Obscura VPN and Online Privacy
Reflections on the growing trend of monetizing privacy, raising concerns about trust in such services
Marius, on Thoughts on Obscura VPN and Online Privacy:
The answer lies in the fact that Obscura VPN is not just another traditional VPN provider. In fact, Obscura is barely a VPN service in the conventional sense at all. It defines itself as a Two-Party VPN, a novel concept that fundamentally alters the trust model of internet privacy. Unlike standard VPN services that handle both the entry and exit of your traffic, Obscura only operates the entry nodes. This makes it inherently dependent on a partner – in this case, Mullvad – to provide the exit nodes that ultimately connect you to the broader internet.
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While the collaboration between Obscura and Mullvad presents a creative solution to the vulnerabilities inherent in traditional VPNs, it highlights a troubling trend: The increasing monetization of privacy.
I agree with Marius here to some extent, privacy has been less and less a priority for corporations that provide us with internet access because less privacy means more tracking, and that means more money.
Privacy is important for other things, not only because someone makes money off of the lack of it.
Ultimately, those with incentives to reduce individual privacy, rather than protect it, cannot be trusted to enforce privacy protection policies.
So it relies either in that there is no technical way to break privacy, or it’s on us to try to defend it.