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That's fantastic, but in terms of threat model, you're still trusting AWS/DO/GCE/Azure/whatever. My hope with a good VPN service is that they'll run their own
by anon9001 7y ago
That's fantastic, but in terms of threat model, you're still trusting AWS/DO/GCE/Azure/whatever. My hope with a good VPN service is that they'll run their own servers in a data center, so they're slightly less subject to audit than something running on AWS.
- dguido 7y agoAre you aware of any VPN services where this is the case? Do you think the internal auditing and security controls at an independent data center would be more effective than those at AWS or Google?
- wongarsu 7y agoThere are some VPN services run on dodgy VPS, but apart from that I'd wager almost everyone either rents or colocates physical servers. A terabyte of outbound traffic is around $170 on AWS but around $5 at a regular data center. You can get good security arrangements if you colocate in sufficient volume (locked rooms etc). That's where reading security reviews is useful.
- paulcarroty 7y agoAmazon Lightsail - $3.5 for 1Tb, $5 for 2Tb outbound traffic per month.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoSome of Mullvad's servers are privately hosted, and they tell you which ones: https://mullvad.net/en/servers/ https://mullvad.net/en/servers/
- Kaveren 7y agoprotonvpn has its own servers in a former swiss army bunker. these are only a few of the many, but they offer routing to other servers through their swiss center which they market as "secure core".
- mirimir 7y agoHow would anyone know? Except for the NSA, I guess.
- mirimir 7y agoRight, you're always trusting someone. If you don't use a VPN (or Tor or I2P) you're trusting your ISP. If you use a VPN service, you're trusting it. If you run your own VPN on a VPS or server, you're trusting the provider. Also, you can't trust what a VPN service says about where their servers are, how they're manages, and so on. So you need to distribute trust. [Please see my other recent comment about how to do that.]
- raxxorrax 7y agoYou can also take the antagonistic approach. Use a VPN service from the North-Korean government. They will surely spy on you and try to attack your network. But they also won't share data with any form of law enforcement that could reach you. Probably a really bad idea, but the principle is clear. If you want to minimize legislative reach, take a service from the other side of the planet. Maybe not Australia.
- mirimir 7y agoYes, that's something I recommend. And using nested VPN chains, you can pick appropriately. For the first (entry) VPN, I use one that's innocuous and popular for streaming etc. For the middle ones, I pick ones that are either apparently honest or do business from jurisdictions that won't likely cooperate with my country's. And for the last (exit) VPN, I pick another that's innocuous, with IPs that don't often get blacklisted.
- jayalpha 7y agoThe question is: What are you trying to achieve? Access the internet via an anonymous SIM card (tethering), then use TOR to access your VPN (paid in Bitcoins, money order or whatever). This gives you a decent level of anonymity, if need be.