TRUST BUT VERIFY
Consumer journalism faces this problem all the time. Only the vendor
knows what its processes really are unless information leaks, law
enforcement gets involved, or intelligent and trustworthy third parties
verify. My solution has been to ask VPN companies directly about their
practices and policies. Sure, they can lie to me—but if they have to lie,
they can be caught lying. What we need now is a means to catch them.7KLVLVDQRSSRUWXQLW\IRU931FRPSDQLHVWR¿[WKHLURZQLQGXVWU\,I
the major players came together, agreed to a set of technical and ethical
principles, and provided methodologies to verify those principles,
almost all of these problems would go away. I think the industry is
inching closer to this future, as more and more companies employ third-
party testers to audit their products and publicly release the results.IT’S TIME TO CLEAN UP THE INDUSTRY
I fear that the confusion and vitriol surrounding VPNs will make the
market unsustainable. All companies, but especially security companies,
need customers to believe that they are good actors. Their reputations
are their business. When customers no longer trust a product, they don’t
use it, and when they don’t trust an industry, they abandon it.Consider antivirus companies again. Abusive practices and sloppy
engineering in the 90s led to public suspicion of the entire category—
and rightly so. When the public needed protection, the industry failed to
meet those expectations and paid a price. Some people still buy into the
³DQWLYLUXVFRPSDQLHVDFWXDOO\PDNHWKHYLUXVHV ́FRQVSLUDF\WKHRU\Similarly, when VPN companies directly or indirectly fund bogus review
sites, generate misinformation, and rely on opacity to sell their products,
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VPNs becomes more toxic, customers will get frustrated and give up.
And that’s a shame, because today, everyone needs a VPN. Rather than
race to the bottom, the industry needs to wise up before it’s too late.[email protected]M
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PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION (^) I SUBSCRIBE (^) I JUNE 2019