Ryan Barrett on Nostr: I don’t understand the value of consumer VPNs. Can someone explain it to me? We do ...

I don’t understand the value of consumer VPNs. Can someone explain it to me?


We do pretty much everything over SSL these days. Definitely everything that matters. That provides confidentiality, so network intermediaries can’t see the data, and server authentication, so they can’t impersonate the server.


Yes, DNS is the exception, it’s not encrypted, but more and more browsers and other user agents are building in DoH and DoT, and even enabling it by default.


So, given all that, what do general purpose VPNs add? What am I missing? Are they just security theater marketing? Or do they bundle other security features like anti-malware etc, and the term “VPN” now means a bundle of miscellaneous endpoint security features, like (shudder) anti-virus used to?