Felix Yu: 15 Year Old Networking Prodigy Advocating for Privacy and Uncovering the Truth behind VPNs.
VPNs (Virtual Private Network) are considered to be top utilities for anonymity with tech giants like NordVPN, Surf Shark, ExpressVPN, and more… being the biggest encrypted-traffic providers unanimously agreeing to the segregation of privacy in comparison with other providers, according to their services they formally announce that they do not log data or leak data on their network in order to conceive their word on the user & data privacy.
Towards the concept of privacy being a god-given and publicized a lot by network providers, Felix Yu, 15 year old Networking Prodigy who advocates for the rights to privacy, acknowledges how VPN providers falsely advertise their notorious rule of not logging any data on their servers with Felix enduring that: “True anonymity and privacy comes from understanding”, claiming that people have to research and understand the concept of a VPN before navigating with one going briefly with an explanation on how VPN providers generically de-anonymize you, making you a target to Hackers & Advertising Agencies.
In a short interview Felix commented that : “It’s important to firstly understand the difference between anonymity and privacy. Anonymity is when your identity is concealed, and privacy is when your actions are concealed. You can be anonymous and not private and vice versa. Given that, the way a VPN works is that you send your Internet Service Provider (ISP) instructions when connecting to a VPN. Essentially you are connecting to another server that the VPN provider hosts, Then wherever you you are navigating the VPN will encrypt the data and send the information to the destination host and lets you access it. The problem relies on that fact that the VPN is a centralized trust-based method of gaining anonymity and privacy.
Many people do not look into anonymity and privacy enough and thus blindly trust VPNs and use them incorrectly. Also people fail to understand that VPNs are not as private and anonymous as they think
For one, VPN providers will know the IP that connects to their servers. You are essentially putting your anonymity and privacy on a “no-log policy” as many VPN providers like to promise.
There are no guarantees they do not log any information and also depending on the country that the VPN is based on they may be required by law to give this information up, compromising not only your anonymity as your IP address will be revealed but your privacy because the VPN always know where you go if you connect to their servers.
Additionally, there have been methods implemented to try and guarantee whether or not VPNs are telling the truth. Warranty canaries have been adopted to try to reveal whether or not the VPN has given logs to secret subpoenas, however, there are still even more issues with VPNs even with a guarantee they do not log, which is near to impossible as nothing is guaranteed and they can change their policies at any moment depending on the situation.
As I’ve mentioned, VPNs can also give away information just such which IP connected to which server and went where without their knowledge. Their server can be hacked and that important information can be revealed. VPNs like to throw around the word “encryption” a lot, but you have to realize this encrypted information has to be decrypted at some point, otherwise none of the data is readable. The VPN can see who connects under which IP and goes where and this is not good security wise and not good for your privacy and anonymity.
Another part that goes unmentioned is the fact that most VPNs have a money trail leading back to you. Unless you use a free VPN which can sell user data in order to generate revenue, most paid VPNs will not only have a username tied to you but also a payment method.”
Felix recommending that Qubes OS is the safest alternative when it concludes with Anonymity as for Tor not being the safest due to vulnerabilities & meta data leaks, while Whonix is isolated and not amnesic it would be a better choice by the nature that in-case a browser exploit were to be used on Whonix, your OS would be secure and no data leak such as IP Leak or any System / Privilege Escalation exploitation would take place.
Felix also stated that: “Qubes runs other virtual machines which can be whonix and these virtual machines have implemented compartmentalization, which means even if a very skilled hacker got access to your Whonix operating system, Qubes will make it impossible to jump from the virtual machine to the dom0. This not only protects against malware potentially infecting whonix but also you can route Qubes OS through tor, and it makes it really easy to open multiple whonix workstations, each dedicated to do just one task for ultimate privacy, security, and anonymity”
Concluding that running Qubes would provide exponential anonymity as well as making system exploitation nearly impossible, Felix has analyzed and structured the concept of Anonymity and continues to the contribution of advocating for online privacy & consulting with individuals on the best solution to anonymize their traffic.
