN

Recently, there have been many articles that say that visiting sites through a VPN is safer. These statements seem dubious to me, because. you buy a VPN for $2 from some obscure dudes from another country and pass all your traffic through them, with which they can do whatever they want. This looks pretty risky. What is the "safety" here?

Answer 1

What is the "safety" here?

VPN, as Artem rightly noted , is just a tool. Let's say, is carrying a knife with you more or less safe than not carrying it? Putting it in your bag (or even putting it on your belt), you first estimate the benefits that it gives you in your given specific conditions and assess the risks. So here - first you evaluate the benefits and risks.
Advantages: The
provider (and therefore SORM) does not see traffic, but only sees a connection somewhere.
All sites, instant messengers, social networks will have the IP of the VPN service in the logs, which supposedly increases anonymity
. Disadvantages:
If you use a ready-made service, then it's not at all a fact that the service does not keep logs and does not leak data, or even it was raised directly by the "comrade major" :) Only a self-raised VPN is safe.
With regular work through a VPN, a feeling of false security arises, but meanwhile it is not so difficult with the proper ability to force a person to reveal his real IP :)

Answer 2

First, either the articles you read give a vague context for this statement, or you don't understand the context.
Secondly, security is a relative and probabilistic concept. For example, if you live in a country where you can be imprisoned for a joke on social networks, you are much less secure if you do not use any means that prevent your identity from being uniquely matched to your social network profile. The fact that "incomprehensible dudes" will collect the statistics of your connections is less unsafe than the fact that it will be collected by "comrade major" from your own FSB.
Thirdly, using a VPN does not automatically mean that you are using a ready-made service of "incomprehensible dudes".

Answer 3

You don’t understand what security is here, because you are trying to get abstract security from a VPN in a vacuum, but in fact, the use of security tools dances from the threat model. That is, you must first understand from whom and what you are protecting yourself from. If from the provider and SORM, then the VPN is the most, since it protects traffic from wiretapping in these near areas. And in order to protect yourself from a dubious VPN owner, then of course you need to use other means.
Your question sounds something like this ( I STRENGTHEN THE ANALOGY FOR UNDERSTANDING ): "Everywhere they shout that down jackets are very good and you can go to the forest in them in winter, and if I go, then a wolf can attack me, what kind of safety is there?" Therefore, you first need to decide FROM WHATYou want to protect yourself, from frost or from a wolf and use the appropriate tools.

Answer 4

VPN VPNs are different. You can raise gre / ipip / eoip / pptp / l2tp just to bypass blocking or for something else, or you can raise l2tp / ipsec / openvpn with encryption and this will also be a VPN, only your traffic inside the tunnel will be encrypted along the way no one can read it.
If you carefully read the decoding of the abbreviation, you will notice that this is a Virtual Private Network, literally "virtual private network".
I saw such an article - I laughed, closed it and forgot

Answer 5

Of course, only the authors of the articles know exactly what "more secure" means, but it can be assumed that the following aspects of security and anonymity are improving
As rightly noted, the VPN provider has a lot of information about you in their hands. Therefore, it must be chosen carefully, not by price. Check the jurisdiction, the reputation of the company.