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Speaker 1: Earlier this week, we talked about how easy it is

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Speaker 1: for advertisers and others to see exactly what you're doing

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Speaker 1: online and how hard it is to stop it, which

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Speaker 1: made us wonder what can normal people do to protect

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Speaker 1: their personal information without having to go to all kinds

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Speaker 1: of crazy lengths. One way that's becoming increasingly popular is

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Speaker 1: using a VPN, or virtual Private network. A growing number

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Speaker 1: of providers are offering VPNs as an easy way for

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Speaker 1: individuals to keep our data from prying eyes, and people

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Speaker 1: are using them for all kinds of reasons.

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Speaker 2: I travel internationally for work sometimes, so whenever I'm out

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Speaker 2: of the country, I'll use a VPN if I'm needing

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Speaker 2: to watch a TV show or something that I can't

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Speaker 2: get access to through that version of the website in

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Speaker 2: the particular country i'm in, And sometimes I use it

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Speaker 2: at home. If there's a show like before Great British

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Speaker 2: Bake Off was on Netflix, I would use a VPN

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Speaker 2: to be able to watch it when it was happening

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Speaker 2: live instead of having to wait for it to be

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Speaker 2: released over here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I use VPN for work because we want to

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Speaker 3: protect some of our more sensitive information, so we have

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Speaker 3: to access the VPN before we can get into that

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Speaker 3: part of our jobs.

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Speaker 1: People who live in countries with repressive governments like Russia

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Speaker 1: have also used VPNs to get around sensors that block

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Speaker 1: access to social media and news sites.

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Speaker 4: Basically, anytime there's a big geopolitical crisis, you're seeing massive

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Speaker 4: spikes and VPN usage.

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Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg reporter Austin Carr. He went to find out

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Speaker 1: if VPNs can actually deliver on their privacy they promise.

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Speaker 1: I'm West Kesova. That's today on the big take. Austin,

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Speaker 1: maybe start by telling us what is a VPN. What's

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Speaker 1: it used for.

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Speaker 4: Essentially, what it's used for is to encrypt your web

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Speaker 4: traffic by funneling your Internet browsing through remote servers around

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Speaker 4: the world. It basically sends them out any website you

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Speaker 4: go to, anysing and surfing you do. It sends that

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Speaker 4: traffic out to servers in places like France, Brazil, Japan,

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Speaker 4: encrypts them to hide your location and also the content

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Speaker 4: of what you're actually browsing.

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Speaker 1: So the usual way it'd be is you look up

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Speaker 1: a website and your identity is revealed to that website.

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Speaker 1: But if you use a VPN, it bounces it all

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Speaker 1: over the world, so nobody can tell where you really

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Speaker 1: are and where that traffic came from.

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Speaker 5: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 4: I mean, if you're using the Internet right now at

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Speaker 4: home or on your cellular provider that's known as an

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Speaker 4: ISP and Internet service provider, and essentially what's happening is

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Speaker 4: every single thing that you do is basically logged with

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Speaker 4: the ISP, your location, the type of surfing that you're doing.

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Speaker 4: They keep a sort of log of all that material

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Speaker 4: that you're surfing the Internet with. Now, of course, in

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Speaker 4: the US that's not such a big deal, but abroad,

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Speaker 4: in places where there's authoritarian governments or just different censorship rules,

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Speaker 4: there's of course a lot of interest in VPNs because

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Speaker 4: it allows you to circumvent those rules, hide your location,

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Speaker 4: hide what you're browsing, and unlock things that might be

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Speaker 4: cut off because of firewalls, like the Great Chinese Firewall

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Speaker 4: is a great example of things where certain social media websites,

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Speaker 4: news websites are cut off, but with the help of

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Speaker 4: a VPN, you can sort of work around those restrictions

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Speaker 4: and gain access to a lot of content that you

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Speaker 4: otherwise would not be able to. Now, of course there's

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Speaker 4: a lot of lowbrow reasons for using a VPN as well.

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Speaker 4: If you like to stream content, sometimes there's reasons that

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Speaker 4: will be blocked for you know, IP reasons, or because

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Speaker 4: your subscription is not relevant in a certain state or

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Speaker 4: certain country.

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Speaker 5: If you're traveling, you can't use Netflix.

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Speaker 4: So a lot of people use VPNs actually to stream

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Speaker 4: content just circumvent rules with content providers as well.

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Speaker 1: So let's say you're overseas and you want to watch

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Speaker 1: Netflix and says sorry, Netflix isn't available in this country.

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Speaker 1: It can fool Netflix into thinking you're sitting at home.

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Speaker 5: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 4: So when you're traveling abroad and you have a Netflix

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Speaker 4: subscription to the US, or if you're a subscriber in England,

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Speaker 4: you have access to differ content. They have their all

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Speaker 4: their original content which is globally accessible, but there's a

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Speaker 4: lot of content that's only geographically licensed to particular countries

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Speaker 4: or regions. So if you want to gain access to

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Speaker 4: that content, you'd have to use a VPN. And Netflix

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Speaker 4: has actually done a lot of work to detect those

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Speaker 4: IP addresses that they give you. It's sort of like

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Speaker 4: this game of IP address whack a mole. As soon

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Speaker 4: as they sense that you're using a VPN, they might

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Speaker 4: block it and you just have to keep changing servers.

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Speaker 4: In the US, Let's say I'm in London and i

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Speaker 4: want to access some content and I'm not recommending anyone

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Speaker 4: does this. This might be violating some terms and conditions.

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Speaker 1: So this sounds pretty complicated. Is it hard to use?

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Speaker 5: Like?

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Speaker 1: What do you sit down your computer? You have a VPN?

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Speaker 1: What is it?

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Speaker 3: Like?

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Speaker 1: How do you actually use it?

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Speaker 4: It does sound complicated, and I think historically that has

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Speaker 4: been the roadblock a lot of these apps. To sort

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Speaker 4: of install them, it took a lot of setup, a

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Speaker 4: lot of sophistication, But nowadays they're super easy.

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Speaker 5: There's a bunch of providers.

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Speaker 4: If you just google vpn, you'll come up with all

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Speaker 4: sorts of names, from ExpressVPN to NordVPN, which are two

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Speaker 4: of the biggest brands, and it's just an app.

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Speaker 5: You download it. Some are free summer subscription base.

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Speaker 4: You just give it access to either your laptop or

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Speaker 4: your cell phone and then you're essentially hooked up to

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Speaker 4: a VPN and you can choose the server you want.

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Speaker 4: Nord VPN, which is one of the big brands out there,

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Speaker 4: it's a Lithuanian based company. They have about fifty five

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Speaker 4: hundred servers around the world. You just open up the

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Speaker 4: app and you can select any country you want to

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Speaker 4: browse from. You can even go down to the city,

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Speaker 4: so if you're in the US, you can select LA,

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Speaker 4: you can select Denver, Miami, Boston, New York, things like that.

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Speaker 4: And once you just tap into that, they promise that

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Speaker 4: it's a good safeguard against your traffic. It can predict

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Speaker 4: your location and sort of yeah, fool your browser into

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Speaker 4: thinking that you're in a different location, and that it

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Speaker 4: can encrypt your traffic.

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Speaker 5: At the same time, Austin.

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Speaker 1: You report that another reason people have been using VPNs

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Speaker 1: is in communicating after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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Speaker 5: That's correct.

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Speaker 4: I mean, basically, anytime there's a big geopolitical crisis, you're

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Speaker 4: seeing massive spikes and VPN usage. In the weeks and

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Speaker 4: months after or Russia's invasion in Ukraine, there was data

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Speaker 4: that showed VPN interests spiking on search engines by over

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Speaker 4: one thousand percent. And that is the case for every time.

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Speaker 4: You know, when we saw sort of the crackdowns happening

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Speaker 4: in Iran, there was big spikes in VPN usage. When

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Speaker 4: there was social unrest in Turkey following an earthquake and

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Speaker 4: they blocked access to Twitter, you saw a VPN usage

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Speaker 4: spike in those areas as well. But the Russia one

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Speaker 4: is a really interesting use case because you can sort

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Speaker 4: of understand why it would be used for a healthy purpose,

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Speaker 4: which is if the government is blocking access to certain

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Speaker 4: news websites, you know, obviously there would be a lot

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Speaker 4: of interest not just among social activists but just your

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Speaker 4: average Russian resident who might want to find out what

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Speaker 4: the real story is, and you can use a VPN.

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Speaker 5: It's become more difficult.

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Speaker 4: They've blocked a lot of VPNs, you know, NordVPN, one

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Speaker 4: of the big brands there, has had to remove all

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Speaker 4: their local servers from Russia and they've increasingly made it

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Speaker 4: difficult to use a VPN there. But that's one of

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Speaker 4: the major upsides of VPN sort of the high mind

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Speaker 4: admission of these apps can be to circumvent that go

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Speaker 4: from in censorship and help people access news, organize for protests,

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Speaker 4: and just generally access the web a little bit safer

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Speaker 4: than they could if they were going through their regular ISP.

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Speaker 1: How good our VPNs is actually doing that they promise

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Speaker 1: you anonymity, but can they deliver any.

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Speaker 4: I think they're really good at marketing cybersecurity and privacy,

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Speaker 4: perhaps more than they are at delivering it. I spoke

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Speaker 4: to a lot of researchers for the story, and the

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Speaker 4: one thing that pretty much all of them said was

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Speaker 4: that you can't really put all your faith in these

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Speaker 4: VPN providers.

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Speaker 5: And there's a couple of reasons why.

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Speaker 4: You know, if you're an Edward Snowdent type and you

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Speaker 4: want to use a VPN and you have someone, you know,

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Speaker 4: the NSA on the other side, or some government agency. Basically,

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Speaker 4: VPN providers have told me that, look, we can't stop

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Speaker 4: from that stuff. We can only do so much. Maybe

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Speaker 4: we can unlock Twitter, but we're not going to be

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Speaker 4: able to necessarily protect you against you know, a government

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Speaker 4: agency with those sort of resources to find you. The

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Speaker 4: other big issue is that a lot of these VPN providers,

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Speaker 4: they're sort of asking you to put all their trust

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Speaker 4: in them that says, hey, we will not log any

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Speaker 4: of your web activity, but there's not really any assurances.

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Speaker 4: They have audits that happen on some of these servers,

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Speaker 4: but that are done by auditing firms such as Price

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Speaker 4: Waterhouse Coopers, but there's not really a way you can

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Speaker 4: go in to see their code to make sure there's

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Speaker 4: no logs. There's not really a way you can go

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Speaker 4: see their server room to make sure that there's no

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Speaker 4: logs being taken off your web traffic. There's been instances

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Speaker 4: historically where you know, a VPN provider will say we're

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Speaker 4: not logging any traffic, and then suddenly they get subpoenaed

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Speaker 4: by a government and they're able to provide those logs.

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Speaker 4: So there's been controversies like that over the years. Several

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Speaker 4: University of Michigan researchers who I spoke with had also

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Speaker 4: just said that there's ways to detect your activity even

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Speaker 4: when you have a VPN on. So there's something called

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Speaker 4: device fingerprinting where they can sort of triangulate your data

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Speaker 4: based on specific computer you're using, or the browser size,

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Speaker 4: or the time that you're accessing sort of content. And

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Speaker 4: there's also ways that if there's a bad actor sophisticated

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Speaker 4: enough to access this ont they can sort of throttle

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Speaker 4: your internet and see if any leaks happen from a

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Speaker 4: VPN tunnel. That might sound really complicated, but what essentially

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Speaker 4: means is there's no one hundred percent guarantee of safety.

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Speaker 4: There's no one hundred percent guarantee of anonymity with these VPNs.

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Speaker 4: In fact, most the researchers I spoke to would not

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Speaker 4: use any commercial VPN. They developed their own. So unless

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Speaker 4: you're able to do that you're a sophisticated engineer or hacker.

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Speaker 4: They all warned against you thinking that, hey, these things

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Speaker 4: are going to provide you some sort of military grade protection.

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Speaker 1: After the break, what do VPNs know about what you're

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Speaker 1: doing online?

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Speaker 2: I definitely feel secure about the connection, but I'm also

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Speaker 2: not like worried. I'm not doing anything that I'm worried

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Speaker 2: about people seeing or reporting. So I guess I've never

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Speaker 2: really thought about, like, what would happen if it wasn't secure,

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Speaker 2: But I feel secure through the one that I use.

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Speaker 3: I feel like ours is pretty secure in private. I've

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Speaker 3: looked up the tool that we use, and I've talked

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Speaker 3: to some of the IT folks, and they've given me

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Speaker 3: a lot of confidence that RVPN is secure.

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Speaker 1: One of the big companies in this space is called

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Speaker 1: Nord Security, and you wrote a whole piece about that.

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Speaker 1: When to go visit them, tell US about Nord Security.

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Speaker 4: Nord Security is a fascinating company that's based in Vilnius,

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Speaker 4: this sort of old world capital of Lithuania. They started

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Speaker 4: a little over a decade ago and actually bootstrap their

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Speaker 4: entire business until raising one hundred million dollars last April

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Speaker 4: at a one point six billion dollar valuation. But they've

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Speaker 4: really ridden this wave of sort of marketing cybersecurity to

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Speaker 4: the public at a time when there's a lot of

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Speaker 4: questions about who is tracking your Internet browsing, whether you're

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Speaker 4: safe online, whether social networks and search engines are mining

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Speaker 4: your activity. And they developed these tools called NordVPN, which

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Speaker 4: is one of the sort of I think, more user

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Speaker 4: friendly apps out there.

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Speaker 5: It's super cheap. I think the.

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Speaker 4: Going rate is like three dollars a month to protect

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Speaker 4: your web traffic. And when I met with the founder,

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Speaker 4: Tom Aukman, he had just returned from Davos. He was

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Speaker 4: going to Web Summit, which is this big tech conference

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Speaker 4: in Lisbon, and you really got the sense this company

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Speaker 4: is finally going mainstream, and I think that's because there's

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Speaker 4: so many questions about what's happening to our internet activity online.

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Speaker 4: They're developing this whole suite not just a VPN products,

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Speaker 4: but to cybersecurity products, dark web monitors, malware threat scanners,

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Speaker 4: things like that, to sort of try to make this

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Speaker 4: sort of encrypted subscription portfolio similar to what you might

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Speaker 4: think about McAfee security or Norton back in the day.

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Speaker 4: The big question is whether some of the promises that

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Speaker 4: they've made about cybersecurity and privacy are real and legitimate

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Speaker 4: or is it just a lot of marketing to sort

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Speaker 4: of drive up their subscription rates.

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Speaker 1: And when you talk to them, what do they say

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Speaker 1: The reason you should use a VPN is like, what

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Speaker 1: are they selling it for? I don't think it so

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Speaker 1: you can circumvent the terms and conditions of Netflix. They

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Speaker 1: probably don't advertise.

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Speaker 5: That they do not. In fact, they were very hesitant.

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Speaker 4: It was fascinating because when I'd gone there, I thought

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Speaker 4: this was just sort of just the most obvious use case.

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Speaker 4: But they were very, very specific and saying, that's not

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Speaker 4: what we're using it for. You know, Netflix has never

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Speaker 4: bothered us. They don't write us takedown notices, they don't complain.

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Speaker 4: I talked to former employees, one of whom said that,

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Speaker 4: you know a few years ago when they would have

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Speaker 4: marketing meetings, and whenever they saw huge spikes in cancelations,

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Speaker 4: the first question they'd ask in meetings was is Netflix

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Speaker 4: working right now or have they blocked our VPN and servers.

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Speaker 4: But really what they're focusing on is cybersecurity. They're pitching

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Speaker 4: this thing as this sort of all encompassing way to

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Speaker 4: keep your web traffic safe, to protect you online, and

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Speaker 4: you know, so far that seems to be resonating. They argue,

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Speaker 4: you know what, if you're on let's say a public

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Speaker 4: Wi Fi network, if you're at a Starbucks using Wi Fi, Oh,

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Speaker 4: there's hackers out there, there's cyber criminals that might be

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Speaker 4: able to steal your banking information. You are more secure

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Speaker 4: to have a VPN. On another use case, they would argue,

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Speaker 4: is just hiding your web traffic from your ISP. There's

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Speaker 4: so many governments even in the US right now. You

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Speaker 4: look at laws in Utah and Louisiana about how they

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Speaker 4: are looking for a verification or for you to register

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Speaker 4: with a web content in your surfing. But you know,

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Speaker 4: one of the major things that they say is also

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Speaker 4: that look, we, in all honesty, do not know what

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Speaker 4: our users are using a VPN for. They have a

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Speaker 4: no logs policy. They're very serious about it, and in fact,

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Speaker 4: they walked me through their hardware at their servers where

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Speaker 4: they removed every single local storage drive in their fifty

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Speaker 4: five hundred plus servers, which essentially means there's no way

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Speaker 4: to physically store this data on a server. It's all

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Speaker 4: run through what's called random access memory, which is essentially

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Speaker 4: your short term memory of your computer. And they just

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Speaker 4: say it's rebooted every you know, I don't know how

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Speaker 4: fro many hours or days if you went to one

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Speaker 4: of these server rooms anyway, there's nothing you could pull

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Speaker 4: off of it.

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Speaker 5: They've never had a data breach.

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Speaker 1: Nor At VPN is just one of a lot of companies,

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Speaker 1: but there's a whole ton of them out there. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of hard to tell which ones are good, which

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Speaker 1: ones are really secure, and which ones are not.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really one of the more questionable parts of

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Speaker 4: the market. If you google best VPN, you're gonna come

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Speaker 4: up with a list of dozens and dozens and dozens

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Speaker 4: of websites out there, and they could range from sort

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Speaker 4: of NordVPN or Express VPN, which are some of the

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Speaker 4: more known companies out there. You also have other ones

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Speaker 4: that are respected, such as Mulvad or Proton or tunnel Bear.

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Speaker 4: These are sort of big names in the industry. But

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Speaker 4: you also have a ton that are just free, these

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Speaker 4: sort of free apps out there that you're not quite sure.

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Speaker 4: Wait a minute, how am I gaining access to this?

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Speaker 4: What are they using my data for? Is this safe?

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Speaker 4: And at least when I've talked to researchers, that's the

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Speaker 4: one thing they say. You know, look, if you are

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Speaker 4: accessing these VPN providers that are free with sort of

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Speaker 4: sketchy sounding names, that are promising all types of privacy protections,

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Speaker 4: but you're not paying for it, Chances are they're mining

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Speaker 4: your web traffic for other reasons, or perhaps their servers

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Speaker 4: are not as safe as they let on. They might

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Speaker 4: be collecting logs, they might be selling your web traffic

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Speaker 4: to marketers. I mean, historically there's been some fun examples,

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Speaker 4: I mean quite scary to be honest. Facebook a few

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Speaker 4: years ago they were running a free VPN. It was

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Speaker 4: called a Navo, a Navo protect, and this was back

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Speaker 4: in twenty seventeen twenty eighteen, and they were marketing it

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Speaker 4: to the public as sort of this you know VPN

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Speaker 4: that's going to protect you online, and it turns out

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Speaker 4: that they were actually using that web traffic internally to

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Speaker 4: see what their users were logging into. Were they using,

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Speaker 4: you know, a different social media website, were they using

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Speaker 4: Snapchat more, were they using WhatsApp more? And they were

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Speaker 4: sort of using these basically to monitor your web traffic

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Speaker 4: for marketing purposes. And this violates the very core of

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Speaker 4: what a VPN is supposed to do, which is protect

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Speaker 4: your your web browsing and protect your anonymity. And Facebook

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Speaker 4: ended up shutting that service down eighteen months after it

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Speaker 4: was discovered, in about twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 1: So what did Facebook say about that when it came

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Speaker 1: to light.

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Speaker 4: Facebook said that it was very clear about what information

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Speaker 4: it was collecting and what it was using it for.

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Speaker 4: And I'm sure somewhere in the terms and conditions there

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Speaker 4: probably was something about, you know, this data could be

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Speaker 4: used for X, Y or z when it comes to

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Speaker 4: marketing purposes or internal research. But I think for the

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Speaker 4: average consumer, the senses any VPN is supposed to protect

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Speaker 4: you from that very use case of a company mining

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Speaker 4: your traffic and sort of stooping on what you're doing online.

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Speaker 4: And I think that is one of the things that

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Speaker 4: every researcher I talk to you just warned against is

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Speaker 4: you never know. You are putting your a ton of

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Speaker 4: faith in these VPN providers, and there's really just no

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Speaker 4: way to know what they're doing with your data other

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Speaker 4: than to trust them. And I think that's a lot

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Speaker 4: of trust to put in these networks, especially when even

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Speaker 4: for paying apps, you're paying like three to four dollars

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Speaker 4: a month for these subscriptions.

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Speaker 1: When we come back, some countries start to crack down

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Speaker 1: on citizens using VPNs to bypass sensors. Us in the

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Speaker 1: rise in VPN use, especially in countries where they block

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Speaker 1: certain portions of the Internet, have not gone unnoticed. In

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Speaker 1: some of these countries are now going after the VPNs

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Speaker 1: for allowing people to see sites they don't to see.

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Speaker 4: It really raises the question about whether the use case

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Speaker 4: of circumventing governments is sort of a longer term or

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Speaker 4: shorter term fixed to protecting your web traffic from peering eyes.

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Speaker 4: In twenty nineteen, Russia made a big to do with

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Speaker 4: a lot of the VPN providers about you know, we

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Speaker 4: want your encryption keys. We want to be able to

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Speaker 4: access some of this server data that you're sort of

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Speaker 4: using it for with these VPNs, and the VPN providers

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Speaker 4: said to Russia essentially, at least the big ones, that

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Speaker 4: we don't collect logs, we can't give you that data,

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Speaker 4: and that sort of forced them to pull out of Russia.

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Speaker 4: They actually, in the case of Nord VPN, they ended

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Speaker 4: up shredding, just ripping apart all their VPN servers in Russia. Now,

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Speaker 4: local residents from about twenty nineteen to twenty twenty could

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Speaker 4: still access a VPN through non Russian servers, meaning they

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Speaker 4: might connect to a server in the US or Brazil

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Speaker 4: or Japan or something. But a few years later, you know,

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Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, not long before the Ukraine invasion,

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Speaker 4: Russia essentially banned all VPN usage outright, made it illegal.

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Speaker 4: And we're seeing a similar pattern playout in India. India

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Speaker 4: essentially said the same thing, we want to have access

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Speaker 4: to some of this encrypted data. Nord VPN said no.

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Speaker 4: Other providers said no, and then they shut down all

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Speaker 4: their servers in India. And so I don't know, I mean,

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Speaker 4: it makes it difficult to know how long you know,

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Speaker 4: these VPNs will sort of be relevant. With that said,

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Speaker 4: there are still ways to access VPNs in these countries.

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Speaker 4: But it gets a really a little bit more complicated,

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Speaker 4: and it also puts a lot of the pressure on

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Speaker 4: these VPN providers to make sure they're safe. You know,

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Speaker 4: if you can access let's say a VPN that is

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Speaker 4: smuggled into a country on a thumb drive or something

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Speaker 4: like that, they have tools that are called such as

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Speaker 4: a kill switch, meaning that let's say you're rated and

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Speaker 4: you have a computer, you can access this kill switch

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Speaker 4: to eliminate any sort of visibility that you were using

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Speaker 4: of VPN. There's a lot more high pressure stakes when

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Speaker 4: you're sort of protecting journalists or activists dissidents with VPNs

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Speaker 4: than you are, say, providing someone in the US with

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Speaker 4: access to ESPN plus in an area that.

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Speaker 5: They can't watch the Super Bowl.

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Speaker 4: So I think longer term that's what we're going to

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Speaker 4: see is just whether or not a lot of these

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Speaker 4: VPN servers are sort of ripped out of countries that

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Speaker 4: they don't want them. You know, in China, it's been

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Speaker 4: difficult to access VPNs that you can't even go to

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Speaker 4: NordVPN dot com and China, So that's going to be

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Speaker 4: a big question longer term, is are these you know,

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Speaker 4: VPN servers when it comes to protecting against governments, can

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Speaker 4: they really do that or is there sort of a

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Speaker 4: short life cycle for that if the government just doesn't

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Speaker 4: want them to operating there?

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Speaker 1: So Austin, given all this, should people use VPNs? Do

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Speaker 1: you use a VPN?

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Speaker 5: You know?

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Speaker 4: I think going into this I did use a VPN

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Speaker 4: a lot more beforehand, before I sort of was learning

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Speaker 4: more about talking to academic researchers, talking to the VPN

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Speaker 4: providers themselves of what they do protect against. And I

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Speaker 4: think there are very healthy use cases for VPNs. You know,

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Speaker 4: I understand the use case of wanting to encrypt your

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Speaker 4: traffic against an ISP or a content provider, or just

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Speaker 4: that you don't want someone to know your location. But

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Speaker 4: I think also in the last ten years or so,

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Speaker 4: we've seen the Internet go from really much more of

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Speaker 4: a wild wild West area. A lot of your Internet

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Speaker 4: browsing wasn't encrypted. When you did log onto an airport

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Speaker 4: Wi Fi or a coffee shop WiFi, it might not

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Speaker 4: have been encrypted. But nowadays browsers are a lot safer.

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Speaker 4: Banking websites, public Wi Fi networks, they're actually a lot

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Speaker 4: safer and a lot more encrypted. And I think that's

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Speaker 4: one of the things that VPN providers are going to

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Speaker 4: have to figure out. When I've talked to NordVPN or

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Speaker 4: Express VPN, they compared it to like an ADYT, the

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Speaker 4: home security system. You know, just because you have ADT

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Speaker 4: turned on, it provides peace of mind, but that doesn't

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Speaker 4: mean you shouldn't lock your doors and make sure the

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Speaker 4: windows are locked at night. And so I think for

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Speaker 4: a lot of customers, you know, it might just provide

437
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Speaker 4: that level of peace of mind, that extra layer of

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Speaker 4: encryption that you wouldn't have beforehand. If you do log

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Speaker 4: into a you know, a McDonald's or a Starbucks Wi Fi,

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Speaker 4: or you're abroad in a country that might not encrypt

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Speaker 4: your web traffic, it can be a safer thing to

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Speaker 4: add that layer of protection, but it's not necessarily going

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Speaker 4: to be the end all be all.

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Speaker 5: It's not a pantas of security for you.

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Speaker 1: Austin, Thanks for coming on the show, Thank you for

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Speaker 1: having me, Thanks for listening to us here at the

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Speaker 1: Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.

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Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is

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Speaker 1: Vicky Rgalina. Our senior producer and the producer of this

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Speaker 1: episode is Catherine fink Kilde Garcia is our engineer. Our

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Speaker 1: original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Kasova.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take