I have NordVPN, and what I have noticed is a significant speed decrease ONLY if I use unusual countries, like Albania, as the server location.
If I use the server location from a town about 60 miles from home here in Texas, the speed difference most times is negligible.

 

I have NordVPN, and what I have noticed is a significant speed decrease ONLY if I use unusual countries, like Albania, as the server location.
If I use the server location from a town about 60 miles from home here in Texas, the speed difference most times is negligible.

I've been using Proton VPN and have seen that it has a pretty significant impact even if I use a server in the same state. My download speed is usually about 20% to 33% with the VPN compared to without it, sometimes even only 10%.

Even so, for most tasks the slower speed has virtually no practical impact.

 

Speaking of VPNs.
For me at least, I have found that many places, like airline’s websites will detect and block VPN’s IP addresses.
What would be a compelling reason to use one?

 

Speaking of VPNs.
For me at least, I have found that many places, like airline’s websites will detect and block VPN’s IP addresses.
What would be a compelling reason to use one?

Another question is what compelling reasons to places like airline websites have for not wanting to do business with people that use VPNs? Could it be that they value the information they are able to glean and profit from customers that don't use them more than they value the potential lost business by blocking them (and unless they actually end up flying with empty seats as a consequence, are they actually losing any business)? Having said that, there are some legitimate reasons from a security standpoint to be more suspicious of traffic behind a VPN.

As for the reasons to use one, whether or not it can be considered "compelling"?

I don't like information about me being collected and used for all kinds of purposes without my knowledge and consent, for a whole host of reasons, both immediate and longer-term and both practical and philosophical. There's only so much I can do to limit it, but I do what I can. The VPN (provided you don't use a VPN provider that is, itself, marketing your information) puts your information further from you and compartmentalizes it better. Without the VPN, my ISP has access to the sites I visit, when and how long I visit them, and what my data usage patterns are. They have all of this information and it is tied directly to me, since they have my account information. That is valuable information to advertising companies and others and even if they aren't selling it (and they probably are, in one fashion or another), it is accessible to others, either legally or illegally. Consider that if I know what sites a person visits frequently, such as banks or merchants, it makes it much easier for me to craft more effective phishing attacks against them. Also, if the government wants to either scour that information in general or are looking at me in particular, it is easier for them to do, possibly via a court order of some kind. Think of how data is used for surveillance all the time and how often it is abused, either officially or unofficially (Flock cameras, anyone?). But even if the VPN provider retains much of that same information in their logs, it is quite a bit harder for others to gain access to it in conjunction with me specifically. Not impossible, but harder. They have to first find out that I'm using a VPN and then which provider and then that provider has to actually have the logs that can be tied to me. I used ProtonVPN because they don't retain any logs (and various audits back this up) and their free VPN is not funded by advertising or data selling, but rather by their paid subscribers.

Is any of this likely to have a major impact on me personally? Probably not. But there's no shortage of people that these things would probably not have ever affected that ended up being affected by them in major ways.

 

Thanks, W. You explained it very well.
Indeed, protecting our own personal information is an ongoing and uphill battle.

No end in sight. Nowadays every single gadget one owns, which is connected to the internet for the “performance and convenience”, becomes a privacy siphon. Most infuriating are the newer automobiles, which on their own deserves a full length rant.

 

Another question is what compelling reasons to places like airline websites have for not wanting to do business with people that use VPNs?

VPNs are used to commit fraud (such as faking location or source) and while the airlines will be well aware they are leaving money on the table by blocking VPN access they will have calculated the cost of fraud versus blocking legitimate customers before choosing to do it.

There isn't enough information in or associated with an IP address to demand it be exposed to collect it so that doesn't seem a reasonable motive.

Note that they do not block Apple's built-in VPN because it can be considered "trusted". Apple's offering allows ambiguation of location but only to regional, which is still accurate enough to know that the connection is near Moscow, Russia and not Moscow, Idaho.

Note that banks are another business that is tough on VPNs.

 

my initial thought is airlines sell the same ticket in diferent countries at different prices

eg. when i was commuting uk to holland, return from holland was much cheaper than return booking from uk.

 

my initial thought is airlines sell the same ticket in diferent countries at different prices

eg. when i was commuting uk to holland, return from holland was much cheaper than return booking from uk.

They sell the same ticket to different people for seats right next to each other on the same flight, purchased at the same time, for different prices. This has been the case for a long time and airlines were probably among the first to do what has now become very common practice and has been taken to extremes in the form of "surveillance pricing". In its primitive form, the airlines would charge significantly more for flights that didn't include a weekend on the presumption that such flights were likely business travel and that companies were willing to pay considerably higher prices and had less flexibility and options than pleasure travellers did.