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Privacy... when it comes to AT&T, it may once again come at a cost:
AT&T plans to reinstate their GigaPower pay-for-privacy scheme, as revealed by AT&T VP Robert Quinn in a recent interview with C-SPAN. In 2014, AT&T started offering GigaPower 300 Mbps fiber internet in cities around the United States. Users signing up had the option of paying $29 more per month to guarantee that AT&T doesn't snoop on your internet traffic and serve you advertisements and offers from their MITM position on your internet. Yes, they actually put a price on privacy and it's coming back. GigaOM discovered that $29 a month ($348 per year) isn't even the real price of buying your privacy back from AT&T – the total bill could run up to $800 per year.
How well would a VPN protect you from this, and at what cost in [in]convenience?
(Score: 2) by shipofgold on Tuesday July 11 2017, @04:05AM
AT&T are going for the low hanging fruit. Until a significant portion of their subscribers use a VPN their is no incentive to circumvent.
I don't think more than 10% would ever use a VPN so VPN users will be protected for the foreseeable future from their crap.
On the other hand, there will also be some who simply don't set up the VPN correctly... Everything going through a tunnel and still using AT&T's DNS servers is probably not the best idea.
I do agree that a VPN is not the easiest solution. I set up my router to send everything through a tunnel but find that things like NETFLIX don't play nice. Also, banks want two factor with every time if accessed via a VPN.
Some people will give up privacy just for convenience.
I feel AT&T won't get into my openvpn connection for now... But Amazon and friends will still track me... which is harder to kill because it requires configuring every device to be effective.