20 Million VPN users across seven different VPN services were compromised and had their data (including personally identifiable information) end up on the dark web. What do you make of this? Where do you go from here? Your average tech-bro (and a rapidly growing subset of tech-gals) advise using VPNs and the Tor Network to protect your privacy. But, Tor is not that secure either. It is not the privacy mana that it is made out to be. Just ask Ross Ulbricht serving a double life sentence.

MYST is now on Bittrex VPNs Leaked 1.2TB of Your Data: Who Can You Even Trust?   20 Million VPN users across seven different VPN services were compromised and had their data (including personally identifiable information) end up on the dark web.   What do you make of this? Where do you go from here?   Your average tech-bro (and a rapidly growing subset of tech-gals) advise using VPNs and the Tor Network to protect your privacy. But, Tor is not that secure either. It is not the privacy mana that it is made out to be. Just ask Ross Ulbricht serving a double life sentence.   This begs comparison to the facebooks and the Twitters of the world -   “If you’re not paying for the service, you’re the product.”   But, people paid for these VPN services and still had their data leaked. This begs another question -   “Is this going to be the new normal? Should we expect our personal data and browsing history to be leaked when we go online?”   Well, the short answer is NO.   But, we should now accept that every company out there shall do something or the other with our data, with our explicit permission (buried in the EULA) or without, unless proven otherwise.   This brings us to the bifurcation in the road and the crux of this edition of the newsletter. Should you embrace the absence of privacy online because it helps advertisers show only the most ‘relevant’ of ads to you?   OR,   Should you consider this an assault on your inviolable rights because these ads have proven to sway public sentiments and election results?   Well, if you’re reading this, you’re a Hacker Noon subscriber, which makes it a rhetorical question.   You prefer the latter.   This is why, Hacker Noon has struck up a strategic partnership with Mysterium Network - a decentralized VPN provider that lets you run your own node and browse truly anonymously.   Therefore, over the course of the next few months, we’ll be: putting their claims to the test, figuring out how easy is it to set up one’s own nodes, how secure is it, how it prevents data-leakages, how it compares to the vanilla centralized VPN services, and above all, how fast their service is. Check them out using this link here and get 5 FREE tokens to try-before-you buy.   With that, we’re calling it a wrap for this edition and leaving you with some of the best privacy stories published on Hacker Noon: Currency-As-A-Model for Reframing The Debate on Data Privacy: A Tho… by @yehudaleibler Internet Privacy Under Continued Attack by the US Government by @freddym Humans As Data Points: Here's Why You Need Better Privacy by @IoTeX Decentralized Web (DeWeb Tokens) 101 – The next big thing? by @liquidarycom Warrant Canaries, Audits, and Linux-based Protocols Shake Up VPNs by @Jansen Coronavirus is Quietly but Surely Eroding Our Privacy by @r-J2 Your VPN Might Be Tracking and Logging Your Browsing Habits by @jan-youngren   *** Got a tech story to share with our readers? Everything you've ever wanted to know about how to get published on Hacker Noon - get it here. MYST is now on Bittrex Copyright © 2021 Hacker Noon. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: PO Box 2206, Edwards CO, 81632, U.S.A. unsubscribe Click Here To Sponsor A Newsletter by Hacker Noon