5 ms·

I'm pretty tech literate, and even so getting an VPN is a huge pain. First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private

by kharms 10y ago

I'm pretty tech literate, and even so getting an VPN is a huge pain. First, there is the trade off of speed, location, protocol. Will a US based VPN be private enough? Do they really not log? Who do I trust? Next there is actual usage: my Phillips hue lights don't sync with my alarm if the VPN is turned on. Torrents don't work if the VPN isn't on the slowest protocol. A few more in that vein. This means that even after I've found and paid for a VPN I think I can trust, I have to be constantly switching it on and off, and have to be vigilant about what browsing I do when.

dboreham 10y ago
And you need to curate a fistful of routing rules to ensure your streaming traffic doesn't go down the VPN (no VPN provider wants your 20Mbit of Downton Abbey season 5 and you want that traffic to hit the CDN node down the street).
- mirimir 10y ago
  Or you could just disconnect the VPN while streaming. Or use different devices with and without VPN.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    Yes, all that seems to indeed be exactly as easy as not changing the defaults my browser came with.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      My claim was that changing the defaults was harder than installing VPNs. I mean, there are lots of things that you could change. Firefox has simplified the GUI, but there's a ton of enigmatic stuff in about:config. Using VPNs for basic browsing, messaging, email etc is indeed trivial. There's basically an on/off button.
mirimir 10y ago
Yes, questions do come up about choosing a VPN service. And it's hard to get reliable information. Although /r/VPN is relatively useless, at least it points people to https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ which summarizes lots of information about VPNs, and has generally good advice. In my opinion, people tend to expect too much from VPNs, and then worry too much. VPNs don't provide anonymity. There's no way for users to know what they log. But if ISP tracking is the threat, pretty much any of the major privacy-centric VPN services is probably OK. The short list, in my opinion, is AirVPN, BolehVPN, IVPN, Mullvad and PIA. Not HMA, for sure. I'm not sure what the deal with your alarm and lights would be. But I'm guessing that it's a firewall rule that blocks LAN access when the VPN is connected. About torrents, do you really mean "slowest protocol"? I would have thought that torrents would like the fastest protocols, with the least encryption load (such as BF-CBC). Switching on and off, and keeping track of that, is problematic. Banks etc don't like VPNs, and neither does Netflix. But if ISP tracking is the threat, a few leaks won't matter much.

by kharms 10y ago

dboreham 10y ago

And you need to curate a fistful of routing rules to ensure your streaming traffic doesn't go down the VPN (no VPN provider wants your 20Mbit of Downton Abbey season 5 and you want that traffic to hit the CDN node down the street).

mirimir 10y ago
Or you could just disconnect the VPN while streaming. Or use different devices with and without VPN.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Yes, all that seems to indeed be exactly as easy as not changing the defaults my browser came with.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    My claim was that changing the defaults was harder than installing VPNs. I mean, there are lots of things that you could change. Firefox has simplified the GUI, but there's a ton of enigmatic stuff in about:config. Using VPNs for basic browsing, messaging, email etc is indeed trivial. There's basically an on/off button.

mirimir 10y ago

Yes, questions do come up about choosing a VPN service. And it's hard to get reliable information. Although /r/VPN is relatively useless, at least it points people to https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ which summarizes lots of information about VPNs, and has generally good advice. In my opinion, people tend to expect too much from VPNs, and then worry too much. VPNs don't provide anonymity. There's no way for users to know what they log. But if ISP tracking is the threat, pretty much any of the major privacy-centric VPN services is probably OK. The short list, in my opinion, is AirVPN, BolehVPN, IVPN, Mullvad and PIA. Not HMA, for sure. I'm not sure what the deal with your alarm and lights would be. But I'm guessing that it's a firewall rule that blocks LAN access when the VPN is connected. About torrents, do you really mean "slowest protocol"? I would have thought that torrents would like the fastest protocols, with the least encryption load (such as BF-CBC). Switching on and off, and keeping track of that, is problematic. Banks etc don't like VPNs, and neither does Netflix. But if ISP tracking is the threat, a few leaks won't matter much.