My post today about VPNs for all follows a trusty formula I’ve used many times for blog posts: get an idea for a product; briefly consider building it myself; realize I’ll never actually do it; write about how awesome an idea it would be; hope someone else makes it instead so I can use it.

In truth, I would be incredibly interested in a “meta VPN” service like the one I describe. But the commitment necessary to turn an idea like that into reality is far too high a bar, especially for someone who, in this case at least, is only marginally interested in the subject matter. I mean, I want the security benefits of a VPN for myself, for sure. But I’m not so interested in security that I could climb the nontrivial learning curve it would take to actually produce a valuable contribution to the space.

I actually discussed this idea with a couple of people, just to see if it held water. And before I sat down to write the post, I felt compelled to at least do some more research into the whole concept, to talk to some VPN experts to get their opinions. Were I a proper journalist, that certainly would have been the responsible thing to do.

As it is though, I opted to let me naïveté be an asset. The whole VPN space is full of experts. That’s abundantly clear if, like me, you’re a neophyte trying to figure out which service is right for you. And in a way, that’s a problem, because for people in my situation the whole category is completely opaque. In that case, a bit of ignorance is a good thing because that’s what should be driving VPN products. And what better place to wave a flag of ignorance defiantly than a blog? (Oh yeah, Twitter and Facebook.)

Cheers,
Khoi