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So even if I use a VPN, my ISP can still see that I connected to https://vpn.com https://vpn.com around the same time https://vpn.com https://vpn.com connected
by matthewmacleod 9y ago
So even if I use a VPN, my ISP can still see that I connected to https://vpn.com https://vpn.com around the same time https://vpn.com https://vpn.com connected to https://embarrasingNSFWsite.ru https://embarrasingNSFWsite.ru.
Your ISP is very unlikely to have access to any traffic logging from your VPN endpoint, unless you are using the same ISP for both.
My solution to this has been to spin up a VPN server on Digital Ocean and just route all traffic through that. Bonus: native IPv6 over the VPN.
- folli 9y agoWhat's the easiest way to set up a VPN on DO? Is there an image available?
- ra 9y agoLook at OpenVPN.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoI'm not aware of one, and I keep meaning to write a blog posts about the process. There is a document on the Digital Ocean site about how to do it, though: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an-ikev2-vpn-server-with-strongswan-on-ubuntu-16-04 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-...
- iDemonix 9y agoThere's a couple of docs on the DO site itself, failing that though just find any 'OpenVPN' server guide and build it on whatever flavour of Linux they build it on using DO.
- tyoma 9y agoYou can use Algo [1]. It packages everything you need to create a VPN on DO droplets and many other cloud platforms. [1] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
- richem 9y agoArs Technica posted a guide on this last month: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/how-to-build-your-own-vpn-if-youre-rightfully-wary-of-commercial-options/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/how-to-build-your-ow...
- ra 9y agoThat's not true - you're ISP can't see the onward connection. VPN's like PIA do provide a layer of abstraction; you could save a small amount of money running your VPN NAT on a VPS.
- andai 9y agoSo, now you've shifted the privacy issue from your own ISP to DO's ISP (and indeed DO)? Now two entities can see everything you're doing!
- lbotos 9y agoI'm not sure if you are being facetious? Isn't the point in the current moment to obfuscate? By virtue of TCP/IP isn't it futile to think you can achieve "true privacy" without something like TOR? (A different protocol with the obfuscation baked in?) Someone is always going to have logs of your activity, the goal being not giving them "end to end logs" easily.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoWell, you've shifted it for sure, but I still think this can improve the situation: - It's residential ISPs that are unreasonably tracking metadata, rather than infrastructure providers. - Even if that no longer applies, it's possible to use a VPN in a friendlier jurisdiction. - The details of what you are doing are more obfuscated. If you're sharing a VPN, that has obvious benefits. If you use an anonymous VPN, even better. Ultimately there will always be some data about your internet use available to a determined adversary – it's ultimately just a side-effect of wanting to send data across a network. But I'm personally more interested in opting out of the dragnet-style metadata collection that's being played with in the UK, so keeping my traffic out of sight of my ISP is a benefit.
- zurn 9y agoResidential ISP's often belong to same conglomerates that own web properties, ad networks etc. So they can correlate last-mile VPN traffic with web traffic by correlating IP packet sizes/timings.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoI'm not really convinced that this is the case, or that they could practically do that.
- siegecraft 9y agoDon't you get a lot of "are you a bot?" captchas (or just outright bans) from google / cloudflare / others? Happens to me with AWS.