Thread · 4 tweets · 12 Aug 2021

This is very rare, but I feel quite ambivalent about this VPN article from @themarkup. Tracking in-VPN behaviour and using marketing tracking on a VPN website are two completely different threats and violations, and bundling them together is confusing. themarkup.org/ask-the-markup…

To its credit, inside the article there's a fair bit of nuance and details. But I still think that these two issues should be treated separately; people are confused enough as it is when it comes to privacy threats.

Tracking in-VPN is deceptive and potentially life-threatening to its users. A company doing that should be sued out of existence and then some. Muddying that with marketing trackers on those sites has strong "and yet you participate in society — curious" vibes IMHO.

Marketing trackers suck but as things are now they're often the primary means of acquiring customers. If we want to have privacy-friendly companies to buy from, they're going to need customers so they can live to fight another day. We shouldn't hold them to impossible standards.