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* I speculate that it doesn't help if one of the main historical uses of consumer VPNs has been for activity that would be considered copyright-violating in the US (e.g., unauthorized trading of video files, or circumventing region restrictions).
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Even some endorsements by organizations might essentially be more about revenue than about merits. * There seem to have long been referral kickbacks by some consumer VPN services, which I assume is the cause of some of the huge amounts of noise on the Web and such about them (e.g., search hits on some non-VPN topics, such as some home theatre search terms, overwhelmed by SEO articles, the purpose of which is to then herd the reader towards particular VPN services with a kickback). (In addition to the business possibly being attractive to people just wanting to provide a useful and honest service for a fair price.) And you can imagine the business is attractive to people intending to do sketchy things, since it's a powerful/lucrative position to be in right now. * Some consumer VPN services have been found to be doing sketchy things. Some reasons you might get some negative vibes from looking into consumer VPN services:
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