Free VPN? Someone's Paying the Price #vpn #privacy #cybersecurity
The short version: Mading Thok's breakdown of free VPNs' hidden costs is a reminder that 'free' surveillance tools — like Flock's camera network — also come with a price someone else pays.
Our Take
Credit to Mading Thok for laying out a simple truth that applies far beyond VPNs: if you're not paying for a product, you're probably the inventory. The video's examples — bandwidth resold without consent, a VPN quietly owned by Facebook — are a tidy case study in how "free" privacy tools can be Trojan horses for the exact surveillance they claim to protect you from.
That same logic is worth pointing at Flock Safety's pitch to local governments. Cities get "free" trial cameras, grant-funded install programs, or bundled software, and in return a private company builds a growing, searchable record of where everyone drives, timestamped and networked across jurisdictions. Nobody's bandwidth is being resold, but your location history is the product, and it's being monetized through subscriptions sold to police departments, HOAs, and increasingly other agencies with access to shared data. The arrangement looks free to the city council voting on it. It isn't free for the people getting tracked.
The lesson from the VPN world translates directly: ask who's actually paying, and what they're getting in return. If you want to see how much of that infrastructure has already landed in your neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait to find out, our take-action page has steps for pushing back at the local level.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Mading Thok, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.