5 ms·

When it comes to VPN providers you're essentially moving your traffic from your ISP to the provider itself, so it's not entirely private. If you want to be abso

by bkq 4y ago

When it comes to VPN providers you're essentially moving your traffic from your ISP to the provider itself, so it's not entirely private. If you want to be absolutely sure that no logs are kept, then you're best off running your own VPN somewhere, so you remain completely in control.

bertman 4y ago
>somewhere You mean on a VPS that you also rented from someone else, therefore essentially moving your traffic from your ISP to...?
- homeland221 4y ago
  I think he meant more control of the traffic by making sure personally it won't log anything. That is high technical skillset out of reach for most users. And if you do even set that up, you will waste a lot of time maintaining. The time lost need to get compensated as he will need to pay bills...and hence he himself quit his day job and become NordVPN. Again, not many users willing to go thru that.
  - Last5Digits 4y ago
    But can you really do that? In the end, you still use the network architecture of the VPS provider. What's preventing them from logging traffic outside of your VPS? You also don't get the benefit of your traffic getting mixed together under the same address, since VPS providers will assign you an individual address.
  - mintythoughts 4y ago
- doix 4y ago
  Everything is a trade-off, at some point you need to trust someone. I've got a box with OVH that I use as a VPN with wireguard. I just assume that OVH aren't logging all my traffic because it would cost them money and cut into their margins. I would never do anything illegal via that VPN though, since it would be trivial to trace it back to me. I'm sure OVH wouldn't hesitate to hand over my details if the authorities requested them. But as a privacy protection on public wifi, it works well. When choosing a VPN, you should think about what you're trying to achieve and what you're trying to protect yourself from. Most non-tech people I know that use VPNs, use them to bypass geo-restrictions. For that purpose, these giant commercial ones are probably fine.
  - Last5Digits 4y ago
    Sure, but if I need to trust someone, I'd rather trust a company whose reputation is staked on not giving out my data. A VPN provider that easily bows to authorities is a VPN provider that will lose a massive portion of their user base. Some server farm probably profits very little from VPN servers, so if some government (or even some IP lawyer) knocks on their door, then they won't take the risk.
    - mintythoughts 4y ago
im3w1l 4y ago
If you pay anonymously for your vpn, then the account is not tied to any identity. You would need to some additional data source for that. Either the isp, or "the same vpn ip first visited shadysite.com and then logged in on bank.com with name John Doe". If you are paying with say your credit card, I guess the only benefit is that the vpn may have a better privacy policy and/or jurisdiction than your isp.
sph 4y ago
At that point why not mail some cash or cryptomoney to Mullvad or other VPN vendor with strong privacy guarantees? Because you need to give your name and credit card data to get a VPS, and in the end you're still sending encrypted data through someone's network.
- nightfly 4y ago
  VPS providers (probably) aren't in the business of extracting value from my web traffic like a VPN company is. And I already have relationships with VPS providers, I don't have to "mail cash" to some company I don't really know and my privacy worries aren't that extreme: usually I either want to keep copyright strikes from going to my ISP or I'm on a sketchy free/public network somewhere and I want to go though somewhere I trust just a little bit more than that.
  - sph 4y ago
    Define "extracting value from your web traffic". VPN vendors are extracting value out of your monthly subscription like anybody else. Though the shadier ones might _also_ sell any metadata (to whom?), but we're not talking about these, and selling data is not a necessary precondition to being a VPN vendor. In reality, the only people that are really interested in knowing in aggregate and in specific where people connect to when trying to hide are governments. And they don't pay, but just put a tap somewhere and if an alarm is triggered, send a court order to get logs and data upstream. That applies for both VPN and VPS vendors. So the goal is finding someone that has as minimal logs and invoicing data as legally possible.
  - Last5Digits 4y ago
    Why do you think VPS providers wouldn't be interested in extracting your data? Whether you use a VPN provider or a VPS provider, it's always going to depend on the company whose service you are using. Pick a cheap, untrusted VPS provider and you're getting just as exploited as if you were using a cheap, untrusted VPN provider. It's also trivial to map the traffic of your VPS to you, since there's a 1:1 relationship between the IP your VPS uses and your actual IP. Additionally IP lawyers may have much more success in threatening litigation to get your provider to rat you out. The provider would get little reward from not doing that, since harboring torrenters is probably not their main business.
artdigital 4y ago
I keep reading this argument but it’s not at all why people like me use a VPN. It’s trivial to pinpoint my location just based on IP. Setup a cloudflare worker and dump the request object, it gets very close, down to giving you the rough zip code area. Using something like NordVPN (even with a server in the same country I’m in) changes my IP proximity to something much more broad. Then in cafes and public networks where I absolutely don’t trust the network

by bkq 4y ago

bertman 4y ago

>somewhere You mean on a VPS that you also rented from someone else, therefore essentially moving your traffic from your ISP to...?

homeland221 4y ago
I think he meant more control of the traffic by making sure personally it won't log anything. That is high technical skillset out of reach for most users. And if you do even set that up, you will waste a lot of time maintaining. The time lost need to get compensated as he will need to pay bills...and hence he himself quit his day job and become NordVPN. Again, not many users willing to go thru that.
- Last5Digits 4y ago
  But can you really do that? In the end, you still use the network architecture of the VPS provider. What's preventing them from logging traffic outside of your VPS? You also don't get the benefit of your traffic getting mixed together under the same address, since VPS providers will assign you an individual address.
- mintythoughts 4y ago
doix 4y ago
Everything is a trade-off, at some point you need to trust someone. I've got a box with OVH that I use as a VPN with wireguard. I just assume that OVH aren't logging all my traffic because it would cost them money and cut into their margins. I would never do anything illegal via that VPN though, since it would be trivial to trace it back to me. I'm sure OVH wouldn't hesitate to hand over my details if the authorities requested them. But as a privacy protection on public wifi, it works well. When choosing a VPN, you should think about what you're trying to achieve and what you're trying to protect yourself from. Most non-tech people I know that use VPNs, use them to bypass geo-restrictions. For that purpose, these giant commercial ones are probably fine.
- Last5Digits 4y ago
  Sure, but if I need to trust someone, I'd rather trust a company whose reputation is staked on not giving out my data. A VPN provider that easily bows to authorities is a VPN provider that will lose a massive portion of their user base. Some server farm probably profits very little from VPN servers, so if some government (or even some IP lawyer) knocks on their door, then they won't take the risk.
  - mintythoughts 4y ago

im3w1l 4y ago

If you pay anonymously for your vpn, then the account is not tied to any identity. You would need to some additional data source for that. Either the isp, or "the same vpn ip first visited shadysite.com and then logged in on bank.com with name John Doe". If you are paying with say your credit card, I guess the only benefit is that the vpn may have a better privacy policy and/or jurisdiction than your isp.

sph 4y ago

At that point why not mail some cash or cryptomoney to Mullvad or other VPN vendor with strong privacy guarantees? Because you need to give your name and credit card data to get a VPS, and in the end you're still sending encrypted data through someone's network.

nightfly 4y ago
VPS providers (probably) aren't in the business of extracting value from my web traffic like a VPN company is. And I already have relationships with VPS providers, I don't have to "mail cash" to some company I don't really know and my privacy worries aren't that extreme: usually I either want to keep copyright strikes from going to my ISP or I'm on a sketchy free/public network somewhere and I want to go though somewhere I trust just a little bit more than that.
- sph 4y ago
  Define "extracting value from your web traffic". VPN vendors are extracting value out of your monthly subscription like anybody else. Though the shadier ones might _also_ sell any metadata (to whom?), but we're not talking about these, and selling data is not a necessary precondition to being a VPN vendor. In reality, the only people that are really interested in knowing in aggregate and in specific where people connect to when trying to hide are governments. And they don't pay, but just put a tap somewhere and if an alarm is triggered, send a court order to get logs and data upstream. That applies for both VPN and VPS vendors. So the goal is finding someone that has as minimal logs and invoicing data as legally possible.
- Last5Digits 4y ago
  Why do you think VPS providers wouldn't be interested in extracting your data? Whether you use a VPN provider or a VPS provider, it's always going to depend on the company whose service you are using. Pick a cheap, untrusted VPS provider and you're getting just as exploited as if you were using a cheap, untrusted VPN provider. It's also trivial to map the traffic of your VPS to you, since there's a 1:1 relationship between the IP your VPS uses and your actual IP. Additionally IP lawyers may have much more success in threatening litigation to get your provider to rat you out. The provider would get little reward from not doing that, since harboring torrenters is probably not their main business.

artdigital 4y ago

I keep reading this argument but it’s not at all why people like me use a VPN. It’s trivial to pinpoint my location just based on IP. Setup a cloudflare worker and dump the request object, it gets very close, down to giving you the rough zip code area. Using something like NordVPN (even with a server in the same country I’m in) changes my IP proximity to something much more broad. Then in cafes and public networks where I absolutely don’t trust the network