My VPN is on about 95% of the time, except when I need to pay a local utility bill (or check my bank account) where they need to know my location.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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If you're paying them, why do they need to know your location to accept it? We're in a capitalist system. Money is money.
Never, I'm in EU and I don't travel that much, pirating since 2000s
Always on although my Phone VPN recently has failed to start up automatically or has shut down randomly lately and I got to get that fixed.
My reasons are just privacy. I'm not using it to get around regional restrictions. Additionally, it helps when I want to use a public Wi-Fi, especially if it doesn't have any passports on it.
I will not connect to public wifi without VPN.
I would use VPN, but it makes my Bitcoin Node stop receiving incoming connections.
General activity goes out the VPN always. My self hosted setup, lab stuff, and work stuff gets different connections out (logically, not physically).
I leave mine on almost all the time. If a website takes a little longer to load "Oh no" its a half second instead of milliseconds. it really doesn't change my life much.
I never have. Don't know how to do it (I know it's not hard). The only use I occasionally have is blocked media, but I just don't watch whatever it is. It's not that important to me.
What's important to me is blocking ads, which I do as much as possible. The way I see it, the main point of them tracking me is to serve me ads, so I break the chain at the ads.
If I want privacy, I use Tor. Everything else seems like spitting into the wind.
I also think, ad/trackerblocker, Portmaster and common sense in what you public on the web is mostly enough (How much claims of the lack of privacy I saw in Facebook through the years...)
24/7 on any device except my home PC.
mostly against geoblocking when I want to watch public TV channels from while I'm not in the "right" country, e.g. when I want to watch PBS outside of the US, Arte outside of Europe (even though I dont think they block anymore), FranceTV outside of France, Ray out of Italy, etc.
Sometimes also for blocked content, e.g. PirateBay in France or AnnaArchive in Belgium but typically for these public proxies are enough.
Ah I also use self-hosted VPN for my own self-hosted services when I'm on the move but it is typically very small traffic.
FWIW I'm not using a large commercial ISP, so trusting my ISP is a big part of my behavior.
if you include my intranet vpn daily, if you include external vpns generally only if I'm going to a hotel or a location I expect would be insecure.
At home never, only sometimes a proxy (CyberGhost extension, Chrome, Firefox) in case of country restrictions. In my phone no need, I don't use public WiFi, it's enough with InVizible Pro. Apart the Portmaster app on desktop (Windows, Linux)
CyberGhost extension
Suggest digging into CyberGhost and their history and association with Kape Technologies.
https://windscribe.com/blog/what-is-kape-technologies/
Kape's Sketchy Beginnings
Let’s just take a brief moment to look at the origins of Kape. It wasn't always known by this name, the original company was called Crossrider.
Crossrider dealt in Malware (they called it “ad injection”), and their specialty was building a platform that allowed mobile app developers to easily inject ads into their software or web application. They were so good at it, they caught the attention of Google’s security research team who were incredibly alarmed by what they had found: an entire ecosystem of thousands of companies, broken down into various segments (Software, Distribution, Injection, and Ads).
Crossrider’s main purpose was to function as a distributor, and they were incredibly effective at this. They used their network to drive as many installs as possible, all while collecting a commission for each install of the ad injection software. For those curious about this ecosystem, an archived version of Google’s Security Blog can be found here.
Rebranding as Kape Technologies
Due to the increasing negative attention their antics were causing, the company underwent a massive rebranding and emerged as Kape Technologies.
Nowadays, Kape Technologies is a conglomerate of multiple “privacy-first” software companies, including Express VPN. Express is not their only play in the VPN space though: they’ve also acquired a few larger-scale VPN operations over the past few years. Their first VPN acquisition was Cyberghost for €9.1M back in 2017, followed by Private Internet Access for $127M and Zenmate for €4.8M in 2018. Then came the Express VPN whale in 2021 for $936M, giving Kape a massive foothold in the VPN marketplace.
If Kape VPNs are known for anything, it’s being kinda sketchy. Since we’ve already covered Express in a previous article, the focus will be on the other three lesser-known VPNs that are part of the Kape Corporate Umbrella
Kape Acquires Cyberghost
Cyberghost was the first VPN that Kape acquired, back when they were still called Crossrider. Cyberghost was founded in 2011 by German entrepreneur Robert Knapp, who moved to Bucharest with $100,000 in seed capital ready to exploit the cheaper labor market in Romania. Robert’s own bio on the Cyberghost website claims that he’s passionate about building a privacy-preserving product, yet he had no problem cashing out for almost $10 Million to a company run by ex-Israeli spies and insider-trading billionaires. The irony is apparently lost in translation I suppose.
There’s also an issue with vulnerabilities. In 2023, professional pen testers exposed a vulnerability in the Cyberghost VPN client that could lead to system compromise, yet they had an incredibly difficult time getting any sort of response from the Kape security team (who quickly and quietly patched the issue).
Nice history, but the extension works as it should and its not a VPN (none of browser "VPN" extensions really is), but a proxy for which I use it sometimes for mentioned reasons. CyberGhost currently has alway an excellent review in IT publications and independent benchmarks, it don't log and also don't has any bandwith limits in the proxy only limits in the amount of servers, which is free to use (incomes through premium accounts in its VPN service). Nothing fishy in it. Windscribe is also good, but the free versin has a data limit, not so good for streaming services.
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Pretty much always. If someone blocks my VPN, I just don't go there or don't use that. Sucks but it is what it is. I'm just not willing to enter your site bareback.
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Mine is on pretty much all the time. Capchas are indeed annoying, but I'm choosing to see that as something which helps me to be more intentional about my use of the internet.
My bank and government portal don't seem to care about it, even if my traffic is coming from a random country on the other side of the world because I've forgotten to route through one of my VPN's domestic servers. Online freelancing platforms, on the other hand, have instantly banned my accounts, and I've had problems with corporate social media (which I try and use for my business).
Whats this with vpns using capatchas?
My client device having the right encryption key is the authenticator for me.
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always on
I have a VPN configured at the router. I use a PI-hole with a lot of restrictions and lists to run my own DNS and downstream DNS is Adgaurd. Several machines I let bypass the VPN umbrella and they have local clients they can switch on at will. I'd like to make a Linux firewall too but not with prices where they are now. These days you have to distrust everything.
100% of the time I'm behind a vpn.
always except for banking, government stuff, job searching. that's when it looks more sus.
I am more inclined to use a VPN if I want government ibfornation. And that is really disappointing.
Fortunately I rarely have to interact with a government website for anything.
absolutely at all time. I can't say that I see many captchas. I think the last one was for some site I used a couple weeks back that used google recaptcha. it's pretty rare for me to see one.