VPN and Privacy Services Extension Assignment
For this assignment, you will research common business practices of supposedly privacy-oriented companies, including Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers. You will consider some of the ethically questionable practices commonplace in the privacy space, including affiliate marketing, phony reviews, surveillance by the privacy providers, use of privacy as a marketing tool, and dark/deceptive user interface designs.
Assignment Information
The application area for this assignment is primarily business, although there is some overlap into information technology. That said, anyone with an interest is welcome to select this assignment, regardless of major.
Prerequisites
- You should be able to perform Internet searches to locate sources relevant to the topics covered by this assignment.
- You should be able to utilize CCU Library resources to aid in research.
- You should be able to think critically about the claims made in sources that you find.
- You should be able to create a logically organized presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress.
- You should be able to record a video presentation by narrating slides while recording a screencast.
- You should be able to edit the recorded video, transcode it to MP4 or WEBM format, and upload the result to Moodle.
Background
Let’s suppose that you’d like to improve your online privacy. You decide to look for a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. Do a quick Internet search, and you’ll find plenty of articles ranking “the best VPN services” available. If you look at several different articles on different sites, you will probably find multiple sites recommending the same services. You pick one of these services and visit their website.
At the top of the site, in red letters, you will find that you’re “unprotected” unless you happen to be using their service already. Never mind that you might be on public WiFi, or on the CCU campus network, or even using another VPN service already: your privacy is somehow at risk without this one company’s service! But wait, there’s a special deal that is only good for the next few hours – complete with a countdown clock – for some large percentage off this service. Maybe this is a good deal, since all those VPN ranking websites have this particular service on their lists?
Or maybe things aren’t quite as they seem? You scroll to the bottom of the home page for this VPN service and find some curious links. There’s something there about becoming an “affiliate” or even a “partner” of this VPN company. Follow this link, and you’ll find ways that you can make money by promoting this particular VPN service in some way.
Welcome to the VPN industry (and indeed, to the privacy industry in general). From this one website, we can already see a few of their questionable business practices. For starters, we have affiliate marketing. If I wanted to create a for-profit website, or a YouTube channel, or really any other online content, I can make money simply by becoming an affiliate of one or more VPN companies. All I have to do is recommend their service on my site, or mention them in my videos, or give them a shout out while dancing on TikTok (never mind that I don’t use TikTok and can’t dance). The VPN service will give me a commission for every new subscription! Some VPN services might even give me another commission if a user I previously recruited renews their service.
A second deceptive practice we find on this VPN service’s website is the use of dark user interface design techniques. We see this starting at the very top of the page: it says we’re “unprotected” until we get their service. Then we see a “limited time” offer for a deal that we need to jump on NOW, since it expires in mere hours. Never mind that we’ll see the same deal with the same countdown if we come back tomorrow, particularly if we clear our cookies or use a private browsing window.
But what about the reviews that said this VPN service was good? Go back to the review sites and hover your mouse over links to the various VPN services. You will probably not see “clean” links to the home pages of the various services. Instead, the links will contain codes or curiously will not link directly to the VPN service provider. These are affiliate links, meaning that the review site is being paid by the service provider, typically only if the user clicks through one of these links and signs up for the service. Can there ever be such a thing as a bad review of a VPN service under these circumstances?
Note some of the claims that are made by the VPN services (and repeated by the phony reviews). Every service promises “no logs” and that a person will magically become anonymous on the Internet by using their service. It doesn’t take too much research to find examples of VPN services that claimed not to log anything but were somehow able to identify users in response to government requests. In some cases, the VPN service itself is even owned by an Internet marketing company, which has every motivation to log and collect as much data as possible about its users (to build those advertising profiles, of course).
Plenty of people have an interest in digital privacy. You know this since you signed up for this course :). However, we can see this is also a broader trend, since there are hundreds of VPN services out there (even though many are owned by the same companies). Privacy, or at least the illusion of privacy, must sell pretty well.
And sell they do. Deceptive claims, affiliate marketing, dark user interface designs, difficult cancellation policies, and fear-mongering tactics are widely used in this market. You’re going to see some of this behavior in this assignment, in which you pick 10 or more of these companies and look to see what shady things they’re doing.
Requirements
Find some privacy service providers by means of an Internet search. Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers are excellent examples to use for this assignment, but you can expand your search scope to other privacy tools and services (browsers, security software, etc.) if desired. Locate and research at least 10 such services, and collect the URLs for each service.
Prepare a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress that addresses the following items:
- For each service that you have identified, find out (to the extent possible) who owns the service. If the service is owned by another company or holding company, what else does that owner company do? What else do other subsidiaries of that company do? Are any of the products or services offered by any of the related companies at odds with a privacy service?
- For each service that you have identified, determine if there is an affiliate marketing program in place.
- Find reviews of each service. Are these reviews trustworthy?
- Determine what information each service collects, or could collect, about its users. Note that VPN services tend to advertise “no logging” policies. However, some of these services have been caught logging the actions of their users. Do NOT trust the company’s own claims!
- Identify any marketing trends you observe. Are the privacy companies you identified trying to reach the same audience?
- Looking at the websites for each privacy service, identify any deceptive or dark user interface designs evident in the public parts of the website. Also cite any reviews you find that indicate that deceptive or dark user interface designs are used once a person subscribes to the service. You do NOT need to sign up or pay for any of these services to look for user interface design issues.
- Consider all the companies you found as a whole. Indicate whether or not you believe any of their services are likely to match their advertising.
- Include links to each service, to any reviews you find for each service, and to any concerning reports you find about the service (for example, cases where they have disclosed user information, Better Business Bureau complaints, bad reviews, etc.).
Record a screencast in which you deliver your presentation. Upload the recording in MP4 or WEBM format to the Moodle submission box for the Extension Assignment. Note that you MUST upload your video file directly to Moodle in order to receive credit for this assignment. While there are no hard time limits for this presentation, a good rule of thumb would be to aim for about 15-20 minutes.
Grading
Please review the VPN and Privacy Services Extension Rubric prior to uploading your video presentation. This rubric explains how this Extension Assignment option will be graded and can be used as a checklist to ensure that you have completed all the required parts of the assignment.
