It’s a great general policy to have, but there are exceptions. NordVPN and ExpressVPN are both great VPN services, and Nebula has been absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, but the creators advertising Nebula also make the content, and there’s definitely VPN providers I distrust less than those two.
and there’s definitely VPN providers I distrust less than those two
I find that a weird way to phrase it. Both Nord and Express are perfectly good. So is PIA, and probably more besides, but I didn’t mention others because those are the two I’ve frequently seen advertised. Both Nord and Express have passed security audits with flying colours, and Express even had a case where their servers were seized but the seizure was unable to be of any value to the authorities, because their claims of not keeping logs were true.
I am generally distrustful of anyone who takes money to hide potentially illegal activities. I don’t think they shouldn’t ever be used, but they do have the potential to be a massive weak point, and the way they’re set up to avoid censorship laws also means you can’t really hold them to account, should something go wrong. Ever tried sueing anyone in Panama?
Nebula is a creater owned abs controlled coop isn’t it? Way different beast.
I tried Nord VPN and realized three things: 1: The “limited time specials” they boast are completely misleading. You pay more per month than what they make it sound like in their sponsored messages. 2: They try to automatically renew your subscription and charge your credit card for a significantly higher price with the hope that you wouldn’t notice. 3: Unsubscribing is made to be a frustrating pain in the ass. You have to talk to their sales representatives and they will make you argue for it. And then you’ll have to do it all over again because even though they said they cancelled your subscription it won’t be because " technical problems".
VPNs rely entirely on trust and Nord has proven to be completely untrustworthy.
I use Mullvad now and it uses none of those deceiving tactics to lock you into an expensive contact. It also goes long ways to keep you anonymous and has periodic audits to prove they don’t collect your data.
When I was shopping for a VPN I skipped those two specifically because they advertised on most podcasts I listened to (I know they are good now but that made me skeptic back then)
NordVPN and ExpressVPN are both great VPN services
Nord is absolutely not trustworthy. They have sleazy tactics like trying to charge you after cancelling your subscription, and also have had a lot of controversy in the past, revealing their no-log policy is likely a lie. I didn’t do as much digging on Express VPN but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have the same issues.
VPNs you see in Ads will always be less trustworthy than the ones who are… well… well known and Trustworthy. Ones like Mullvad which make an effort to protect and respect your privacy.
Advertising is allllll subconscious. It’s not relying on your conscious choice and reasoning.
You will forget that you saw the advertisement. Then when you go to the store and are deciding between two brands, the idea is that you will pick the brand with which you have greater familiarity with (the one you’ve seen more adverts of), since your brain interprets familiarity with trustworthiness. All of this is done subconsciously without you even noticing.
Advertising isn’t a billion dollar per year industry for no reason. The reason being, that it works.
Advertising isn’t allllll subconscious, even if mere exposure and priming can be powerful. If ads were all subconscious, they wouldn’t try to get your attention and make you actually think about them. On top of that, backfire effects can overwhelm the subconscious approval, as can consciously making note of it.
I actually want to avoid products all together when I see ads. It makes me question whether or not I need it or alternatives, and often times, I decide that I don’t. Every ad also represents the entire capitalist system to me. They remind me who the enemy is.
edit: spellz
VPN is a scam~ 🥰🥰🥰
If you are fine with torrenting using your real IP, then yes. However, here this can easily lead to high legal bills as rightholders can demand pay for damages even if a tracker just returned your IP as a participant of a swarm. There is no first strike here where you just get a mean letter. It goes into the thousands straight away.
Personally, I wouldn’t do that, especially here with law firms that specialize in that kind of behavior. I rather pay some bucks for that rare case where I want to get something from BitTorrent than risk all that hassle.
Where is “here”? Germany? Italy? Most other EU nations don’t give a fuck though. I’ve been torrenting straight from tpb proxies for over two decades without a single hitch.
feddit.org is a German instance. The fact that they’re on that instance makes it pretty safe to assume they’re German, just as my instance makes it safe to assume I’m Australian.
(And incidentally, torrenting is pretty safe here in Australia. A court case years ago heavily restricted the ability of copyright owners to go after torrenters, requiring them to have reason to go after one individual in particular, blocking them from the sorts of mass attacks that make it commercially viable in the US and, seemingly, Germany.)
If you’re only interested in torrenting don’t use a VPN, just get a seedbox. You can get one with minimal stats (1TB storage, 2TB/mo upload on a 50Gb connection) for like $6/mo. You use it to run all of your torrents and handle seeding (handy for getting access to private trackers) and then just download everything via SFTP/rsync/whatever. Or, you can spend a bit more and have them host the *arr suite and Plex/Jellyfin so you have your own private streaming service. Split between a few family members, this is a very affordable alternative to commercial streaming services.
If you’re looking for a VPN for privacy concerns, don’t use a US-based provider. You have no guarantee of privacy, just a flimsy ‘guarantee’ from the company. Use a provider located in a place that has strong privacy and secrecy laws, like Switzerland.
The seedbox I looked into requires you to provide VPN details, it did not allow using it without one.
Edit: also as far as I know Switzerland doesn’t have that strong privacy laws as providers claim in advertisements, but they’re not a member of five eyes.
some vpns are scams, yes, but that happens in every industry. Ignoring illegal shit, my Internet speeds are faster when I use a vpn vs not, and that’s reason enough to have one.
I used mine for a similar case because my previous provider had shitty peering which caused YouTube etc to not work well, especially Saturday evening (search for Telekom peering of you want to know more). VPN circumvented this. However I have since switched to a better provider
To this day, I will never ever ever touch any Mazda products. All thanks to their dumb fucking zoom zoom advertising campaign about 20 years ago that involved their adverts playing twice during every ad break. Plus they were sponsoring shit, so it was everywhere. I feel like I still have PTSD from it. Fuck Mazda.
I can’t speak for modern Mazdas but I got a lowest trim manual, power nothing, in the mid naughties and it was still going strong 15 years later. So for all of their marketing annoyance it was absolutely a good product.
You got it when they were still creating rustbuckets then. The newer ones have much stronger bodywork and don’t oxidize within 3 minutes upon seeing salted roads. Can’t speak for the long term reliability though, don’t know anyone who’s owned one for too long (only friend who owned a newish Mazda traded it in for a Volvo V90 after a few years because space)
I am tempted by new Mazdas because they now have some real nice engines available and they don’t do the whole “everything is touch” thing because apparently they actually care about safety… BUT… I’m salty that they don’t sell the CX90 here, only the CX80. I could really use the extra space nowadays.
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t get another Mazda. I have a 70 pound dog that goes nearly everywhere with me. I needed actual cargo space and Mazda does not do cargo space. I can’t speak to the rusting, the snow place I lived in used cinders instead of salt. I can speak to normal ass sedans with manuals driving right past fancy 4 wheel drive vehicles in the snow. That was hilarious.
Lol yeah they seem like decent cars actually. But I made myself a promise back then to never give them a cent and I tend to stick to my principles (or at least like to think I do). It’s just a personal thing though. And also kinda funny, I think.
I’d say it was TV that gave you the PTSD. I bailed on TV at about 8 years old (28 years ago…) and every time I’ve been with people watching it since I was always amazed just how awful it all really was. But I guess it’s just what becomes normal if you grow up with it
Oh yeah it’s definitely TV. But this was before the days of Netflix and shit and before I had uncapped wifi. I don’t watch standard TV anymore either and when I do see it, same reaction as you. It’s probably a bit different from country to country but I think standard TV is mostly geared towards older people now too because most under 40 have unplugged by now.
That’s how advertising works…
