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 strongly believe nobody is entitled to keep a registry of the sites that we visit online. Not the gov, not your ISP, not your carrier. Thats why its essential for me.
A few sites wont load sometimes, which is my only exception to turn it off, and then on again, but its a habit i have gotten used to and its not that much work, given the benefits of an always-on trustworthy VPN.
It’s become a critical aspect of my online experience. I currently use Mullvad since leaving PIA. Mullvad seems to suffer from being too popular for it’s own good. An Increasing amount of websites are trying to identify and block traffic coming from VPN servers, sites like Kroger.com, USPS.com, Reddit. I never previously had this much trouble on PIA, but maybe it’s just that the times are a changing. I may search for alternative VPN when my service is up with Mullvad, though. I definitely don’t like the idea of using the internet without a VPN anymore.
My assumption is that Mullvad allowing port forwarding previously forced a large number of their IPs to be blocked due to misuse and that’s having carryover effects. I know very little about Mullvad or the IP address market though.
It isn’t just Mullvad. I’m sure it is also AirVPN and I presume that it includes all of the popular ones. I doubt port forwarding has anything to do with it.
PIA isn’t, and IIRC it’s also the cheapest. This is deeply suspicious and I’m trying to think of an alternative explanation to the obvious one.
I don’t think most ppl need a vpn for at home stuff but I do use Mullvad since I spend a lot of time on college WiFi and they might not like how I access my textbooks and research papers.
It’s not cost effective to lose your privacy, you’ve merely haven’t realized you’ve been paying all along. Also you are the product being sold.
I use Mullvad daily. Never turn it off.
This is my rule, too.
Same
Very happy with mullvad VPN ,use it mostly for accessing annas archive with is blocked in my country ,thanks to cloudflare
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
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.
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?
I bought a SIM from lebara mobile when traveling to europe once because it had 10x more data than other companies for the same price and it blocked VPN.
Cheap MVNO with enough data and good coverage/no outages. The low price comes from somewhere, I guess…
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.
The only VPN I use is:
Wireguard and OpenVPN to connect to my home network.
AirVPN for a server that I may or may not have on my home network that may or may not be sailing the high seas (allegedly).
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.
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.
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.
I’m fully with ya there. If I was doing anything more than downloading media, I’d be using something like tails with TOR or i2p or whatever. But without having any issues with my ISP chastising me in years (since I began VPNing), I’m happy with what I’ve got.
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.
