u/CosmicComi

There is a massive gap between VPN marketing and reality i feel. Many people like mee buy a subscription believing it acts as a total ghost mode but that is not how modern web tracking works. A VPN only encrypts your connection path and masks your IP address. It DOES NOT protect you from browser fingerprinting, tracking cookies, or active account logins on sites like Google and Reddit even. Modern web traffic has HTTPS, which means third parties cannot read your passwords or sensitive data anyway. Using one of these popular VPNs does not eliminate data logging... it simply shifts your trust from your internet service provider to a commercial VPN company, which to me are both untrustworthy!

A paid VPN is useful for bypassing geographic restrictions on streaming sites, accessing blocked content on restricted networks, keeping your real IP address hidden while torrenting, and preventing your internet provider from harvesting your browsing history for advertisers, but none of these are guarantees. If your goal is true digital privacy, you need proper browser hygiene, ad blockers, and fewer persistent account logins, because a VPN is merely a tool for specific tasks rather than a silver bullet for anonymity orr perhaps looking into a VPN which uses real residential IPs and doesn't key logs. I'm still trying to find the best option. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

Sorry if a bit too technical but was hoping some parents have dealt with the same issue. I've got 2 children, 14 & 12. When we travel as a family, they always use their iPads on hotel WiFi.

Is it safe for them to use as is? I’ve seen people recommend VPNs, but I’m not sure what that really covers. From what I understand, VPN can hide your IP, but it doesn’t fully protect devices on shared networks.

So is hotel WiFi generally safe for kids? Is a VPN enough, or are there other things I should be doing?

Would appreciate any advice.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I remember when installing antivirus felt like enough to keep your home computers safe. Now it feels like everything is connected all the time between smart tvs, phones, tablets, cameras, game consoles, and random IoT devices. I think antivirus on my computer won't protect these things, correct?

My kids are online constantly too, so it’s not just about my own browsing habits anymore. i still use antivirus, but I’m not sure if that’s considered enough protection now or not. Are people actually adding more at home these days, or is antivirus still enough for most families?

Thx

I was adjusting settings on my TV recently and started noticing just how many viewing experience, recommendation, voice, and data collection options were turned on by default. I realized the TV basically knows what we watch, when we watchh, how long we watch, login info and probably even which devices are connected in the house.

What started bothering me is that TVs used to just be screens. Now they feel more like data collection devices sitting in the living room. I have kids at home too, so the idea of everything being tracked and profiled over time is not something I'm too excited about. Not in my home.

I know phones and apps already collect data, but for some reason the TV crosses a different line for me because it’s in the center of the home and always connected. I’m curious how people here handle this.

Do most of you just ignore it, disable settings, isolate devices on the network, or use some other setup entirely?

Hi parents, I'm a parent of two teenagers, one girl one boy and recently I've been suspecting that at least one of my kids is watching porn on their mobile phone. I'm obviously not thrilled and had a talk to them about it. However, I want to control my internet at home. Even tho we have 5G on our phones, the area we love in has very poor reception which means we all connect up to the WiFi when we're home. My question is it anyone knows of any devices or tools I can install so that I can monitor or block porn sites from being accessed on our WiFi? Thanks so much in advance.

I’m not talking about huge purchases like a new phone or laptop. More like small changes or tools you didn’t expect to matter that much.

For me, I added a internet router and it's made my internet safer.

Curious what others have found. What’s something simple you upgraded or added that made a noticeable difference?

Been tweaking my deeper setup and found an upgrade (for me) I wanted to share. Using vlans + device groups.

I've decided not to tunnel 'everything' anymore.

work → stable low latency nodes

streaming → direct or region based

iot / random devices → always through deeper

Biggest upgrade was segmentation

split into trusted, iot, guest

anything untrusted gets forced through deeper so even if it’s compromised it’s isolated + tunneled

I also realized per device vpn is kinda useless and wasteful long term.

Still figuring out failover + balancing privacy vs performance

Anyone else doing more advanced setups or just keeping it simple? Any suggestions to my setup is welcomed and appreciated!