And if you use one, are you happy with it?
I’m trying to get more into privacy and security and VPN is currently a struggle for me (and it seems also for some people in my social circle). It’s mostly cost, effectiveness, but also connection issues (not being able to connect to servers, not reaching websites, sometimes slower speed.
I use a VPN for bittorrent and to access content that’s inaccessible in my area. For privacy, I use Tor. Most the time, I don’t use a a VPN or Tor at all. I might start using a VPN all the time with how bad surveillance is getting. I trust my VPN more than my ISP being able to see every IP I exchange data with.
commercial VPNs are sus. and israel have been buying up a lot of them.
i trust my ISP and my country’s laws more than i trust any of these shady providers which may or may not be tapped by the nsa. and that’s a low bar to clear let me tell you.
I’d like to not get doxxed (made mistake of befriending some one in the past who I find out years later mighta doxxed some one for drama I had nothing to do with (infact , was already excised from that friend group by that point)) , tho not sure how well VPNs protect against online (stalk|identity correlat)ing by random internet users
I connect to my home network via VPN if I’m out and about. There’s no additional cost, but I feel more secure in a public wifi and have access to all my internal services as I’m used to.
Native Mullvad app when home using my own DNS server, Tailscale through a gluetun container + headscale when away. The latter eats up battery quite a bit otherwise I’d just keep that on all the time.
Same here. My mobile provider blocks the standard VPN ports, and also access to other DNS servers, so I am pretty sure, their low price means they are selling my data. Going through a VPN on a non-standard port to my home network, from where I can go out through DNS over https and also a pi-hole, and being protected by my own firewall, gives me the (false?) feeling of an additional layer of security.
Wtf kinda mobile service is that?
Cheap MVNO with enough data and good coverage/no outages. The low price comes from somewhere, I guess…
I’m doubtful it does much in most cases due to browser fingerprinting, but I still use it and it sometimes can be useful to get around geo issues, plus it’s just a bit more privacy to stack on top of the measures I’m already taking, so for the price I feel like it’s worth it.
it all depends what you do, the average person honestly does not need a VPN, is it still “nice”? sure, getting over streaming restrictions or getting cheaper flights, and if you desire to sail the seas to any degree than also yeah get a VPN, and ofc, getting over porn bans
The average person doesn’t know how to use a VPN, either. They turn it on once, expect magic, and don’t go beyond that.
Love the people coming into the privacy community to say they don’t value privacy rather than explaining the limits of a VPN in that regard
They didn’t say they don’t value privacy; a bit of a strawman. Most connections are private even if not anonymous. TLS is sufficient for many uses. Knowing this allows one to be discerning about when a VPN is more useful.
Actually maybe I misread your intent. On second glance, looks like you might be yes-and’ing.
“I value privacy I just think TLS is sufficient” is exactly the kind of crud I’m talking about hahaha. You guys would be so easy to DNS poison
Don’t think this attitude will survive long once Copilot & stuff starts making meemaw and peepaw into Minority Report-style billboards for gallblader medication
Are you saying TLS doesn’t make the data that traverses a connection private? If so, I think we’ve discovered the deficiency in your viewpoint.
e: missed a word
That must sound really epic if you don’t know anything about how internet security works at all and have no threat model outside of a guy sharing public wifi with you. No important personal information, photos, professional files, financial documents, websites. Which would track for a Lemmy.world reply guy who apparently got roused from days of slumber by me impertinently pointing out I am the only person in the thread advocating thorough privacy practices
No. You’re the only one I see implying there are no cases where data is private outside a VPN. Strictly speaking, if you need only the data across a connection to be private TLS is sufficient. Who is implying that is a complete threat model. You are building more and more strawmen against which to argue, but it really just sounds silly. I’m a professional that has been in the industry for decades, so your dick waving contest just doesn’t move me.
Yes, a more complete risk analysis in many cases may show that you’d like the host one is reaching to also be private, but nobody is saying such a situation doesn’t exist; you’re barking at the moon.
Hah, now you’re trying to bring your employment requirements into it. Imagine trying to dick wave about being an IT guy and throwing a tantrum because someone didn’t trust datacenters and want to hug and kiss them and hand over all of their family’s information to them. Your whole threat model is the guy trying to break into wifi. You are literally part of my own threat model. Law enforcement is an asset to you, not a part of a threat model. You are a computer mall cop. Yeah, people like you are exactly why nobody should ever be satisfied with TLS encryption 😂 incompetent shrill nincompoop
Take it down a notch Scotty. We’re all here for a common purpose. No need to brow beat people. It’s exactly this attitude that I harp on in privacy forums. It’s like, give a guy some information and suddenly they think they’ve got some moral or intellectual high ground and others are mere normies, sheep, et al. Some people don’t need a VPN with a triple hop Socks proxy. Their threat model doesn’t dictate that. Where as I want all the obfuscation I can get.
Funny you say that since a few hours ago someone on here posted “how did reddit ban my alts??” and you’re acting like this is an issue that only affects hobbyists and experts. My guess is you don’t say anything interesting enough to have issues.
I have 2 that I use regularly. PIA to unblock things on the internet (and change how things are logged) and Tailscale to access my home network remotely. I’m happy with both of them.
Tailscale works really well for me as well.
VPN’s are like a condom for the internet. With much of the internet trying to fuck you putting on a wrapper is probably a good idea.
Eventually you get used to the slower speeds, rarely have issues with connection and if I do I just change IP. If a website doesn’t allow a vpn I really don’t need to go there and for the sites that I do want to visit there are optional different front ends I use.
A vpn and a good add blocker is pretty much a necessity for me at this point.
Slower speeds? I get my full 110 megabytes per second downloading with my VPN hahaha
Thanks for rubbing it in… and failing to mention what service you use.
That’s cuz I get a negative reaction when I mention it hahaha. I use Nord. Got it a few years ago to support Eric from Internet Comment Etiquette, and it just worked for me so I haven’t changed. It used to cap out at maybe 15/20MB per sec, but now I get my full-ass gigabit speeds when downloading stuff. I’ve considered switching but it works great for me and I get max speed, so ehhhh
lol… I get that ;]
I’d probably stick with it as well. My current view is that VPN mostly just provides a cover for general piracy. If “they” wanted to devote the effort they could figure out who I was. But I am sure a lot of vpns serve as honey pots and you wouldn’t want to blow your cover just for someone downloading a movie they never would have paid for anyway. They got the signature thing, but if I was doing something serious then that is going to be quite different than my general use signature and match every other user of Tails or whatever. The signature thing really sucks, but we do have control over what signatures we leave where and via vpns and tor those different “personas” don’t need to be connected by singular ip address.
Or at least that is my present opinion. If anyone here has a good argument against it, I’d like to hear it.
If a website doesn’t allow a vpn I really don’t need to go there
Indeed. If all my obfuscation techniques break a site, and I can’t fix it by hopping onto a new VPN IP, I go somewhere else. The internet is a vast library and usually, one site’s info is replicated somewhere else more easily accessible. I mean, when you stop and think about it, at no other time in human history have we had the sum total of the world’s knowledge in the palm of our hands or on our desk. Maybe not wisdom, but certainly vast stores of knowledge. The great libraries of Alexandria would look like my magazine rack in comparison. It’s all out there, sometimes you just got to dig for it.
A browser can be fingerprinted so I only use it in a separate OS install when I want to keep something private, but it’s indispensable so that I have that option.
It can, but it isn’t likely as specific as an ip is.
My view is that security/privacy is a sliding rule and that every little effort helps.
Browser fingerprinting is quite specific.
absolutely crucial. All my devices are always connected through a VPN, and usually I try to route my traffic through a different country. When your country is paying for a service to monitor citizen’s internet traffic, anonymity is worth paying for.
Unfortunately I live in a country where they once banned whole google drive because someone was sharing a pirated movie through it. And just recently they banned proton mail because someone used proton mail to blackmail some one else. OK I don’t condone second one but still would they have banned gmail if those idiots had used that. Yeah I know I don’t need a VPN I need a new government but till then a VPN and Tor is all I have
Very happy with mullvad VPN ,use it mostly for accessing annas archive with is blocked in my country ,thanks to cloudflare
My house has 2 other units and we all share one network. Without a VPN, my neighbors could see all my network traffic. I don’t think they know or care how to do that but it’s enough to keep me on a VPN at all times.
Super duper important. I won’t run my network without one. So if we ever get to a point where a VPN is prohibited by law, I will unplug and go work on some of my other hobbies like creating bonsai. Any no, I don’t run the 'arr stack, I’m not a hacker, nor do I torrent. I just prefer the absolute minimum number of people knowing who I am or what I’m doing. I’m that way irl.
sometimes slower speed.
Indeed, anything you put between you and your target will slow speeds, especially if you’re running everything through a double hop Shadowsocks proxy. That is the trade off. All technology wields a double edged sword. Additionally, you will encounter more captcha than normal, tho 99% of what I see are Cloudflare verification. Again, yet another trade off. You might even be precluded from accessing some websites. Me personally, I’ll accept the captcha/verification, slower speeds, and occasional site blocks, for security, privacy and anonymity. Also, in regards to sites blocking a VPN ip, it’s not a common occurrence on my network, but when it does happen, I find that the information contained on the blocked site, is freely available somewhere else.
I always use a vpn when downloading and managing my linux iso’s. For everything else I can’t really be bothered half the time.
