Libra00

If that’s the case then both of you failed to read the part of my comment where I explicitly addressed that:

The issue is whether or not anyone can associate that IP with yours, and what that comes down to is how willing they are to give up their records when the government asks nicely (or, even more importantly: not so nicely.)

I admit I didn’t include the possibility of the VPN operator themselves being malicious, but it seems weird to call me out for not addressing the issue of record security re:governments/LE when pretty much the entire point of my comment was to address that specific issue because no one else was, no?

lol, k, I definitely respect the opinion of someone who drops a half-assed comment like that without bothering to offer what they believe to be the correct information.

They could. But you and I both know they won’t because most people don’t care about anything beyond ‘make the magic box work so I can do my job / play my game / etc.’

I think they would. I tried Linux again for the first time in 10+ years and kept running into issues like my sound would randomly die or change to headset, when I tried to update the video driver it hard- locked the system, etc. I just installed Ubuntu the other day and whenever it boots the monitor just goes into standby with no signal. It’s been nothing but trouble, and I have pretty normal hardware. Most people aren’t going to know or care how to deal with those problems. As far as Linux has come, it’s still not ready for widespread adoption by most people on the ‘it just works’ front.

A VPN is a VPN, having a different IP address is equally effective against those things no matter which IP it is. The issue is whether or not anyone can associate that IP with yours, and what that comes down to is how willing they are to give up their records when the government asks nicely (or, even more importantly: not so nicely.) I’m not familiar enough with either service to be able to speak to that, but everyone else seems to be talking about features, prices, politics, etc when none of those directly address your questions.

I’m gonna guess a whole lot of flustered backpedaling amounting to not a lot of anything, but I’m willing to be surprised if someone wants to dig up the video.

Capitalism’s Invisible Army often acts as the propaganda arm of the US hegemony, so it is in a very real sense a part of their job to make sure this doesn’t come to pass. Sadly they seem pretty good at it.