Does a VPN used on a smartphone with Wi-Fi disabled (mobile data only enabled) provide any sort of protection?

I’ve never completely understood this, but I think the answer would probably be “no,” although I’m not sure. Usually when I leave the house I turn off wifi and just use mobile data (this is a habit from my pre-VPN days), although I guess I should probably just keep it on since using strange Wi-Fi with a VPN is ok (unless someone at Starbucks is using the evil twin router trick . . . ?). I was generally under the impression that mobile data is harder to interfere with than Wi-Fi, but I could well be wrong and my notions out of date. So, if need be, please set me straight. 🙂

Coasting0942,

Protection from what?

If it’s your phone leaking your location, then yes and also disable location services and Bluetooth as well.

You mention interference. Mobile data can be interfered from miles away at the phone company. Same for your home internet.

interdimensionalmeme,

The spyware in your radio firmwarr always has direct internet access and it won’t use your vpn

reddthat,
@reddthat@reddthat.com avatar

Sent from their Android

interdimensionalmeme,

Btw you can have battery powered wifi to lte bridge hotspot. This neuters to radio in your phone.

As far as the spyware inside the radio, android or apple, doesn’t make a difference, they don’t make radio firmware.

HeartyBeast,
HeartyBeast avatar

You’re hiding your traffic route from your mobile operator and giving it instead to your vpn company who swear they are honest

rudyharrelson,
rudyharrelson avatar

I run my own wireguard VPN at home and connect to it from my phone when I'm traveling.

Grants me privacy (but not anonymity) from my mobile carrier. Sure, my home ISP still sees my VPN's traffic, but that's still one less company able to monitor my web traffic when I'm mobile.

giloronfoo,

Same. Also feels a bit safer connecting to public wifi.

HeartyBeast,
HeartyBeast avatar

Running your own VPN in that situation is a good use-case agreed - assuming you trust yourself :)

ahal,

I’m experienced enough to know that out of my mobile carrier and ISP, I am the least trustworthy operator.

HeartyBeast,
HeartyBeast avatar

Thanks for the smile this morning 🙂

BCsven, (edited )

Well facebook VPN waa sniffing data to see what other Social media the person was using. But something like Proton that prides itself on privacy and encryption should be fine

HeartyBeast,
HeartyBeast avatar

Absolutely. Unless they’re actually evil. Which I’m sure they aren’t. But they could be.

Moonrise2473,

Only if you live in a country like russia, china, iran, north korea or south arabia

twinnie,

Your provider will just see encrypted traffic (mostly), so yes it will provide protection.

jmcs,

Only if you trust your VPN service more than your mobile Internet provider.

eleitl,

You forget that nation-states control your ISP. And of course you can choose your VPN provider or run your own.

noorbeast,

Any public data exchange has an element of risk, but the management/priority of that risk relates to your relevant risk matrix/profile.

Any exposed data transverses via a provider, be it mobile or Wi-Fi is pertinent, if you are concerned about provider vulnerabilities and exposure, be it Wi-Fi or mobile, use a VPN and related encryption.

tobogganablaze,

Usually when I leave the house I turn off wifi and just use mobile data

I would stronly recommend that you set your wifi to only join trusted networks. That way you can also just leave the wifi on and not have it connect to every random network it encounters.

ISOmorph,

I would still recommend turning wifi off when leaving home for privacy reasons (which can easily be automated). The process to identify if a network is trusted or not requires a handshake. So leaving wifi on makes you trackable by the wifi network operators and the apps on your phone with access to your wifi, wether you connect a network or not.

UndercoverUlrikHD,

What sort of protection are you after? Your VPN should encrypt your data to make it more difficult to snoop on your activity. I wouldn’t trust any random WiFi hot-spot just because you got a VPN encrypting your traffic though.

hedge,
@hedge@beehaw.org avatar

Before answering your first question (I’m actually not sure how to answer! I’ll have to think about it 🤔)–my laptop has wifi, which transmits and receives radio waves to/from my router; my router is connected to a cable (broadband cable? I guess? Not DSL at any rate), which is connected to the internet (and there’s also a MODEM in there somewhere too). My laptop doesn’t have the ability to connect by mobile data which uses, I guess?, cell phone towers, but my smartphone can use both. So they’re two different systems is I guess what I’m getting at, and I was never clear on how or if a VPN provided any sort of basic privacy if it was only using cell towers. This is a potentially really dumb question (the head injury doesn’t help 🤕), but remember, William Gibson used to think that computers were powered by these gleaming magical crystals (or so he claims), before he looked inside one and discovered that it was basically just a floppy plastic record spinning around really fast.

rudyharrelson,
rudyharrelson avatar

Definitely not a stupid question! Networking infrastructure is complex. I've been working in IT for years and still find myself scratching my head at times going, "Wait, how does the OSI model work again?"

Connecting to a VPN on your phone while using mobile data basically means the cell phone tower handling your data only sees encrypted data. Whoever your VPN provider is will see your traffic instead of the cell tower.

However, in modern times it's fair to be wary of backdoors and exploits that can compromise your device and render the VPN encryption moot. There's not much that regular people can really do to mitigate that possibility other than not use a phone.

If you're interested in learning more networking fundamentals, I'd recommend starting with the OSI model and its layers.

A handy mnemonic I whipped up with ChatGPT last year for better remembering the order of the layers:

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