That last line is extremely oversimplified. If you find a VPN provider you trust more than your ISP, there are several benefits to routing that information through a VPN. Just because they could see the exact same thing does not mean they are redundant.
Comment on What ISP see when I use custom DNS?
I_like_cats@lemmy.one 11 months ago
It doesn’t matter if you use the DNS of your ISP or not they can always see what websites you visit. What they cannot see is website contents if the website is using https, which most modern websites are.
That means your ISP can see that you went to youtube.com but they can’t tell which video you watched or what else you did on the website.
The only thing they could do is analyze the traffic and see that there are many requests in a short time and assume you are probably watching a video.
amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
opt9@feddit.ch 11 months ago
Also there’s no reason for using a VPN as the VPN provider will see the exact same thing as your ISP.
This is not true for Tor Browser.
And for regular VPN’s that depends on how hostile your ISP or government is. It may be much better to let some company in a far away country who don’t care about what you’re doing to see your stuff.
HeckGazer@lemmynsfw.com 11 months ago
That statement feels intentionally misleading. The ISPs and VPNs product alignments/value propositions are very different, as well as the jurisdictions they operate under. For example here in Australia we have extremely fucked privacy laws, ISPs have to store your history for a minimum of 7 years and must comply with any warrentless government data request within a day if they want to so much as exist. The service they provide is internet, zero privacy. A VPN based in Sweden with none of my personal info being paid specifically to protect my privacy is providing a different service.
merde@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
not to forget that in some territories you have to use a VPN even to access Wikipedia 🤷