2 ms·

Seems like a good time to be in the VPN / Proxy business.

by rapind 16y ago

nitrogen 16y ago
I don't see how anybody trusts a VPN or proxy any more than their own ISP. It seems to me that using a privacy-focused VPN (1) makes you stand out more to anyone looking to bring down the proverbial hammer of justice, and (2) puts all of your access history in the hands of a potentially-hostile third party (the VPN/proxy provider, who could just as easily be subpoenaed, or even be run by an intelligence agency, like Tor).
- rapind 16y ago
  My understanding is that it is not actually easy to subpoena records from all the VPNs cloaking traffic to a specific site. In fact there could be a significant cost attached to doing that. So while it might make you look guilty in some situations, it can protect your innocent behaviour from being snooped until you do something to justify appropriate suspicion. As stated --- The approved subpoena requires the company to turn over “documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms” tied to Hotz’s hosting. --- I'm pretty sure they would need to apply for another subpoena in order to uncover any IPs coming from a VPN. Now this could be done if it was warranted, but most of the time I doubt it would be pursued and it might even be hard to prove it was warranted for each VPN? Now just for fun, let's say you're tunneled to a VPN that's tunneled to another VPN, to another, etc. While you could still be chased down, it probably not practical in most situations like this. I wonder if one company could provide a service that uses multiple routings like this through different registered entities requiring the authorities to request records for each of the different entities in order to track down just one account. Then implement this on a large scale...

2 ms·

Seems like a good time to be in the VPN / Proxy business.

by rapind 16y ago

Seems like a good time to be in the VPN / Proxy business.

nitrogen 16y ago
I don't see how anybody trusts a VPN or proxy any more than their own ISP. It seems to me that using a privacy-focused VPN (1) makes you stand out more to anyone looking to bring down the proverbial hammer of justice, and (2) puts all of your access history in the hands of a potentially-hostile third party (the VPN/proxy provider, who could just as easily be subpoenaed, or even be run by an intelligence agency, like Tor).
- rapind 16y ago
  My understanding is that it is not actually easy to subpoena records from all the VPNs cloaking traffic to a specific site. In fact there could be a significant cost attached to doing that. So while it might make you look guilty in some situations, it can protect your innocent behaviour from being snooped until you do something to justify appropriate suspicion. As stated --- The approved subpoena requires the company to turn over “documents reproducing all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms” tied to Hotz’s hosting. --- I'm pretty sure they would need to apply for another subpoena in order to uncover any IPs coming from a VPN. Now this could be done if it was warranted, but most of the time I doubt it would be pursued and it might even be hard to prove it was warranted for each VPN? Now just for fun, let's say you're tunneled to a VPN that's tunneled to another VPN, to another, etc. While you could still be chased down, it probably not practical in most situations like this. I wonder if one company could provide a service that uses multiple routings like this through different registered entities requiring the authorities to request records for each of the different entities in order to track down just one account. Then implement this on a large scale...