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At what point will browsing via a VPN become the de-facto way of using the web ?


At a guess, never. In fact, it will likely be the opposite, you'll be accessing the web through a device (mobile phone, tablet, thin client (aka ultrabook)) that you have bought at a steep discount from some provider in exchange for a large chunk of your privacy.

People (as in, the general public and a surprisingly large fraction of those that should know better) simply do not care.


> that you have bought at a steep discount from some provider in exchange for a large chunk of your privacy.

I have some doubt that the consumer observes this discount.

If consumers insisted on privacy-by-default, the point of sale cost would not be very different. It's just the industry standard not to provide this.

If we observe a steep discount now, it's because privacy-by-default has become a specialist interest that manufacturers can therefore charge extra for.


Microsoft just announced a "Windows 8 with Bing" product. No word on price yet but it's generally expected to be much cheaper than normal Win8.


That's because MS wants to segment the market, and sell Windows to people that don't want to pay as much.

If people refuse to buy it due to privacy issues, they'll segment it by some other feature.


Never. People don't care of this level of privacy (except a very small minority). And frankly, thanks to the sophisticated data mining/statistical algorithms just using VPN only makes tracking/profiling harder, not impossible.


They dont care now,but someday they will,trust me.They dont care now because they get all these freebies in exchange of all their data.These freebies aint going to be free forever.


This isn't an issue of privacy, it's an issue of deception. Privacy (or the control of privacy) is being insinuated, but it's only smoke and mirrors. It's a lie.


When traffic shaping of typical protocols like HTTP[s] and a lack of net neutrality causes only unidentifiable VPN sessions to operate at a consistent high speed.


As per the OP what would this solve, exactly? You just would disguise your IP address, but cookies and any other identity revealing details of your browser will stay the same.




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