<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>bscphil</author><text>&amp;gt; I advocate somewhat strongly for paid 3rd-party VPNs, not because I think they&amp;#x27;re great, but because I think they are sometimes the least-bad option -- 3rd party VPNs address privacy problems that self-hosted VPNs can&amp;#x27;t&lt;p&gt;Well said. I would add that they&amp;#x27;re also useful in situations where you don&amp;#x27;t care about privacy at all. E.g. you don&amp;#x27;t care if your ISP logs that you&amp;#x27;re watching Netflix, you don&amp;#x27;t care if your VPN logs that you&amp;#x27;re watching Netflix, but you (and to some extent Netflix) have an interest in making it seem like your computer is located in a different country than it is.&lt;p&gt;Region-shifting and preventing non-government adversaries from discovering your real identity from your IP address are both valid reasons to use a commercial VPN. I suppose the reason why those who oppose commercial VPNs discount these two is that they&amp;#x27;re mostly used for IP infringement.</text><parent_chain><item><author>danShumway</author><text>It might be that PIA is not going to start doing anything shady, and they&amp;#x27;ll still be a (relatively) well-respected VPN company after the merger. But if you&amp;#x27;re currently a PIA user, it would be foolish to keep using them while you&amp;#x27;re waiting for them to prove that. Cancel PIA for now, and if a year from now they&amp;#x27;re still on the level, you can make a more informed decision about whether or not to go back.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no reason for you personally to be the canary in the coal mine, just use someone else while you&amp;#x27;re waiting to see what happens.&lt;p&gt;I advocate somewhat strongly for paid 3rd-party VPNs, not because I think they&amp;#x27;re great, but because I think they are sometimes the least-bad option -- 3rd party VPNs address privacy problems that self-hosted VPNs can&amp;#x27;t, and unlike Tor, VPNs actually scale well for regular Internet browsing.&lt;p&gt;I do however fully acknowledge that shifting trust can be dangerous, so I recommend people be willing to quickly jump ship between VPNs, and possibly use different VPNs for different services. You should be a little nervous around your VPN provider, and you should hold them to really high standards.&lt;p&gt;In PIA&amp;#x27;s case, I notice looking at their pricing page that they offer 1-2 year plans in addition to monthly plans. Not everyone has the money to ignore deals, but if you do have the money, paying an extra $35-40 a year so just so you can easily switch VPNs on a whim is probably worth it. In general, for services that can pivot in quality quickly (like a VPN) it is usually worth paying monthly rather than yearly (again, assuming you have the extra money to do so).</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>PIA: Our Merger with Kape Technologies – Addressing Your Concerns</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/dz2w53/our_merger_with_kape_technologies_addressing_your/</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>sigstoat</author><text>&amp;gt; But if you&amp;#x27;re currently a PIA user, it would be foolish to keep using them while you&amp;#x27;re waiting for them to prove that. Cancel PIA for now, and if a year from now they&amp;#x27;re still on the level, you can make a more informed decision about whether or not to go back.&lt;p&gt;how will they prove it in a year?&lt;p&gt;and what threat is it you think the shady guys are going to pose? they&amp;#x27;ll start spending more money to keep logs? i guess they could get in bed with law enforcement but i doubt that pays well. maybe the RIAA&amp;#x2F;MPAA will pay them off?</text><parent_chain><item><author>danShumway</author><text>It might be that PIA is not going to start doing anything shady, and they&amp;#x27;ll still be a (relatively) well-respected VPN company after the merger. But if you&amp;#x27;re currently a PIA user, it would be foolish to keep using them while you&amp;#x27;re waiting for them to prove that. Cancel PIA for now, and if a year from now they&amp;#x27;re still on the level, you can make a more informed decision about whether or not to go back.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no reason for you personally to be the canary in the coal mine, just use someone else while you&amp;#x27;re waiting to see what happens.&lt;p&gt;I advocate somewhat strongly for paid 3rd-party VPNs, not because I think they&amp;#x27;re great, but because I think they are sometimes the least-bad option -- 3rd party VPNs address privacy problems that self-hosted VPNs can&amp;#x27;t, and unlike Tor, VPNs actually scale well for regular Internet browsing.&lt;p&gt;I do however fully acknowledge that shifting trust can be dangerous, so I recommend people be willing to quickly jump ship between VPNs, and possibly use different VPNs for different services. You should be a little nervous around your VPN provider, and you should hold them to really high standards.&lt;p&gt;In PIA&amp;#x27;s case, I notice looking at their pricing page that they offer 1-2 year plans in addition to monthly plans. Not everyone has the money to ignore deals, but if you do have the money, paying an extra $35-40 a year so just so you can easily switch VPNs on a whim is probably worth it. In general, for services that can pivot in quality quickly (like a VPN) it is usually worth paying monthly rather than yearly (again, assuming you have the extra money to do so).</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>PIA: Our Merger with Kape Technologies – Addressing Your Concerns</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/dz2w53/our_merger_with_kape_technologies_addressing_your/</url></story>