PIA and their "advertising"

[Mad153]

30 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

You guys really like to beat a dead horse. Just forgett PIA if you don´t like them and move on

Maybe I should have made this a more open topic with its name... I have seen a lot more worse advertising from other companies.

 

Sorry if it seemed I was taking it out on ltt or Pia, it's definitely an industry wide issue and it's been annoying me since these ads flooded YouTube a few years back where the truth is sometimes twisted in small little ways and sometimes they go too far. 

 

At least I've lived up to my profiles biography...

[TehDwonz]

On 7/7/2020 at 10:23 PM, Mad153 said:

I know that there are some websites out there that don't offer HTTPS at all, but most of them are for insensitive things, like idk cake recipes. And if they are concerning sensitive information, perhaps a VPN, where your traffic leaves the tunnel unencrypted to the wider internet where you can still get "spied" on, won't help at all.

 

My issue is that for the average person, who doesn't need to hide from their ISP (because most people don't) and for people who have left college or other forms of school or places that don't want you to use all of the internet(again, most people) would absolutely not benefit at all from buying a VPN, while ads such as these suggest they are mandatory for keeping your internet usage safe through images such as these, which infer that otherwise all of your internet browsing gets sent in plain text and this is simply false. 

 

It's for avoiding geo-locking on content, but also getting past a network you might not trust, like public-wifi. It is trivial to set up a pfsense router to man-in-the-middle all HTTPS traffic (as part of squid proxy on https). There are ways to detect this happening of course, but I see nothing underhand in the advertising, stating that it stops your ISP knowing what you're doing is correct.

[Roswell]

23 hours ago, piratemonkey said:

What you just described is a paid review. LTT, and all other youtuber's who have integrity/business sense, keep their opinions out of sponsor spots, and sponsored videos. 

Hardware companies do provide products/early samples for reviews (CPUs, GPUs, etc.) so that when the embargo lifts there are reviews. 

For greater clarity, reviews are LMG's unbiased opinions on the product that the company may or may not have provided, and sponsored projects/videos/spots will usually/always contain talking points provided by the sponsor (How freshbooks is for small businesses, or PIA encrypts all your internet traffic).

As far as I can tell, and everyone else who is informed can, LMG has never and will never make a paid review, but will make sponsored pieces which do not reflect the company's opinion necessarily.

 

Linus just did a literal paid review for Lenovo 2 days ago.

 

He even went as far as saying what Lenovo told him to focus on, etc. It's pretty shameless, lol.

 

Anyway, at least it's a good example of why you can't really use LTT as a trusted source of unbiased information.

[piratemonkey]

37 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

 

Linus just did a literal paid review for Lenovo 2 days ago.

 

He even went as far as saying what Lenovo told him to focus on, etc. It's pretty shameless, lol.

 

Anyway, at least it's a good example of why you can't really use LTT as a trusted source of unbiased information.

It was an unboxing, on an unboxing channel. There was no mention of the word review, and from what I can tell, the opinions were not presented as his. I can guarantee that there will never be a review of that laptop. It was clearly a sponsored piece, which I have no problem with, and neither should you. A paid advertisement is when (secretly) a company will pay a reviewer to review their product positively

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

Anyway, at least it's a good example of why you can't really use LTT as a trusted source of unbiased information.

Why? Those videos aren't, and they're clearly marked as such. The actual reviews are. A channel/company can do multiple types of content, they aren't somehow forced to make them all the same...

[nonamesm3]

On 7/8/2020 at 4:21 AM, piratemonkey said:

Without a VPN to from your ISP is unencrypted. HTTPS only encrypts after the traffic routes through the ISP. For clarity, VPNs will encrypt between you, your ISP, until their servers (where your public IP address reflects that of the server), and then (provided you're using it) HTTPS and SSL will encrypt traffic from the VPN provider while in transit across the internet.

The encryption happens IN your browser. It's not done by your ISP. HTTPS encrypts your data between your browser and the websites server. While visiting HTTPS site your traffic is encrypted between your browser and the websites server.

[wall03]

On 7/7/2020 at 6:41 AM, Mad153 said:

 

 

I don't know, it quite clearly says Gmail... And therefore their statement about it encrypting Gmail more is false.

DO you think that if it said apple.com that it would mean anything different?

[nonamesm3]

Why not contact PIA and ask them what they meant with that gmail thing? And with everything else. And then tell us what they answered. I am interested to know, and maybe they even change their website, who knows.

[AngryBeaver]

These companies are out to make a buck and they do so via scare tactics. For probably 95% of people a vpn isn't needed and spying on you isn't worth the effort to analyze your data.

 

Even then most sites and services of note are encrypted and you can even use an encrypted dns to hide what you are doing even further. 

 

Now let's look at vpns. Some don't retain user information or some only hold it for a short amount of time, but a lot are holding that data. So you are shifting visibility from your ISP to your VPN provider. Then you have these wonderful things called cookies. That means people like Google can still track you even over vpn unless you take steps to stop it.

 

If you really want to be anonymous and for the low low cost of free then you can use the TOR network. Now this isn't a great solution for gaming or moving massive amounts of data, but it is a better solution than most VPNs.

 

Heck you might as well pickup the TOR browser to and discover that the dark web doesn't necessarily mean illegal (though it is used for that too), but actually just means an untracked portion of the web.

[Mad153]

16 hours ago, TehDwonz said:

It is trivial to set up a pfsense router to man-in-the-middle all HTTPS traffic (as part of squid proxy on https). There are ways to detect this happening of course, but I see nothing underhand in the advertising, stating that it stops your ISP knowing what you're doing is correct.

I'm not an expert at pfsense at all, but it seems to require configuration that is *filled* with security warnings on the client computer, at least according to this tutorial:

https://turbofuture.com/internet/Intercepting-HTTPS-Traffic-Using-the-Squid-Proxy-in-pfSense

(correct me if I'm wrong, but without adding a certificate to the client, i think you would get an error like this:)

https://wrong.host.badssl.com/

[AngryBeaver]

30 minutes ago, Mad153 said:

I'm not an expert at pfsense at all, but it seems to require configuration that is *filled* with security warnings on the client computer, at least according to this tutorial:

https://turbofuture.com/internet/Intercepting-HTTPS-Traffic-Using-the-Squid-Proxy-in-pfSense

(correct me if I'm wrong, but without adding a certificate to the client, i think you would get an error like this:)

https://wrong.host.badssl.com/

This is correct. A mitm attack like is being mentioned requires you to have the cert on your machine to avoid the message everytime data hits that router.

 

In the corporate world this is done via custom OS images that includes it and allows the company to see all of your data going over the network. If you are on a work machine thougjg your activity should never be considered private.

 

Now the way these mitm routers work is that when you establish a secure connection via say ssl. The data from your machine to the smart switch (what we call them) is encrypted. Once it hits the switch it decrypts and views the packet, header, etc information. It then reestablished another secure connection between that server and the end destination so the data is encrypted again.

 

As I said in an earlier post a lot of information is encrypted these days. So the only way for people in my field to have full visibility is to be able to see the packet data. So the corporate mitm becomes a necessary evil. I feel bad for a company that doesn't have one setup since domain fronting would be a major threat.

[piratemonkey]

9 hours ago, nonamesm3 said:

The encryption happens IN your browser. It's not done by your ISP. HTTPS encrypts your data between your browser and the websites server. While visiting HTTPS site your traffic is encrypted between your browser and the websites server.

I know. I didn't express that well. It happens after your traffic leaves your ISP. Thank you for correcting me

[piratemonkey]

5 hours ago, AngryBeaver said:

If you really want to be anonymous and for the low low cost of free then you can use the TOR network. Now this isn't a great solution for gaming or moving massive amounts of data, but it is a better solution than most VPNs.

 

Heck you might as well pickup the TOR browser to and discover that the dark web doesn't necessarily mean illegal (though it is used for that too), but actually just means an untracked portion of the web.

Actually, most people will recommend that when using TOR you should use a VPN. Otherwise your traffic is less secure. Please always use a VPN when using TOR. It's pretty much dangerous otherwise

[Roswell]

18 hours ago, piratemonkey said:

It was an unboxing, on an unboxing channel. There was no mention of the word review, and from what I can tell, the opinions were not presented as his. I can guarantee that there will never be a review of that laptop. It was clearly a sponsored piece, which I have no problem with, and neither should you. A paid advertisement is when (secretly) a company will pay a reviewer to review their product positively

There's no unboxing. The entire video is him gushing over the features and so on. It's a paid review, infomercial, whatever you want to call it. 

 

Lenovo paid them money to only say good things about a product.

 

16 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Why? Those videos aren't, and they're clearly marked as such. The actual reviews are. A channel/company can do multiple types of content, they aren't somehow forced to make them all the same...

Because you can't be impartial sometimes when other times you take money from hardware manufacturers forcing you to say nice things.

 

It's one of the most basic forms of a conflict of interest.

 

I get it, people like the LTT. I do too, but to say their integrity isn't compromised when it comes to reviews and stuff is absolutely crazy. Imagine if NPR started reading Trump 2020 campaign points during their newscasts for money to keep the network afloat. Is their integrity still intact? No.

[piratemonkey]

2 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

There's no unboxing. The entire video is him gushing over the features and so on. It's a paid review, infomercial, whatever you want to call it. 

 

Lenovo paid them money to only say good things about a product.

That's what a sponsor piece is. An unboxing is when you unbox the product and talk about the product and 'test drive' the product. 

Lenovo gave them talking points, which were presented as Lenovo's opinions. If LMG wanted to review it, they would've.

13 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Because you can't be impartial sometimes when other times you take money from hardware manufacturers forcing you to say nice things.

You can be. It's called honesty, and integrity. But you seem to be confusing a 'showcase' or something similar, to a review. 

I cannot say for certainty what Linus' or LMG's definition of a review is, but from what I've heard, it's an unbiased opinion of a product.

A showcase (again, I'm inferring from what he has said over the years) is a sponsored piece showing a product and pretty much going over bullet points you'd find on the website, or other talking points the companies send. IT IS NOT A REVIEW. 

19 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

I get it, people like the LTT. I do too, but to say their integrity isn't compromised when it comes to reviews and stuff is absolutely crazy.

I have not seen any big names denouncing LTT. It would take literally less than an hour to know if LTT lied about something, because other people would/will be covering the product. If the review was positive when all others were negative for no good reason, you can be sure a company's been involved in some shady way (providing an early sample is NOT shady, it's been done for decades in most wide spread industries [video games, movies etc.]).

26 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Imagine if NPR started reading Trump 2020 campaign points during their newscasts for money to keep the network afloat. Is their integrity still intact? No.

You're comparing a tech review, to political news. They're not even in the same ball park. One is what your next purchase may be, the other being what makes you decide who you vote for. 

 

I don't know if you have a grudge against LMG, but it's unreasonable to think that no company should ever be sponsored by another company. 

[Warin]

On 7/7/2020 at 3:20 AM, HenrySalayne said:

And nobody is bothered by the IP adress? Come on! If your IP adress is 604.86.75.309 neither PIA nor Jesus can save you.

But it does mean that Jenny live in the lower mainland area of British Columbia.

 

[peacefulpolarbear]

I hate the fact that they advertise this shit. It's misleading. 

[piratemonkey]

3 minutes ago, peacefulpolarbear said:

I hate the fact that they advertise this shit. It's misleading. 

We've been over this, jeez

 

I have no idea if you're calling PIA sh*t, or something else. But PIA, from my research, it isn't bad. Sure, it could be argued that the marketing is bad or misleading, but that doesn't affect the actual product

[peacefulpolarbear]

I hate the fact that they advertise this shit.

Just now, piratemonkey said:

We've been over this, jeez

 

I have no idea if you're calling PIA sh*t, or something else. But PIA, from my research, isn't bad. Sure, it could be argued that the marketing is bad or misleading, but that doesn't affect the actual product

I don't like PIAs advertising, which makes me like them/their product less. I'm sure it works fine. 

[piratemonkey]

3 minutes ago, peacefulpolarbear said:

I hate the fact that they advertise this shit.

If you're talking about LTT, you can choose who you advertise when you become a successful business owner and youtuber.

8 minutes ago, peacefulpolarbear said:

I don't like PIAs advertising, which makes me like them/their product less. I'm sure it works fine.

When you call something sh*t to most it means that you've used the product. You're misleading others due to you not liking one part of the company

[Roswell]

50 minutes ago, piratemonkey said:

That's what a sponsor piece is. An unboxing is when you unbox the product and talk about the product and 'test drive' the product. 

Lenovo gave them talking points, which were presented as Lenovo's opinions. If LMG wanted to review it, they would've.

You can be. It's called honesty, and integrity. But you seem to be confusing a 'showcase' or something similar, to a review. 

I cannot say for certainty what Linus' or LMG's definition of a review is, but from what I've heard, it's an unbiased opinion of a product.

A showcase (again, I'm inferring from what he has said over the years) is a sponsored piece showing a product and pretty much going over bullet points you'd find on the website, or other talking points the companies send. IT IS NOT A REVIEW. 

I have not seen any big names denouncing LTT. It would take literally less than an hour to know if LTT lied about something, because other people would/will be covering the product. If the review was positive when all others were negative for no good reason, you can be sure a company's been involved in some shady way (providing an early sample is NOT shady, it's been done for decades in most wide spread industries [video games, movies etc.]).

You're comparing a tech review, to political news. They're not even in the same ball park. One is what your next purchase may be, the other being what makes you decide who you vote for. 

 

I don't know if you have a grudge against LMG, but it's unreasonable to think that no company should ever be sponsored by another company. 

I'm not addressing this wall of text.

 

If you think taking money from companies you review doesn't affect your bias or integrity, you're naive.

[piratemonkey]

1 minute ago, Vitamanic said:

I'm not addressing this wall of text.

 

If you think taking money from companies you review doesn't affect your bias or integrity, you're naive.

Bias, arguable, but not integrity. 

Hardware companies aren't babies, they can handle criticism (see Intel, Corsair, AMD, almost every big company). There's no incentive to positively review a bad product.

I'll give a few examples. LTT's build logs have almost always had a sponsor (AMD, or Intel). Yet recently, Linus criticized 10th gen Intel.

Linus made a video pretty much mocking corsair's (new at the time) logo.

I will also point out that there is editorial seperation (the writers don't know who the sponsor is [source: gamer's nexus ltt studio tour])

While there probably is some unconscious bias for Linus or other long time employees, it's hard to imagine that every writer/editor has the same feelings toward a company.

[Roswell]

19 minutes ago, piratemonkey said:

Bias, arguable, but not integrity. 

Hardware companies aren't babies, they can handle criticism (see Intel, Corsair, AMD, almost every big company). There's no incentive to positively review a bad product.

I'll give a few examples. LTT's build logs have almost always had a sponsor (AMD, or Intel). Yet recently, Linus criticized 10th gen Intel.

Linus made a video pretty much mocking corsair's (new at the time) logo.

I will also point out that there is editorial seperation (the writers don't know who the sponsor is [source: gamer's nexus ltt studio tour])

While there probably is some unconscious bias for Linus or other long time employees, it's hard to imagine that every writer/editor has the same feelings toward a company.

"Trust me, I have integrity" isn't an argument. Once you accept money from the subjects of your reviews and journalism, you no longer have integrity on the matter, full stop. You're no longer an independent source of unbiased information and you're no longer impartial.

[piratemonkey]

4 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

"Trust me, I have integrity" isn't an argument. Once you accept money from the subjects of your reviews and journalism, you no longer have integrity on the matter, full stop. You're no longer an independent source of unbiased information and you're no longer impartial.

With that logic, almost no big tech youtubers or publications are independent then. I would assume that it's not just money that would influence an opinion, but any free goods (as in, early samples). In that case only small youtubers (who aren't easy to trust [you don't know their motivations as easily]) should be unbiased, but (again according to your logic and thinking) if they accepted a free good or service from even one company in the tech sector, they're biased. That means everyone who has ever used a free trial is biased. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong

[Roswell]

1 hour ago, piratemonkey said:

With that logic, almost no big tech youtubers or publications are independent then. I would assume that it's not just money that would influence an opinion, but any free goods (as in, early samples). In that case only small youtubers (who aren't easy to trust [you don't know their motivations as easily]) should be unbiased, but (again according to your logic and thinking) if they accepted a free good or service from even one company in the tech sector, they're biased. That means everyone who has ever used a free trial is biased. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong

You're wrong.

 

You're conflating review samples with revenue streams. LTT sponsor money keeps them afloat, review samples do not. In addition, LTT likes to mix sponsorship business sectors with their "reviews". Any YouTuber that cares about being impartial doesn't take sponsors that blur into their area of review.