I've said this before, but PIA and other similar VPN providers are great security against most drive-by hackers. I am a happy customer for this reason.
But if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA", you are going to have to spend more than $4 a month to remain secure.
Okay, I'll bite. My budget is more than $4 a month, but not thousands. Is there any way to keep myself secure from the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA/etc in a simple VPN-way?
if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA"...
I think there are two vastly different threat model within that - (a) large-scale and indiscriminate vacuuming up of the average citizen's Internet usage data to fill up datacenters and do analytics, and (b) active targeting of a specific subject.
I'm hoping a VPN will insulate me against (a) too. But for (b), I don't think I stand much of a chance even if I spent $400 a month.
"Failsafe" is unnecessary. Come on, we call ourselves engineers here, right? A cardinal rule of engineering is to not let "perfect" get in the way of "good enough".
Comments
I've said this before, but PIA and other similar VPN providers are great security against most drive-by hackers. I am a happy customer for this reason.
But if your threat model includes "NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA", you are going to have to spend more than $4 a month to remain secure.
Okay, I'll bite. My budget is more than $4 a month, but not thousands. Is there any way to keep myself secure from the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA/etc in a simple VPN-way?
I think there are two vastly different threat model within that - (a) large-scale and indiscriminate vacuuming up of the average citizen's Internet usage data to fill up datacenters and do analytics, and (b) active targeting of a specific subject.
I'm hoping a VPN will insulate me against (a) too. But for (b), I don't think I stand much of a chance even if I spent $400 a month.
Yes. In fact, I'm not aware of a failsafe method to guard against digital surveillance at any price save not using computers.
"Failsafe" is unnecessary. Come on, we call ourselves engineers here, right? A cardinal rule of engineering is to not let "perfect" get in the way of "good enough".
Yes. I perhaps should have said that price for granted security scales exponentially.