4 ms·

How safe is it to setup a VPN (via Wireguard or something) with AWS?

notatoad 7y ago
i can't speak to the safety, but i think you'll find browsing with an AWS IP to be a frustrating experience. Many sites block traffic from known AWS IP ranges in an attempt to prevent scraping or abuse.
- scurvy 7y ago
  Yep plus 1000 to this. I tried doing this 4 years ago and it was a miserable experience. And rightly so to be honest. For every privacy focused nerd, there are 1000 lowlife hackers and spammers trying to use something as a bounce proxy.
  - cf498 7y ago
    Any experience with using classical VPS as a proxy? Same problem?
    - scurvy 7y ago
      That's what I started out with. Pretty useless. Blocking the entire ASN is pretty easy and most won't care what is what.
      - jstarfish 7y ago
        FWIW, most modern VPN providers spread their infrastructure around to evade ASN bans so there is some value added in paying a service to manage that for you.
- eknkc 7y ago
  Use Google Cloud VMs. Nobody blocks Google IPs (they might even lift paywalls etc)
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Google's services do not share IPs with their cloud platform. All 3 major cloud ip ranges are easy to block.
- GordonS 7y ago
  I use an Azure VM as a proxy, and don't see many issues. Every now and then Google asks me to do a captcha, and there are literally a handful of sites that do the same.
harshreality 7y ago
Safe? Against what? - Preventing websites from seeing your true IP? (you'll want to disable webrtc as well[1].) Mostly yes. - preventing your ISP from spying on your traffic? (allowing Amazon to spy on your traffic in exchange...) Yes. - Avoiding risk of legal threats if you engage in copyright infringement? Mostly no. They can subpoena Amazon instead of your ISP, and your lightsail/EC2 ip isn't shared. Routing through a vpn, whether it's a commercial one or through AWS, linode, digitalocean, etc. will get you blocked on far more sites, because it's more difficult to identify individual clients, and there's more fraud and bot activity on any kind of vps or vpn netblock than there is on typical residential netblocks. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Prevent-WebRTC-from-leaking-local-IP-address https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Prevent-WebRTC-from-l...
- bsamuels 7y ago
  I would be fascinated to hear about how Amazon is spying on EC2 traffic in the same ways ISPs want to spy on/monetize customer traffic
  - fock 7y ago
    except for long forgotten http-tricks inserting scripts: what do ISPs do today? I guess they log a lot of connection data (which AWS certainly does too)
    - rocqua 7y ago
      DNS logging and legally mandated modification. See the recent thread about UK ISPs disliking Mozilla using DNS over HTTPS.
- mrunseen 7y ago
  I live in Turkey and I got myself Wireguard set-up with wireguard+lightsail. I can say I got same trouble as no-VPN. For example I cant view profiles on Twitter when im on VPN. btw Turkey is notorious for blocking sites, Youtube got blocked for months, Wikipedia is still blocked today..
theblackcat1002 7y ago
You usually ended up in more recaptcha challenge (from form submission and cloudflare )than usual.

i can't speak to the safety, but i think you'll find browsing with an AWS IP to be a frustrating experience. Many sites block traffic from known AWS IP ranges in an attempt to prevent scraping or abuse.

scurvy 7y ago
Yep plus 1000 to this. I tried doing this 4 years ago and it was a miserable experience. And rightly so to be honest. For every privacy focused nerd, there are 1000 lowlife hackers and spammers trying to use something as a bounce proxy.
- cf498 7y ago
  Any experience with using classical VPS as a proxy? Same problem?
  - scurvy 7y ago
    That's what I started out with. Pretty useless. Blocking the entire ASN is pretty easy and most won't care what is what.
    - jstarfish 7y ago
      FWIW, most modern VPN providers spread their infrastructure around to evade ASN bans so there is some value added in paying a service to manage that for you.
eknkc 7y ago
Use Google Cloud VMs. Nobody blocks Google IPs (they might even lift paywalls etc)
- manigandham 7y ago
  Google's services do not share IPs with their cloud platform. All 3 major cloud ip ranges are easy to block.
GordonS 7y ago
I use an Azure VM as a proxy, and don't see many issues. Every now and then Google asks me to do a captcha, and there are literally a handful of sites that do the same.

harshreality 7y ago

Safe? Against what? - Preventing websites from seeing your true IP? (you'll want to disable webrtc as well[1].) Mostly yes. - preventing your ISP from spying on your traffic? (allowing Amazon to spy on your traffic in exchange...) Yes. - Avoiding risk of legal threats if you engage in copyright infringement? Mostly no. They can subpoena Amazon instead of your ISP, and your lightsail/EC2 ip isn't shared. Routing through a vpn, whether it's a commercial one or through AWS, linode, digitalocean, etc. will get you blocked on far more sites, because it's more difficult to identify individual clients, and there's more fraud and bot activity on any kind of vps or vpn netblock than there is on typical residential netblocks. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Prevent-WebRTC-from-leaking-local-IP-address https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Prevent-WebRTC-from-l...

bsamuels 7y ago
I would be fascinated to hear about how Amazon is spying on EC2 traffic in the same ways ISPs want to spy on/monetize customer traffic
- fock 7y ago
  except for long forgotten http-tricks inserting scripts: what do ISPs do today? I guess they log a lot of connection data (which AWS certainly does too)
  - rocqua 7y ago
    DNS logging and legally mandated modification. See the recent thread about UK ISPs disliking Mozilla using DNS over HTTPS.
mrunseen 7y ago
I live in Turkey and I got myself Wireguard set-up with wireguard+lightsail. I can say I got same trouble as no-VPN. For example I cant view profiles on Twitter when im on VPN. btw Turkey is notorious for blocking sites, Youtube got blocked for months, Wikipedia is still blocked today..

theblackcat1002 7y ago

You usually ended up in more recaptcha challenge (from form submission and cloudflare )than usual.