gets to Hong Kong, so that should be small concern. Larger concerns are all the people trying to make money off of you, vpn or not.

My primary browser is still Opera, which includes a vpn of sorts, but I also use Firefox, Vivaldi, and Brave, which all have snooping protections.

Truth is, there is huge argument raging, and aside from some agreement on slowing down due to all this bouncing around servers, not everyone is convinced we all need the protection of a vpn.

So I thought about that...I know nothing about the VPN that comes with Opera. Would it have the same issues I had raised about being linked to outside places that are less than transparent.

Do you trust it TB? Sounds like it comes with the browser and I was not sure if a kid should be using it.

Thank you for your response!

I figure a VPN might be useful for banking, health (mychart), and taxes at a minimum. Financial stuff and health stuff. Maybe using DU?

vpns, browser based or otherwise. Nothing makes me think they're so great, either. For banking, I use my bank's app. The bank should have better security than I can afford. Taxes the same way. Health I don't know.

Your browser should have some indication that there's some innate security when you're connected to an "https" site. At any rate, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it.

Just a few below. Buyer beware.

Missing is thr bad thing resulting from all this. Who lost money or reputation?

Is any of these operations worse than what Google, Facebook, or Amazon does on a regular day?

Fwiw, every so often I go online to buy something and the "nearest store" is in NJ or Indiana. How'd it figure thaf?

Chinese owned companies might be fine. Just not for me. And if you're on a Chinese government hit list, not for you. I'd tell you what I think of China, but I'd probably get tombstoned.

Is any of these operations worse than what Google, Facebook, or Amazon does on a regular day?

Let's see ... Google? I use Duck Duck Go for searching. Kinda hate the rest of their ecosystem. Youtube spreads almost as much mis-info as real. Facebook? I closed my account years ago. Amazon? Pure evil, closed my account years ago as well.

Fwiw, every so often I go online to buy something and the "nearest store" is in NJ or Indiana. How'd it figure thaf?

Well there's Geolocation. There are multiple services that can take your internet address and return a latitude/longitude. They're sometimes very accurate, sometimes no-so-much. Usually they get it to within a few miles. And if you've got a mobile device that has enabled location sharing, it's often accurate within a few meters. They'll use WiFi and cell phone signals to get closer. But I've also seen really bad implementations where fails (and doesn't notice) and places you out in the middle of nowhere. E.g. Null Island : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island

that they turn to Google when they can't find enough stuff on their own.

My point is simply that once you've stepped on to this path, all roads are open. You just can't see most of them.

Well I've noticed a great improvement in (lack of) targeted ads since I switched to Duck Duck Go.

I'm skeptical that DDG ever queries Google for search results. I've had to manually query Google sometimes when the results from DDG are skimpy. It's a rare thing, but happens occasionally.

And yeah, it's a continuing fight to keep some privacy. I'm very old school and have a long list of things that are just not-their-business. Lol, I don't even do loyalty cards at grocery stores. Guess I'm an edge case.

But with VPNs there can be lives at stake. E.g. activists being hunted down when the VPN they thought was secure was compromised.

Using an untrusted VPN service is adding risk to your environment, not reducing it. I personally would
never trust a VPN service in Hong Kong or any totalitarian state. Hell, I usually don't trust them anyway
and use them only for specific testing.

The VPNs act as a relay for you and cause the remote system (that you're using) to see the VPN address instead of yours.

But as a result, all of your traffic goes to the VPN servers who "see" all of your packets. It's a great single-point of attack for someone that wants to spy on your traffic.

Normally the contents of your traffic will be encrypted until it reaches the final destination. But just the contents, not the envelope containing the "to" and "from" addresses that direct the packet to its destination. The VPN service will know both your real network address and which site you are using.

And they'll also (usually) see your domain-name system lookups. E.g. when your computer looks up the network address for "whistle-blower.com" or "top.secrets.newspaper.com". The VPN service will know when you're connecting with those sites.

And of course, there's the issue that most VPN services want you to install *their* software on your device(s). So who knows what malware it contains if the VPN service is evil or compromised.

And then there is "man in the middle" where if the VPN is seriously evil, it can pretend to be the site you want to connect with and decrypt all of the traffic ... including the contents.

For more a little more info ...

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20948/can-a-vpn-decrypt-my-ssl-traffic#20955

for a two year license on one laptop.

I always switch AV when in the second year they want to jack the price to $78 or some such so I was pleasantly surprised by two years and the vpn, and a cleaner utility too.

Now I'm not sure about the locations. Doesn't seem like there a lot in the US, but enough to switch around some, and I have used Toronto too, and it was fine. I'm in a Great Lakes State.