<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Majestic121</author><text>My take on NordVPN is that it&amp;#x27;s surely some kind of honeypot, to catch extremely illegal uses (pedos, drugs), or high value targets (journalists, politics ?). Not sure who&amp;#x27;s running it.&lt;p&gt;But if you&amp;#x27;re using it for mildly illegal things like having the Netflix catalogue from another place it&amp;#x27;s probably good enough.&lt;p&gt;Just don&amp;#x27;t install their app, configure it yourself, don&amp;#x27;t use it full time, and don&amp;#x27;t expect protection from anything other than low level law enforcement from your country. Expect your connection to be monitored when you&amp;#x27;re using it, as much as can be (so not breaking encryption, but all the rest for sure).&lt;p&gt;I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever other than the fact that it&amp;#x27;s been a high visibility service for very long, which makes me think it would have already been taken down a while ago if it was actually effective at protecting high value targets</text><parent_chain><item><author>voidUpdate</author><text>The thing about nordVPN (and VPN services in general) is they always talk about how funneling all your traffic through them makes it more secure and it means that governments cant spy on you and whatever. But sending all your traffic through a single point of failure seems like a bad idea from a government protection view, and how is it any more secure than https? The only thing that I&amp;#x27;ve seen it be good for is making it look like you&amp;#x27;re from somewhere else to watch different stuff on streaming services. I think Tom Scott put it well here &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;WVDQEoe6ZWY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;WVDQEoe6ZWY&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>bugtodiffer</author><text>&amp;gt; I understand how this feeling is unjustified&lt;p&gt;Every company you listed is bad.&lt;p&gt;NordVPN wasn&amp;#x27;t caught yet, but it&amp;#x27;s to good to be true and ALWAYS having 73% off is illegal marketing.&lt;p&gt;Betterhelp sold data to facebook to retarget you with ads.&lt;p&gt;SquareSpace had a security issue were entering the email of an old, not yet migrated account, was instant account takeover... how does this slip through security reviews?&lt;p&gt;Everything that needs my favorite minecraft youtuber to advertise it, is scam. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t sell without influencer marketing.</text></item><item><author>freetonik</author><text>I feel the same. The more I hear about a brand in youtube ads (or any ads, for that matter), the more &amp;quot;scammy&amp;quot; feeling I get about it. At this point I feel I won&amp;#x27;t even consider looking into NordVPN, Betterhelp, or SquareSpace, even though I understand how this feeling is unjustified.</text></item><item><author>voidUpdate</author><text>I still don&amp;#x27;t understand a lot of youtube advertising. Like for me, if I&amp;#x27;m being advertised something, I instinctively don&amp;#x27;t trust it, because they&amp;#x27;re having to pay people to say good things about it rather than people who have used it telling me it&amp;#x27;s a good thing. And there are still so many sponsorships from places like BetterHelp, which has been known to be a scam for a while now, and Raid Shadow Legends, which is just a crappy mobile game that is about as &amp;quot;mobile game&amp;quot; as you can get. The only reason I use onshape is because a friend recommended it to me, and I was very skeptical about it initially</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube</title><url>https://sponsor.ajay.app/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>GuB-42</author><text>Most of what people use personal VPNs for is to break some rules, sometimes the law. Circumventing geofencing or content blocking is most likely against some terms of service. VPN services can&amp;#x27;t really advertise for this, so they talk about evil hackers.</text><parent_chain><item><author>voidUpdate</author><text>The thing about nordVPN (and VPN services in general) is they always talk about how funneling all your traffic through them makes it more secure and it means that governments cant spy on you and whatever. But sending all your traffic through a single point of failure seems like a bad idea from a government protection view, and how is it any more secure than https? The only thing that I&amp;#x27;ve seen it be good for is making it look like you&amp;#x27;re from somewhere else to watch different stuff on streaming services. I think Tom Scott put it well here &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;WVDQEoe6ZWY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;WVDQEoe6ZWY&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>bugtodiffer</author><text>&amp;gt; I understand how this feeling is unjustified&lt;p&gt;Every company you listed is bad.&lt;p&gt;NordVPN wasn&amp;#x27;t caught yet, but it&amp;#x27;s to good to be true and ALWAYS having 73% off is illegal marketing.&lt;p&gt;Betterhelp sold data to facebook to retarget you with ads.&lt;p&gt;SquareSpace had a security issue were entering the email of an old, not yet migrated account, was instant account takeover... how does this slip through security reviews?&lt;p&gt;Everything that needs my favorite minecraft youtuber to advertise it, is scam. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t sell without influencer marketing.</text></item><item><author>freetonik</author><text>I feel the same. The more I hear about a brand in youtube ads (or any ads, for that matter), the more &amp;quot;scammy&amp;quot; feeling I get about it. At this point I feel I won&amp;#x27;t even consider looking into NordVPN, Betterhelp, or SquareSpace, even though I understand how this feeling is unjustified.</text></item><item><author>voidUpdate</author><text>I still don&amp;#x27;t understand a lot of youtube advertising. Like for me, if I&amp;#x27;m being advertised something, I instinctively don&amp;#x27;t trust it, because they&amp;#x27;re having to pay people to say good things about it rather than people who have used it telling me it&amp;#x27;s a good thing. And there are still so many sponsorships from places like BetterHelp, which has been known to be a scam for a while now, and Raid Shadow Legends, which is just a crappy mobile game that is about as &amp;quot;mobile game&amp;quot; as you can get. The only reason I use onshape is because a friend recommended it to me, and I was very skeptical about it initially</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>SponsorBlock – skip sponsor segments on YouTube</title><url>https://sponsor.ajay.app/</url></story>