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In addition to ad blocking, VPN is becoming a very important feature for modern web browsers. With so many countries blocking websites and websites geoblocking
by zzzcpan 8y ago
In addition to ad blocking, VPN is becoming a very important feature for modern web browsers. With so many countries blocking websites and websites geoblocking users it becomes necessary to help users circumvent that to access a wide web. This is kind of the whole point of web browsers, give access to world wide web, not local web.
Interestingly, Opera trying to compete with other browsers makes it pursue users interests, while other browsers yet again don't see Opera as competition, ignore users and pursue megacorp interests instead.
- kabacha 8y ago> Interestingly, Opera trying to compete with other browsers makes it pursue users interests Lol, sure the closed source browser owned by chinese is out there for user's interests! /s
- sakoht 8y agoThat used to be true before it was sold in 2016 to a Chinese conglomerate. As noted above, the Chinese removed VPN apps from the Apple app store, but they left this one. Which means it's compromised.
- liquidise 8y agoHow does it conclusively mean that?
- angott 8y agoYou cannot legally sell a VPN without lawful intercept capabilities in China. My guess is that if the Chinese authorities have let this VPN pass through the system, it could mean there must be some way for the Chinese authorities to intercept traffic. Of course, this conclusion is not backed by any evidence.
- vbezhenar 8y agoIt’s a small jump from blocking websites to blocking popular VPNs. I know two countries which block websites (Russia and Kazakhstan) and they either block or have plans to block VPNs. I don’t see centralized VPN as effective solution for that problem.
- zzzcpan 8y agoOf course it's not a solution for countries that block VPNs, but most countries that block websites don't do that.
- kabacha 8y agoHow do you block a VPN though? Do you just constantly chase after their IP addresses? I mean Netflix and similar services do try but with not much luck really.
- ZoF 8y agoYeah you block vpn providers ip ranges and it's actually very effective unless you're deploying e.g. ovpn on a box yourself. Even then some sites will block content submission from large hosting provider ranges as well.
- saurik 8y agoThat isn't at all the same problem: Netflix is trying to block being accessed by a VPN, while China/Russia/etc. want to block users from talking to a VPN.
- kabacha 8y agoHow do you block "talking" to a VPN?
- tgragnato 8y agoWhen packets traverse the edge router, IX, cable (landing) station, .. if they're recognised as VPN traffic, then the server's IP (or IP / port) is added to a blacklist, every subsequent packet is dropped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection
- exelius 8y agoYup; this is why VPN over HTTPS is a thing.
- ksec 8y agoThis had me thinking. Since Cloudflare wants to provide free VPN. May be they should collaborate with Firefox and Offer a Browser with Cloudflare VPN / DNS by default?
- iimblack 8y agoMozilla already partnered with ProtonVPN.