Q&A: Our Privacy Hopes for 2025

Two questions related to past content: (1) In one of his videos, Henry mentioned having problems when running Proton VPN but not IVPN alongside with NextDNS. Do you believe there is benefit (if you're not using your own custom blocklist on NextDNS) to using a NextDNS custom DNS server on stock Android in addition to running a VPN with a DNS filter such as Proton's NetShield, and, if so, what VPN-CustomDNS combo do you think is most reliable? (2) In one of his videos, Henry interviewed a divorce lawyer, who had some interesting insights into the legality and usefulness/futility of various practices to enhance privacy. Related to that, have you or people you know in the privacy community consulted lawyers (and if so, how helpful was it) when dealing with companies about collection of your personal data? It seems that a lot of law-related discussion on this topic in the privacy community relies on opinions of people who have very little knowledge of the law in general, and of privacy law in particular; the result being something of "brolaw," analogously to "broscience" in fitness. From the number and length of TOCs/EULAs, it would seem that there are lot of lawyers who draft them, whom you might be able to hire for a few hours to help you navigate them. It seems unlikely that these lawyers would be such ideologically fervent supporters of the dark patterns they help to craft so that they would turn you down on principle. In addition, it seems likely that the tools created by companies for users to use to request/delete their data are highly likely to be carefully crafted to provide as little information as possible and legally to commit the company to as little as possible. This is doubly so because a company has to do it only once for all its users, so it has economies-of-scale incentives to go the extra mile. Thus, a lawyer who actually knows the law could do a much better job by drafting a letter to a company for you that would be crafted with your interest in mind, not the company's. Finally, companies will often lie about what they are required or not required to do, or make demands of you that you are not required to comply with, and having authoritative council can go a long way in calling their bluff. What are your thoughts on this?

David Johnson