On Mon, 22 Aug 2022 20:43:40 -0700 John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote:
> How is i2p different from using a VPN? A VPN relays your stuff through only one computer. They have your legal name, home address, IP address and ISP, ready to hand over to the police and/or their buddies in the media industry, along with all your activity that they claimed they weren't logging. I2P relays your stuff through many computers with onion routing. None of them have your address so they can't send a court summons. None of them have your IP, so they can't ask your ISP to threaten your mother if she doesn't stop all the downloading. And they can't log your activity since i2p changes up who relays what. Also I2P nodes share their bandwidth, while VPNs only give you bandwidth for money. You can still probably use a VPN, because they kind of lose business if they keep selling out their customers. Buuut ISPs also lose business when they keep selling out their customers, and it doesn't seem to be stopping them! A VPN is like picking a different ISP, and paying extra for it. > if I > use a VPN (and I do), what more do I get with i2p? With I2P, you can reach people even if you don't know their address or location, because you use public keys not addresses. You can share files, slowly, but 99.999% safe from any bogus copyright claims, and you can also help people like me with threat letters from our crooked monopoly ISP. If you tell me to get a VPN, then you can't help me. All you can do is demand that I go pay $$$ to some VPN so they can help me. But i2p is a more peer-to-peer community effort. So that's nice. You also help protect people in danger, whistleblowers, non-assholes in the deep South, and anti-war Russians and stuff. There's also a few IRC servers. Oh and you can test your network, with some good information about its reachability to i2p nodes around the world.
