VPNs, Battery Life, Stripping Ads & Ethical Quandary

[rob]

This blog post from Tailscale suggests battery life is an issue for several of their users:

Battery life instrumentation

[Bmosbacker]

Thanks everyone for the insightful responses. Based on your input, I’m comfortable running the VPN insofar as it will have little to no impact on battery life. As to the ethical question, I feel more comfortable limiting or eliminating ads as much as possible, but I will give this more thought before I make a final decision. The marketers seem to have little regard for the reader’s experience and will push the limits as far as they believe they can. That said, I don’t want to penalize those independent writers who depend on ads for their livelihoods.

[MevetS]

With respect to the ethical issue:

Candy Crush, Tinder, MyFitnessPal: See the Thousands of Apps Hijacked to Spy...

I have no ethical qualms about using ad-blockers.

[Bmosbacker]

That is truly disturbing. I searched the list and thankfully, ExpressVPN is not one of the VPNs listed. My ethical quandary is resolved. Going forward, I’m always running a VPN and blocking ads. Not to overstate it, but one could argue this is a matter of “self-defense.”

[WayneG]

@MevetS

I have no ethical qualms about using ad-blockers.

I downloaded MFP a few years ago and used an Apple “hide my email” address to register. About a week later I started receiving email from its parent company at my primary address. A coincidence?

[lsamberg]

@webwalrus

@tomalmy

encryption of outgoing data and decryption of incoming data does consume power and slows things down

Although most web browsing is encrypted as well these days. So depending on your Internet traffic, it might not be that much of an additional load for the stuff that would not otherwise be encrypted.

Although I can’t opine on the battery usage, this is not entirely accurate. It is true that the payload for most traffic is encrypted these days, using a VPN actually does a second encryption which includes both the payload and the IP header. This is why your ISP can’t track you. So the VPN results in an additional encryption pass and then adds a new IP header to the whole thing.

[MevetS]

Another reason to block ads:

Fake Google ads lure Mac users into installing malware disguised as Homebrew

[cornchip]

That’s not going to help Mike McQuaid’s annoyance at Google for not hiring him.

[ACautionaryTale]

@Cindy

Many ad networks operate on a “pay per click” model, where the publisher is not paid unless you click the ad. In that situation, do you feel morally obligated to click so that the writer gets paid?

I don’t feel obligated to click on ads because the model is different: Pay-per-click clicks are only of interest to the advertiser if I’m interested in the product, which means that a click is much more valuable than a view impression. The advertisers are paying for an interested audience and it’s up to them to make their ads compelling and targeted enough to be clicked on. Ultimately, they don’t want me to click if I’m not a potential customer: it costs them for no gain.

[ACautionaryTale]

@tomalmy

Is that no different than buying a newspaper and throwing out the advertising sections without looking at them?

I think it’s more akin to the newspaper sales stand blacking out all of the ads embedded in pages with content and then selling you that version of the paper for a small extra fee that they pocket.