20 ms·

Free VPNs are a privacy nightmare. You shouldn’t download them

31 points by Anon84 6y ago

diegoperini 6y ago
I deploy this[0] to my own personal EC2 on AWS where I also deploy many other small, hacky projects for personal use. I didn't create this but whoever did, it's a remarkable and very easy to use setup. Highly recommend it. I give access to it to my close friends and family. They love it! [0] https://github.com/mobilejazz/docker-ipsec-vpn-server https://github.com/mobilejazz/docker-ipsec-vpn-server
- np_tedious 6y ago
  Would you mind sharing how much this usually costs you a month? The EC2 is easy to figure out, but the network traffic I have a harder time with
  - diegoperini 6y ago
    I pay $60 for t3.medium on N. Virginia , without any EBS volumes attached. An additional $2 for Route 53 also. (VAT included) The average traffic consists of: - 2 people heavily using it, video streaming and stuff. - 2 people using it every once in a while per week, mainly for social network sites. This much data usage only costs $0.11 as of August 2020. A much smaller instance would work if it is gonna be used solely by this container. I believe you can get away with as cheap as $20.
    - np_tedious 6y ago
      Thanks for such a thorough answer! Somehow I thought the network costs would be worse. I have a micro with some room to spare, it's quite possible I could pull this off at very little marginal cost.
newscracker 6y ago
Like this article says towards the end, I would just recommend ProtonVPN for anyone looking for a casual free VPN service. None of the free services is going to be enough for fast streaming or downloads anyway. For those who trust the "cloud" and just want (only) a VPN service under their control are capable of logging in to servers and running some commands, I'd recommend Algo [1] with WireGuard. [1]: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  It depends what you're using a VPN for. If you're looking for anonimity, using a VPS with Algo is counterproductive as you now have a single IP you're always using and that only you yourself is using. This is worse than your Dynamic IP on your home/phone connection. For this purpose commercial providers are better because you're hiding in a crowd. If you're just looking to encrypt your traffic on an untrusted wifi or trying to connect to your own services, then Algo is great. I use it too for that purpose.
  - newscracker 6y ago
    I agree. But the simplicity of deploying Algo (for those who can) means that you can always spin up a new instance, use it and trash it regularly to avoid being tied to a single IP (though I'm not convinced that hiding in a crowd based on IP address is going to be of help; it would still require several other mitigating measures in place against tracking).
GekkePrutser 6y ago
General rule: If you're not paying you're not the customer, you're the product ;) However they contradict themselves a bit by recommending ProtonVPN and Windscribe at the end. So there ARE good free VPNs. But they're promotions with the intent on you becoming the customer in the future.
auganov 6y ago
The whole idea of VPNs (or extra hops in general[0]) providing security is very context specific. For the vast majority of people they seemingly chose to trust a VPN provider over their ISP which is hard to justify. If you don't have a reason to be afraid of surveillance the best thing to do is nothing. [0] usually even worse if not VPNs used by many
- tw04 6y ago
  >The whole idea of VPNs (or extra hops in general[0]) providing security is very context specific. For the vast majority of people they seemingly chose to trust a VPN provider over their ISP which is hard to justify. The whole idea of VPNs and why I encourage people to use them is so that when they're sitting on public wifi at a coffee shop, their traffic is going out encrypted. It has almost nothing to do with hiding from authorities or authorities surveilling you. It has everything to do with the kiddiot in the corner hoping to steal a login because your mom re-used the same one 400 times and her favorite cross-stitch site doesn't use SSL.
  - auganov 6y ago
    Well, using public WiFi is a good example of a situation where there is a reasonable expectation of tampering. Point is there's no easy win if you don't adequately understand your threat model. If you then end up using the VPN even when you're not on an untrusted network then it's questionable. The concern with VPNs isn't state level players either. Much more likely to have a rouge admin or hackers at a VPN provider than a big ISP. They get to see your clear text connections too. Not even talking about minor concerns like the fact that some VPNs won't put you behind a NAT like most networks would. Had an http proxy running and was sending tons of spam traffic to Russian and Ukrainian (I hope that's all they were doing!) websites for weeks before I realized I had to lock down ingress traffic myself.
sidcool 6y ago
I use NordVPN. Is it safe?
- varbhat 6y ago
  No. Use Bitmask
  - sidcool 6y ago
    Reasons being?
    - jstarfish 6y ago
      They've been compromised at the hypervisory level before.
      - sidcool 6y ago
        Oops
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Free VPNs are great for evading censorship. For everything else, you need you'd probably be better of using VPN + Tor.
varbhat 6y ago
https://bitmask.net/ https://bitmask.net/

31 points by Anon84 6y ago

I deploy this[0] to my own personal EC2 on AWS where I also deploy many other small, hacky projects for personal use. I didn't create this but whoever did, it's a remarkable and very easy to use setup. Highly recommend it. I give access to it to my close friends and family. They love it! [0] https://github.com/mobilejazz/docker-ipsec-vpn-server https://github.com/mobilejazz/docker-ipsec-vpn-server

np_tedious 6y ago
Would you mind sharing how much this usually costs you a month? The EC2 is easy to figure out, but the network traffic I have a harder time with
- diegoperini 6y ago
  I pay $60 for t3.medium on N. Virginia , without any EBS volumes attached. An additional $2 for Route 53 also. (VAT included) The average traffic consists of: - 2 people heavily using it, video streaming and stuff. - 2 people using it every once in a while per week, mainly for social network sites. This much data usage only costs $0.11 as of August 2020. A much smaller instance would work if it is gonna be used solely by this container. I believe you can get away with as cheap as $20.
  - np_tedious 6y ago
    Thanks for such a thorough answer! Somehow I thought the network costs would be worse. I have a micro with some room to spare, it's quite possible I could pull this off at very little marginal cost.

newscracker 6y ago

Like this article says towards the end, I would just recommend ProtonVPN for anyone looking for a casual free VPN service. None of the free services is going to be enough for fast streaming or downloads anyway. For those who trust the "cloud" and just want (only) a VPN service under their control are capable of logging in to servers and running some commands, I'd recommend Algo [1] with WireGuard. [1]: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

GekkePrutser 6y ago
It depends what you're using a VPN for. If you're looking for anonimity, using a VPS with Algo is counterproductive as you now have a single IP you're always using and that only you yourself is using. This is worse than your Dynamic IP on your home/phone connection. For this purpose commercial providers are better because you're hiding in a crowd. If you're just looking to encrypt your traffic on an untrusted wifi or trying to connect to your own services, then Algo is great. I use it too for that purpose.
- newscracker 6y ago
  I agree. But the simplicity of deploying Algo (for those who can) means that you can always spin up a new instance, use it and trash it regularly to avoid being tied to a single IP (though I'm not convinced that hiding in a crowd based on IP address is going to be of help; it would still require several other mitigating measures in place against tracking).

GekkePrutser 6y ago

General rule: If you're not paying you're not the customer, you're the product ;) However they contradict themselves a bit by recommending ProtonVPN and Windscribe at the end. So there ARE good free VPNs. But they're promotions with the intent on you becoming the customer in the future.

auganov 6y ago

The whole idea of VPNs (or extra hops in general[0]) providing security is very context specific. For the vast majority of people they seemingly chose to trust a VPN provider over their ISP which is hard to justify. If you don't have a reason to be afraid of surveillance the best thing to do is nothing. [0] usually even worse if not VPNs used by many

tw04 6y ago
>The whole idea of VPNs (or extra hops in general[0]) providing security is very context specific. For the vast majority of people they seemingly chose to trust a VPN provider over their ISP which is hard to justify. The whole idea of VPNs and why I encourage people to use them is so that when they're sitting on public wifi at a coffee shop, their traffic is going out encrypted. It has almost nothing to do with hiding from authorities or authorities surveilling you. It has everything to do with the kiddiot in the corner hoping to steal a login because your mom re-used the same one 400 times and her favorite cross-stitch site doesn't use SSL.
- auganov 6y ago
  Well, using public WiFi is a good example of a situation where there is a reasonable expectation of tampering. Point is there's no easy win if you don't adequately understand your threat model. If you then end up using the VPN even when you're not on an untrusted network then it's questionable. The concern with VPNs isn't state level players either. Much more likely to have a rouge admin or hackers at a VPN provider than a big ISP. They get to see your clear text connections too. Not even talking about minor concerns like the fact that some VPNs won't put you behind a NAT like most networks would. Had an http proxy running and was sending tons of spam traffic to Russian and Ukrainian (I hope that's all they were doing!) websites for weeks before I realized I had to lock down ingress traffic myself.

sidcool 6y ago

I use NordVPN. Is it safe?

varbhat 6y ago
No. Use Bitmask
- sidcool 6y ago
  Reasons being?
  - jstarfish 6y ago
    They've been compromised at the hypervisory level before.
    - sidcool 6y ago
      Oops

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago

Free VPNs are great for evading censorship. For everything else, you need you'd probably be better of using VPN + Tor.

varbhat 6y ago

https://bitmask.net/ https://bitmask.net/