So a bit ago I got an add for “canned rambutan”. I had looked up Rambutan a few days prior after hearing it mentioned 10 hours into the video game Baby Steps. I wasn’t using a VPN at the time and I didn’t have fingerprinting protections active but I only mentioned it to a few sources (according to my browser history) all of which generally are implied to be private.
Which of these do you think is the reason the ad networks know?
- Wikipedia
- Startpage Search
- Duckduckgo Search
- My ISP
- Firefox
- My Firefox Extensions
- Kubuntu
- CachyOS
- The omnipotent algorithm connecting my mentions of Baby Steps with my progress through the game.
- Does this only make sense if my browser history is incomplete?
- Maybe I was using DNS over HTTPS via Cloudflare at the time of my search.
Any guesses as to where the weak link is?
You make it sound like it’s always the case but ISPs in some countries are less centralized/ not on the stock market and rather oldschool so I bet they don’t do anything with your data (yet). Think of utility companies.
Ok, but what if you live in UK or USA? You can pretty much guarantee without the shadow of a doubt that every single one available is selling your data. In fact, I think their terms even say they will do that.
In a case like that I would 100% rather trust a paid VPN service from a country that isn’t a privacy nightmare.
So your answer to „you can’t generalize vpn good, isp bad because not everyone is living in the UK and US“ is „but what if everyone does?!“ ok