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Does a VPN used on a smartphone with Wi-Fi disabled (mobile data only enabled) provide any sort of protection? (beehaw.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've never completely understood this, but I think the answer would probably be "no," although I'm not sure. Usually when I leave the house I turn off wifi and just use mobile data (this is a habit from my pre-VPN days), although I guess I should probably just keep it on since using strange Wi-Fi with a VPN is ok (unless someone at Starbucks is using the evil twin router trick . . . ?). I was generally under the impression that mobile data is harder to interfere with than Wi-Fi, but I could well be wrong and my notions out of date. So, if need be, please set me straight. 🙂

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

That’s true, thank you.

Some other possible unencrypted services people use today… email over non-SSL (which still does exist). Bittorrent. Non-SSL NNTP, which is also still supported. And DNS.

Of course much of that has options of securing, but the point is that a VPN shifts the trust of them not being secure over to an entity that may be more trustworthy.

And sometimes that becomes the path of least resistance for people.

I use a VPN for access to my house (inbound), but also to prevent my ISP from ever snooping on anything for certain services (inbound and outbound) — content, headers, metadata of any kind. I trust Mullvad right now much more than I trust my ISP.

Not everyone’s use case is the same. But that doesn’t mean it is somehow invalid as some posts here have alluded to. Though, I do agree with some posts here that the commercialization of VPNs is playing on people’s possibly-unfounded fear (NordVPN and the like, putting ads seemingly everywhere acting like everyone is watching).