Tech Friday: Adding security and privacy with a VPN
Posted By RichC on June 15, 2018
My good friend Jeff works in IT and has been programming and running networks for 30 years; after attending a cyber security conference a few weeks ago to help hardening his company’s network and systems, he asked me what VPN service I was using?
“Online privacy experts such as privacytools.io recommend staying away from
VPN providers based in the Fourteen Eyes, especially within the U.S.” – link
I’ve switched around for speed and cost over the years (primarily for travel) and never really gave all that much thought to them. We often bounce ideas off each other as to how to harden servers, networks and our personal computers so it wasn’t unusual to being questioning the VPNs we were using. He mentioned “5,9 and 14 Eyes” and wondered if my chosen VPN was part of this international surveillance alliance. Huh? Now for a little more learning!
The terms “5 Eyes“, “9 Eyes“, and “14 Eyes” often appear in the privacy community, especially when discussing VPNs.
In short, these are just international surveillance alliances representing various countries around the world. These surveillance alliances work together to collect and share mass surveillance data. In other words, they are essentially acting as one global-surveillance entity to spy on you and record your activities.
In this guide we’ll explain the different “X” eyes surveillance alliances and why this topic is important when choosing a VPN service.
Five Eyes
The Five Eyes (FVEY) surveillance alliance includes:
- Australia
- Canada
- New Zealand
- United Kingdom
- United States
The history of this alliance goes all the way back to WWII …
I’ve since switched from a couple of other VPN services to ProtonVPN which offer there added Secure Core option. A bit slower, but if privacy is ever really a concern over speed (besides a standard secure VPN connection), I can turn it on. I’ve not used it long enough yet, but plan to update as I learn more. Stay tuned.
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