VPN is another case of an appropriated and bastardized term, much like hacker, crypto, AI, etc.
The term has been used wrong for so long by so many that most people now know VPN as nothing but a glorified proxy with some security, which is a rather niche use for the technology as a whole.
Might be time to find a new term for Virtual Private Networks too, so it doesn’t get mixed up or get bad rep because of its other meaning.
It’s not really appropriated, as it’s still the same thing, just being used for a purpose other than the one it was originally invented for. Plenty of things end up useful for things other than why they were invented but retain a name based on the original very specific use case that doesn’t make sense for their common use case. USB’s name isn’t appropriated when a device charges over USB-PD and uses resistors on the channel configuration pins to set the current limits without a serial connection, despite serial bus being part of the name.
It is the same technology, but from ‘virtual’, ‘private’ and ‘network’ only ‘virtual’ and ‘network’ kept their meaning. The network is no longer ‘private’, when all traffic goes through a third party (unencrypted on their side!).
VPN is another case of an appropriated and bastardized term, much like hacker, crypto, AI, etc.
The term has been used wrong for so long by so many that most people now know VPN as nothing but a glorified proxy with some security, which is a rather niche use for the technology as a whole.
Might be time to find a new term for Virtual Private Networks too, so it doesn’t get mixed up or get bad rep because of its other meaning.
It’s not really appropriated, as it’s still the same thing, just being used for a purpose other than the one it was originally invented for. Plenty of things end up useful for things other than why they were invented but retain a name based on the original very specific use case that doesn’t make sense for their common use case. USB’s name isn’t appropriated when a device charges over USB-PD and uses resistors on the channel configuration pins to set the current limits without a serial connection, despite serial bus being part of the name.
It is the same technology, but from ‘virtual’, ‘private’ and ‘network’ only ‘virtual’ and ‘network’ kept their meaning. The network is no longer ‘private’, when all traffic goes through a third party (unencrypted on their side!).