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Exactly. Is there anyone whose primary use case for a personal VPN is not "Geofence bypass for region-locked content"?? Whenever a state in the US passes a new
by hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Exactly. Is there anyone whose primary use case for a personal VPN is not "Geofence bypass for region-locked content"??
Whenever a state in the US passes a new "we need your ID to watch porn" law, sales of personal VPNs must predictably skyrocket in that state.
- tim333 3y agoThere's also bypassing nanny software in coffee shops. I've had checking a word meaning on Urban Dictionary and checking the odds of Trump winning 2024 blocked by that. I guess for naughty words and gambling?
- tshaddox 3y agoIs "geofence bypass for region-locked content" actually “illicit”?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Is "geofence bypass for region-locked content" actually “illicit”? Yes, in practically every jurisdiction. It’s wilful breach of contract, tortious interference with the content distributor’s licensing schemes and copyright infringement.
- raxxorraxor 3y agoThis is false, it is not illegal. You might be in violation of a specific contract, but that is far from it being illegal. For example Steam might ban you if you circumvent a region lock. Reason for that is that there are other legal requirements for them as a market place.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago> This is false, it is not illegal. I highly doubt you know the laws in every region globally. This may be true in yours, but it's not a good idea to make such blanket, objective statements online.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoUnless you have any explicit court case decisions to the contrary, I'm calling bullshit. I did a simple Google search and could not find any examples of someone being sued or prosecuted for region bypass.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Unless you have any explicit court case decisions to the contrary I also don’t think there is prosecutorial precedent for murdering someone with a sea cucumber; that doesn’t make it licit (or legal).
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoWhen was the last time you heard of anyone murdering someone with a sea cucumber? People obviously use VPNs all the time for region bypass, and have for years, so if anyone had an issue with it it surely would have had some relevant legal proceedings. Laws only mean what courts say they mean. Besides that, I have simply never heard any argument of region bypass being illegal or otherwise illicit, and you haven't provided any evidence to the contrary.
- chrisfinazzo 3y agoA notable exception being the use of a VPN to access region-protected content. INAL, but while this use case might violate ToS, the case law suggests that courts deem this to be fair use provided you don't breech other laws in the process (e.g, copyrights).
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoAgree that it's the digital equivalent of jaywalking.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> tortious interference with the content distributor’s licensing schemes No it's not. Tortious interference with a business relationship is no doubt what you're referring to here, but it's a long bow with multiple layers of indirection. It is "intentionally acting to prevent someone from successfully establishing or maintaining business relationships with others". Miramax, as a content distributor, might license their content to Netflix. You are a customer of Netflix. Now say you are a customer of NordVPN. For one, NordVPN isn't trying to prevent you maintaining a business relationship with Netflix. Nor is it trying to prevent Netflix having a business relationship with Miramax. NordVPN may provide you means by which you can choose to be in violation of your TOS with Netflix. It's not acting to ensure you are. Netflix doesn't have to -allow- this, hence VPN/proxy detection. But they have recourse, drop you as a customer, for you, the customer's, actions, not for NordVPN's actions. Miramax can't argue that NordVPN acted to interfere with their licensing scheme with Netflix.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Miramax can't argue that NordVPN acted to interfere with their licensing scheme with Netflix No, but they could argue that the VPN user interfered with their licensing scheme. (If everyone in a region circumvented geoblocks, why would someone in that region pay for regional rights to that content?) They wouldn’t, because it’s not worth it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> Exactly. Is there anyone whose primary use case for a personal VPN is not "Geofence bypass for region-locked content"?? Hi! /waves I use a VPN to stop my ISP from monitoring my traffic and selling my personal information. My VPN (usually) exits in the same "region" as my real location; I guess if I hit a geoblock I could look at that, but it hasn't come up.
- aborsy 3y agoYou can set mullvad (which offers VPN service) as your DNS over https server. Traffic is also mostly encrypted by https. Your ISP still gets the destination IP addresses, though they are harder to track. Wouldn’t that address your concern?
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI think this is the old way of thinking about it. Skipping the broader discussion of AI, the ridiculous amount of automatic and human impossible pattern, matching and correlation with seemingly harmless data is something that I don’t think we are equipped to fully comprehend. The time at which I hit some meta CDN, seems harmless. Until combined with some cookie and some access time to some asset it uniquely identifies me to previously anonymized data. So no, I do not think HTTP and a good DNS are enough.
- hnlmorg 3y agoIP addresses and host names (as defined in SNI). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoNo; until Encrypted Client Hello is ubiquitous HTTPS still has domains in cleartext. Also, I don't think we should be casually dismissing tracking by IP addresses.
- dec0dedab0de 3y agoHi! /waves I use a VPN to stop my ISP from monitoring my traffic and selling my personal information. But then how do you stop your VPN company from doing the same? You essentially have two ISPs now.
- chuckadams 3y agoSir I would have you know that I participate in no such illicit tomfoolery. My VPN use is strictly for torrenting pirated content!
- cjk2 3y agoI reckon the majority of VPN sales are actually people being bombarded by adverts and sponsorships for VPNs and think that is actually of benefit. I am constantly bombarded by questions on which VPN product to use from people who are even unaware you can steal content. "Are you downloading films from anywhere?" "Huh what from Disney Plus?"
- jonathantf2 3y agoMy dad used to complain that he couldn't get on certain websites, got CAPTCHAs a lot more than he used to and often prices came up in US dollars on his computer, turns out he paid for a 3y plan to NordVPN and had it start on start up on his computer. He can barely work the Sky box never mind stream stuff from the internet, he got duped into thinking it would make him "safer" when in reality it just makes using the internet a lot harder as everyone flags your traffic as malicious based on the datacentre IP.
- username135 3y agoWhy is your assumption that VPN traffic is being blocked because it's malicious?
- SkyPuncher 3y agoBecause it absolutely is. I occasionally fire up Mullvad when I’m on the go. I get blocked way more often when I use it
- csours 3y agoIf you read carefully, you may see that they did not say that "VPN traffic is being blocked because it's malicious"
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoBecause people run crawlers and perform illegal activity, and/or because ‘security companies’ sell the IP lists as low reputation potentially malicious IPs?
- xmodem 3y agoAnyone who has browsed through one of these personal VPN services - or even a DIY VPN from a datacentre IP - for more than about 10 minutes will have experienced the increase in captcha's.
- kefyras 3y ago>Anyone who has browsed through one of these personal VPN services - or even a DIY VPN from a datacentre IP - for more than about 10 minutes will have experienced the increase in captcha's. So has anyone behind random CGNAT.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoTorrenting and buying a service cheaper are two examples.
- blackeyeblitzar 3y agoYes, lots of people have other primary use cases? Why is that even a surprise? VPN companies are more trustworthy than my ISP. Many get third party audits and publish results. And if the VPN company and server are in a privacy friendly country, they are hard to subpoena. Individual privacy being the default is itself valuable. This is leaving aside numerous other reasons like avoiding censorship or persecution or whatever.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoYes, I was using a bit of hyperbole. But that said, on this point I do agree with the author: privacy improvements from using a VPN are marginal for the average user due to the now widespread use of HTTPS. Yes, your ISP can see which domains you visit, but that's about it. I'm curious if there have been any successful lawsuits or prosecutions based solely on domain access logs.
- RajT88 3y agoUnless you're using DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS. Then they can't. Side question: Anyone know of a gateway or self-host service which supports DNS over HTTPS relay? i.e. it will accept vanilla DNS requests, but if it needs to forward requests, it will only do so to DoH / DoT servers?
- Kwpolska 3y agoI absolutely despise my ISP’s business arm, but I trust their network arm not to do something stupid. I certainly trust them more than a company in a remote tax haven with a broken legal system.
- superkuh 3y agoMy ISP Comcast (sometimes called Xfinity) has regularly done MITM attacks that inject javascript into web pages since 2013. Surfing the web without tunneling my connection is unacceptable with an ISP that commits CFAA crimes like this. It is a valid use case for a VPN or VPS tunnel for the 30 million of us stuck with a comcast monopoly.
- barfbagginus 3y agoI am old fashioned. So I would use a VPN if I want to prevent my landlord from getting a cease and desist letter from a lawyer when I download warez. Mostly audio books, and textbooks, but also movies and music. Ie, it's the use case where you Pirate all the media, and use a VPN as a security bandaid against anti-post-scarcity busybodies.
- ldjb 3y agoPiracy is also listed under the "When to use a personal VPN?" heading.
- g4zj 3y agoIt is, but I believe the comment you replied to was in response to this line. > Is there anyone whose primary use case for a personal VPN is not "Geofence bypass for region-locked content"??
- averageRoyalty 3y agoSo... piracy, but worded fancy? There's no ethical difference between faking your location to bypass licensing and copyright and downloading a file via torrent to bypass licensing and copyright. Both are piracy.
- cyanydeez 3y ago...piracy
- snapplebobapple 3y agoMy primary use case for a vpn is i dont trust people on my guest network and dont want their traffic looking like it is coming from an ip associated with me. I am not protecting against 3 letter agency levels of surveillance so i dont need the extra benefit and slowness of tor, i just need to move that traffic to a different jurisdiction to complicate things enough that people dont bother to figure out it came from my network on the off chance that someone i let on myguest network does something untoward. does that count?
- theginger 3y agoThat's a valid privacy concern But is a VPN service a good solution? Certainly not if you are on a shared IP with the VPN. I know you can get some with a dedicated IP, but with most VPN providers it is still probably coming out of a cesspool of ips that you don't want any kind of association to.
- snapplebobapple 3y agoShared ip is even better if you are reasonably sure the provider deletes logs (i.ec you are using mullvad). Good luck proving in a court of law which of the firehouse of clients did whatever you are claiming.
- alex_lav 3y agoYour use case is valid, I’m just kind of curious why they’re on your guest network if you don’t trust them? Like an AirBnB or something?
- snapplebobapple 3y agoWorse than an airbnb, my relatives when they visit, lol
- mbesto 3y agoExcept that use-case doesn't even work because any service worth a salt just blocks the VPN's IP addresses. For example: US citizen living in US goes to the UK and uses VPN service to watch US-based netflix. Netflix blocks this.