So I’m pretty recent to the high seas but I’ve seen a few posts now about “stop relying on your VPN” and “people that think VPNs will protect them are naive” and so on.
So since I believe knowledge is our greatest weapon/tool/super-power, can we get some answers regarding what exactly the doomsayers are getting at? ELI5 why VPNs wouldn’t protect your anonymity.
Is it about logging? The country your end-point is in? Something more technical?
Ultimately I’d like to be fully armed in order to keep making the best choices for my fledgling ship as it navigates the vast, stormy seas.
This isn’t why. They refuse service because a large part of DDoS, scam and generally unlawful trafic comes from VPNs (because the criminals are the ones interested in masking their true IP, for police evasion). If your site has a payment form, it is financial suicide to not block common VPN IPs because carders will use it to test their ill-acquired cards. If your site has a way to make a request that cost a lots of resources, you want to block VPN IPs because otherwise your site gets DoSed to hell and back by anyone who has a problem with you. The collateral damage of blocking people who deny you one data point to track them is completely acceptable to these businesses.