Quote:
Originally Posted by MBAtarga
Not a user, but Norton Secure VPN is $30 for a year for 1 device. At least that price option is available to me from their desktop Anti-virus Scan product.
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Considering Norton's focus on security, I would not be that concerned with their service.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Esel Mann
Take a look at nord vpn.
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I think Nord is pretty big and has been around a long time. They may be alright.
I figured there's 2 main issues with these services 1 are they really secure and 2 what are they doing with my data (it flows through them, so they see everywhere you're going).
I'd say that most of the BIG banks financial players have a pretty strong focus on security. And even then, bad things can happen. Part of the reason is that issues cause customer confidence issues which will cost the company even more money than a breach of some sort. On top of that, there are a slew of regulatory bodies and issues and repurcussions.
These VPN services likely have no regulatory mandates. Anyone can put up a "security" service and run it well or poorly and no one is going to knock on their door or fine them.
The main benefit of a VPN is to 1 provide a layer of security if you're using a public network (wifi provided by hotel, coffee shop, etc...) and 2 mask your source IP address (you'll look like you're coming from the VPN provider, not your home.
The layer of security only protects your traffic on that local network, but it does not protect your laptop on the local network. If your laptop is not secure, then a local bad actor can still potentially access your device locally. The benefit is only that the web traffic that is going through the VPN is not visible other than as an encrypted stream. Eventually the traffic going through the VPN is going to drop out onto the Internet. You would get any benefit between the VPN provider's network and the end target (website). That benefit would only come from http vs https and the health of the end point (are all vulnerabilities patched/mitigated). Even VPNs have vulnerabilities that need to be patched.