Do they ensure user privacy in other ways? I don’t think changing your IP is enough in this day and age.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
They also encrypt traffic between you and the VPN server preventing your ISP (and in some cases, government) from collecting certain metadata from your connection (the data itself is usually encrypted already these days).
But you are correct that besides the IP address there are zillion ways to fingerprint and identity you.
nope, they dont insure any sort of privacy, they only let you access one of their public IP addresses, but they do NOT “ensure” privacy in any way
and you are correct, changing your IP doesnt do squat for safeguarding your privacy, and , with more and more sites banning or locking out users behind VPN’s, they are becoming less useful every day
A VPN not just hides what sites you visit, VPNs also prevent those networks from blocking sites. And it isn’t just ISPs and governments, but potentially your parents, your school, hotels, any public network you might use.
An ISP can easily determine whether a user is directly connected to a VPN. VPN server public IP addresses can only be hidden via a proxy.
That is completely different than hiding what websites you visit from the ISP
Obviously.
Sure, consumer VPN IP Addresses are known. But not all VPNs are run by identifiable consumer VPN companies.
This is irrelevant to my point. A ISP knows whether a user is directly connected via a VPN protocol without knowing the specific IP address of the VPN server.