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Is there any other real world usecases for VPN nowadays other than: 1. Getting access to geolocked data 2. Torrenting "Linux ISOs" ?

0x073 1y ago
Free wifi hotspots Nowadays most traffic is tls encrypted, but there are still metadata that can be collected.
- gruez 1y ago
  >but there are still metadata that can be collected. That logic is questionable given how poorly "spying on public wifi users" scales. You either need to put a bunch of eavesdropping radios in a bunch of public places or somehow convince a bunch of small businesses to use your "free wifi" solution. Even if you do have access, it's hard to monetize the data, given that nearly every device does MAC randomization (so you can't track across different SSIDs) and iOS/windows rotates mac addresses for open/public networks. OTOH setting up metadata capture on a commercial VPN service is pretty straightforward, because you control all the servers.
  - baby_souffle 1y ago
    Doesn't pretty much every Starbucks location in the United States use a nationwide provider? Despite the randomized Mac address, you can still fingerprint devices using all the usual tricks when they connect to the authentication and authorization page before you allow them to access the broader internet. If the receipt had a passcode on it, you've got a link between all of your browser fingerprint, radio fingerprint and payment detail fingerprint and possibly customer loyalty provided at time of payment.
    - gruez 1y ago
      >Despite the randomized Mac address, you can still fingerprint devices using all the usual tricks when they connect to the authentication and authorization page before you allow them to access the broader internet. Fingerprinting is overrated given that every iPhone 17 is identical to any other iPhone 17. If you leave system settings at stock, which most people do, there's very little to fingerprint. >Doesn't pretty much every Starbucks location in the United States use a nationwide provider? True, although mobile data is cheap and plentiful enough that I rarely bother using wifi at cafes or fast food places. The only time I use public wifi is if I'm staying long term, which basically only encompasses trains, airports, and hotels. Those are diverse enough that it's tough to build a complete profile. >If the receipt had a passcode on it, you've got a link between all of your browser fingerprint, radio fingerprint and payment detail fingerprint and possibly customer loyalty provided at time of payment. I don't think I ever saw a place that was that guarded about their wifi. The closest I've seen is hotels requiring your room/last name, which would allow them to identify you, but at the same time I'm not sure how much information they can glean, other than that I'm logging into gmail or airbnb. Persistent monitoring that ISPs can do is far more useful.
      - baby_souffle 1y ago
        > Those are diverse enough that it's tough to build a complete profile. Debatable; i promise you that somebody out there is willing to buy the info and will attempt to combine it with $otherInfo such that it becomes valuable enough for somebody else to buy. Lots of adtech/survalence-tech operates with thin margins at _massive scale_. > I don't think I ever saw a place that was that guarded about their wifi. It's rare; i'd run into it only a few times a year. Typically PoS systems and WiFi are not integrated. I also haven't really been paying attention since LTE is good now :).
ThatMedicIsASpy 1y ago
ISPs bad routing and peering
bilegeek 1y ago
3. Hosting websites with DDNS (though the abuse from that caused Mullvad and IVPN to drop port forwarding) 4. Though it hurts anonymity, and is relatively rare: I2P or Hyphanet, because some websites block known P2P nodes[1]. Important if your bank or work is being a jerk about it. 5. As ThatMedicIsASpy notes, ISP issues: some routers soil the bed from P2P, some ISP's throttle P2P traffic regardless of legality, etc. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/tc3bhs/is_anybody_else_blocked_from_wikipediawikimedia/ https://old.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/tc3bhs/is_anybody_else...
zer0tonin 1y ago
Those two are pretty big already to be honest. I guess a third one would be avoiding eavesdropping on public wi-fis.
- justapassenger 1y ago
  With TLS being everywhere, and just few clicks away from having DNS over TLS, I really don't get eavesdropping on public wifi prop value.
  - octo888 1y ago
    TLS doesn't hide which websites (hostnames) you visit
    - IggleSniggle 1y ago
      It does if you do DNS over TLS or HTTPS, although I guess that information would still be knowable to your DNS provider if they terminate your TLS behind the scenes
      - optimalquiet 1y ago
        Not quite. In order to make TLS certs work on a per-site basis, requests sent over HTTPS also include a virtual host indicator in cleartext that shows the hostname of the site you’re trying to connect to, so if the IP on the other end is hosting multiple domains it can find the right cert. For this reason some people feel that DNS over TLS is pretty pointless as a privacy measure.
        MrOwen 1y ago
        I think this is only true if SNI is disabled. Otherwise you really only get the IP of SRC and DEST.
        appointment 1y ago
gambiting 1y ago
3. Avoiding government-mandated record keeping by ISPs in a country like the UK, where all ISPs have to keep a year of your browsing history and it can be accessed warrant free by 17 different agencies(including DEFRA, the agriculture agency). And yes, I'm aware that you're most likely trading one surveilence for another - but honestly at this point I'd much rather trust my paid VPN provider with my browsing data than my ISP and ultimately the government.
- justapassenger 1y ago
  Given that most of the web has TLS and you can easily do DNS over TLS - that's very very high level metadata, where I personally just don't see much ROI vs to giving that metadata to random company with no regulations whatsoever.
  - octo888 1y ago
    Many TLS deployments still leak the hostname in plain text as part of SNI
- retube 1y ago
  > but honestly at this point I'd much rather trust my paid VPN provider with my browsing data than my ISP and ultimately the government. Your ISP will need to comply with local laws and regulations, and you'll have some recourse if broken. A third-party VPN operating in an overseas jurisdiction could be doing anything with your data.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    Unless it's selling the data back to my own government, I'd rather a foreign commercial VPN provider have that information rather than my own domestic ISP or my own domestic government. My government can do parallel construction, can send teams of armed gunmen to my house, and otherwise find far more methods to persecute me than the intelligence services of Russia or China can. Being innocent of any kind of crime does not necessarily remove one from the crosshairs of law enforcement organizations, particularly the FBI, who have an extensive, well-documented history of violating citizens' constitutional rights, conducting partisan witch hunts against political opponents, being a lawless menace to civil rights activists, anti-war activists, gay rights activists, both pro-abortion and anti-abortion activists, and is probably busy right now planning on being a menace to trans inclusivity activists. There is no such thing as a friendly government, but I'd much rather have my data in the hands of a government 10,000 miles away than in the hands of my own government. My own government hunts, injures, stalks, harasses, socially ostracizes, and even kills my fellow citizens far more than any foreign government ever has.
mr_mitm 1y ago
I VPN into my home network for added privacy in public wifis, and to access private services.
gruez 1y ago
Protection from IP tracking, especially if your ISP doesn't do CGNAT. Of course there's a trade-off here between a) your ISP (who knows your billing information) knowing which sites you visit, and any site you visit can correlate internet activity back to your household b) your VPN provider knowing all the sites you visit
- Havoc 1y ago
  CGNAT won't save you in a world where everything is fingerprinted to within an inch of it's life.
  - TurboSkyline 1y ago
    But a VPN, commercial or self-hosed, also won't stop fingerprinting. It changes your apparent IP address, but the rest of the characteristics of your device and browser stay the same.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hemabe 1y ago
In Germany (and probably in the UK too), you now have to be very careful about what you write online. There is actually a section 188 that makes insulting, defaming, or slandering people in political life a criminal offense. You can now face heavy fines for minor insults (“idiot”) or even have your home searched. A VPN can be useful here.
- hansvm 1y ago
  What idiot signed that bullshit into law?
  - skrause 1y ago
    That law has existed since 1951 and is based on an executive order from 1931 by Hindenburg.
  - dartharva 1y ago
    This is actually not uncommon in most of the world. American 1A is actually an extremely novel concept most other countries still haven't caught up on.
    - crossroadsguy 1y ago
      American 1A is as strong as it's proving to be right now and increasingly proving to be stronger and stronger by the day, since January this year! Many other countries have protections like that, "on paper" (!!!) - but the point is in how it is used or misused, or rather completely ignored - directly or indirectly, like in the USA currently and many other countries in the world.
    - Y_Y 1y ago
      Novel in what sense? Are you familiar with the hisory of free speech in e.g. the UK, Sweden, and France?
      - IAmBroom 1y ago
        The UK, where the government has literally smashed printing presses in the newspaper age when magazines were thought to be publishing embarrassing news about the Crown? Where the government's legal authority to do so is still intact? That UK?
hansvm 1y ago
A ton of ISPs use deep packet inspection for various kinds of filtering (and other shenanigans). When they get it wrong it manifests to the user as certain websites or access patterns being inaccessible and the ISPs customer support agreeing that you should have access and being able to do fuck all to fix it. A VPN in the middle usually solves the issue.
- TZubiri 1y ago
  Wait, I think an ISP cannot inspect the content of packets that are encrypted, say, with HTTPs. In order to inspect TLS encrypted packets you need access to the end-device, controlling the end-router is not sufficient since you would not have access to the device certificates. If you can prove that an ISP can inspect packets, it would be major news.
  - calvinmorrison 1y ago
    They may not need the contents, seeing you're connecting to a netflix IP and having a lot of data transfer may be a good reason to throttle, for example.
  - esseph 1y ago
    * Russia * Kazakhstan * China * Belarus * Iran * Mayanmar - list of countries that are known or suspected to MITM traffic, including SSL
    - coderatlarge 1y ago
      how so they supposedly do it?
      - walterbell 1y ago
        SSL certificates have a centralized hierarchy. Many browsers trust a long list of root certificate authorities from multiple countries. https://cyberscoop.com/russia-tls-security-certificate-authority/ https://cyberscoop.com/russia-tls-security-certificate-autho... https://jpgamboa.com/china-ssl-authority-revoked-by-browsers/ https://jpgamboa.com/china-ssl-authority-revoked-by-browsers...
msp26 1y ago
Accessing services from the UK without handing over your personal ID to a service that will inevitably get hacked. This happened to discord literally a few days ago.
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago
  Underrated comment. And why do we need to justify privacy? Justify our non-privacy!
- JonChesterfield 1y ago
  "Hacked" will be "left the data on a public S3 bucket until someone noticed" or similar.
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> Getting access to geolocked data I use VPNs when I'm trying to ferret out the scope of an outage. I have VPN servers on local ISP which moves me around different routing. I use a commercial service to move me further out and to other countries.
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago
  So you are doing a manual version of what uptime monitors do.
  - WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
    Sort of. I suppose the difference is that I don't need to know in advance where the fault is. ex: An upstream, 3rd party service provider appears offline.
ragequittah 1y ago
One others seem to have missed 3. ad blocking on your phone away from home. Almost all VPNs have a block ads / known malicious traffic function. This can be done with just a DNS but often mobile carriers will block using your own DNS.
baby_souffle 1y ago
The original use for a VPN - getting access to private resources - is still very much in play. I don't just mean being able to access some private web interface you have on a private server in your at home, I mean connecting a satellite office to the main corporate office. But for all of these consumer marketed VPNs, I think your list has 90%+ covered...
- TZubiri 1y ago
  Interesting that we use the same word to describe both technologies, but semantically and technically they are very different. Perhaps we use the same word to describe them because initially they did use the same technologies, but they have branched out ever since? Maybe IPSec would be a common tech used. But the algorithms are not the same anymore since they serve different purposes (Personal privacy vs corporate/sysadmin security) In the corporate world VPNs were usually a lower level abstraction security mechanism or a redundant security mechanism to either complement application layer_security, or to hot-patch modern security unto legacy LAN systems. VPN encryption is usually provided by the local router. Common algorithms are IPSec/IKev2. In the personal privacy world, we are talking about a proxy that hides identification such as IP addresses, and pools connections to provide privacy. The actual encryption is not the main security mechanism even, as it only covers the transit between consumer to proxy, leaving (a potentially longer transit) between the proxy to the actual destination. In terms of purpose and architecture it's closer to bitcoin tumblers, or Tor or Freenet, or money laundering placement. The fact that they call it VPNs seems to me more of a marketing scheme or political play to avoid association with all of the above, than an actual technical or academical description. If someone were to analyse these technologies, I'm sure a neutral or critical approach would avoid uncritically calling them VPNs in the same way that research is published not about Viagra, but on Sildenafil.
  - baby_souffle 1y ago
    > Interesting that we use the same word to describe both technologies, but semantically and technically they are very different. That's where my head was at. When i hear my colleagues talk about a VPN, i'm thinking about an IPSEC tunnel and an afternoon of swearing at ios on some outdated ASA. When I hear regular people talking about a VPN, my mind immediately goes to "oh, so you want to watch rick and morty on netflix and don't know anybody hosting a jellyfin/plex server". When do we coin a new term? Or do we? Does "vpn" turn into a word like "truck" where it's only the context that tells you if we're talking about a 2 axle pickup truck in a home depot parking lot or something pulling a 40ft container unit?
noman-land 1y ago
3. Not revealing your IP/location with every outgoing web request.
whatever1 1y ago
Access sites the government has blocked in your state/country
- eloisant 1y ago
  I would put that in the "geolocked data" category
JonChesterfield 1y ago
Sharing corporate info with your employees and not everyone else. You know, the "go to work" thing some people do.
- TZubiri 1y ago
  Just because something is called with the same name, doesn't mean it's the same thing. Especially if the naming is done on a product by a company that wants to sell the product, and especially if the name is not a protected trademark. Express VPN, NordVPN and Surfshark belong to another category of software than the VPNs used by companies. Some differences are: 1- One is used by consumers, the other is used by businesses. 2- One protects communications to a client-controlled Local area network. The other protects communications with third party services. 3- One provides encryption, the other provides anonymization.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    1- If we both use a hammer, and you use it for business while I use it for DIY, the tool is still the same thing. 2- The hammer doesn't care where the nail is; local carpentry or third-party furniture still require the same tool. 3- Both sides of the VPN are encrypted to each other, and anonymous to anyone else. No difference that I can see.
    - TZubiri 1y ago
      I don't think it's a great metaphor. First, a hammer is a build (compile time) tool, while VPN is a runtime tech. Closer to a nail if you will. Additionally, millions of products use hammers, while there's two product categories that use VPNs. The product distribution of VPN products is bimodal, there's no inbetweens it's either a privacy oriented consumer VPN, or it's a security oriented corporate product. Regarding the specific technology, there is no technical definition of what a VPN is, it's not an industry term, it's a marketing term. Similar to "Web", it's not HTTP, it's not TCP. This is in stark contrast to Internet (as in Internet Protocol). Related technologies are IPSec, IKev2, WireGuard, but VPN is one of those trademarkless industry buzzword terms that companies are can latch onto for free and participate of a commodity market. On an unrelated note, this is not unlike the term AI, which can somehow apply to fake images and conversational software. And coincidentally, modern AI is also bimodal, it's either text or syntethic images, the common ancestor might have been that the textual product originally was also synthetic generated text, but with agents and text as thought (in a Sappir-Whorf fashion) have since greatly diverged.
TZubiri 1y ago
3. Creating multiple accounts with platforms to break their ToS without getting chainbanned. 4. Perform DDoS 5. brute force passwords 6. try out leaked passwords 7. exploit vulns. 8. CSAM 9. Phish 10. Spam 11. Evade taxes with crypto 12. Sell drugs 13. Terrorism Lots of malicious uses for VPNs, or was your question about legitimate usecases? In which case: 14. Sending emails about cryptography 15. Pornography 16. activism 17. Journalism/Whistleblowing 18. Military Although some of the legitimate/ilegitimate categories might be subjective, which is precisely why it's a grey legal area at all.
tick_tock_tick 1y ago
I mean the EU has completely given up on free speech so if you want to say anything you better be hiding who you are.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Australian ISPs are legally required to retain metadata for two years. That's one of the best reasons to use a VPN if you're in Australia. Give up as little as possible. I have found, however, lots of sites block or Captcha-restrict IP addresses that are (somehow determined as) non-residential, and Netflix restricts its content as well.
- globalnode 1y ago
  Won't TOR browser block metadata collection?
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    Probably, yes. TOR can be problematic for other reasons, primarily that it can be significantly slower than 'clear' internet or VPN-internet. It's all a game of who do you trust most / least versus convenience in the end.
miki123211 1y ago
3. When you know/suspect your ISP is more shady than the VPN you're using. This applies particularly when you're doing something your government doesn't like. VPNs don't increase privacy, they just change who has the opportunity to spy on your traffic. Sometimes, it's much better if it's some foreign random ISP instead of your local government, who can send law enforcement agents where you live.
miki123211 1y ago
Another one is getting around content filters / service-specific throttling (think college dorms and campuses, hotels, public hotspots etc).
klinch 1y ago
Accessing "the internet" while visiting your family in China/Russia/Iran/Thailand/...
wyre 1y ago
My vpn bypasses the paywall on the public xfinitywifi hotspots making internet essentially free because I would likely being paying for Mullvad regardless.
ornel 1y ago
Way too many services in Mexico only work from Mexican IPs, from paying your electricity or internet bills to topping up highway toll accounts and even ordering food from a supermarket
Gustomaximus 1y ago
I use a VPN for 3 main reasons: 1) I need to come out of a particular country for some systems access. If I'm travelling it's easier than having IT team change permissions. 2) I use dedicated IPs for some systems. 3) Testing websites where I want to appear local to a particular country.
apt-apt-apt-apt 1y ago
3. Watching porn without your ISP knowing you are into furry sharks wearing banana costumes
brisky 1y ago
Testing your app/website when it has different behaviour depending on locale
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Real, but pretty minimal usage.
cess11 1y ago
I work from home and use a VPN service to get a bunch of IP:s I can easily switch between. Recently a SaaS supplier blocked my IP because I was logging in programmatically every thirty seconds to collect data on batch processing in a customer project, basically two HTTP requests to get an access key and then the data, and I was lazy so I just put those in a script and dumped the second response to a log file and put that in a scheduler. Turned out that another customer of the SaaS supplier somehow could see the traffic on my customer's SaaS instance and panicked because in their mind it was obviously the russians attacking or something, and when they brought this to the supplier they also panicked. So to keep doing this I had to move over to checking whether the previous access key was still valid and reuse it if so, as well as moving my 'location' to another country. Apparently this is fine but logging in two times a minute is not. It also happens that I need to do research on network services and cloud environments, where having the ability to just hit a couple of terminal incantations to switch 'where' I am helps out quite a bit sometimes.
- walterbell 1y ago
  > another customer of the SaaS supplier somehow could see the traffic on my customer's SaaS instance Is this common?
  - cess11 1y ago
    I'm not sure, but it definitely shouldn't be. It was surprising in a way I don't hesitate to call bad, but this supplier is an enterprise style organisation so of course they've only ranted at me and don't plan to alter their infrastructure.
mrweasel 1y ago
It's probably more that a lot of people have been convinced that they need a VPN, but they don't. There are use cases, like I trust Mullvad more than I trust some random hotels WiFi. When traveling it can provide a slightly higher base layer of trust. If you live in a country that restricts your internet access, which to be fair is most these days, a VPN can help. Most of us just don't care about those restrictions or they are more easily circumvented using a 3rd. party DNS. Also if you're in country like Iran or Russia, you really need to trust your VPN provider and strange corporate structures and staff sharing really isn't helping in that respect. For the average person, no you don't need a VPN. You might need one for a few days or week per year, if you travel and need to access your bank or corporate infrastructure (in that case your employer most likely have their own VPN). VPNs are a niche business, but online influencers have convinced a lot of people that they need a VPN for everything, which simply isn't the case for the vast majority of us.
- haskellshill 1y ago
  > I trust Mullvad more than I trust some random hotels WiFi For what exactly? All sites are HTTPS now anyway, so the only thing you're leaking is the hostnames / IPs you visit. I don't exactly see how the whole "hotel WIFI" thing is relevant at all, except as a dishonest marketing strategy by VPN salesmen
  - Citizen8396 1y ago
    ...and the IPs you connect from, which tend to correlate with where you live, work, and so on.
    - haskellshill 1y ago
      You connect to hotel WIFI from home and work?
      - Citizen8396 1y ago
        I plead the fifth.
kelvinjps10 1y ago
Why torrentingn Linux isos?
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  It's the classic "legal" use for torrenting, as many Linux orgs send users to torrents for updates. If someone also accidentally downloads a TB of movies and music on the way to the latest Mint upgrade, oops.

0x073 1y ago

Free wifi hotspots Nowadays most traffic is tls encrypted, but there are still metadata that can be collected.

gruez 1y ago
>but there are still metadata that can be collected. That logic is questionable given how poorly "spying on public wifi users" scales. You either need to put a bunch of eavesdropping radios in a bunch of public places or somehow convince a bunch of small businesses to use your "free wifi" solution. Even if you do have access, it's hard to monetize the data, given that nearly every device does MAC randomization (so you can't track across different SSIDs) and iOS/windows rotates mac addresses for open/public networks. OTOH setting up metadata capture on a commercial VPN service is pretty straightforward, because you control all the servers.
- baby_souffle 1y ago
  Doesn't pretty much every Starbucks location in the United States use a nationwide provider? Despite the randomized Mac address, you can still fingerprint devices using all the usual tricks when they connect to the authentication and authorization page before you allow them to access the broader internet. If the receipt had a passcode on it, you've got a link between all of your browser fingerprint, radio fingerprint and payment detail fingerprint and possibly customer loyalty provided at time of payment.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >Despite the randomized Mac address, you can still fingerprint devices using all the usual tricks when they connect to the authentication and authorization page before you allow them to access the broader internet. Fingerprinting is overrated given that every iPhone 17 is identical to any other iPhone 17. If you leave system settings at stock, which most people do, there's very little to fingerprint. >Doesn't pretty much every Starbucks location in the United States use a nationwide provider? True, although mobile data is cheap and plentiful enough that I rarely bother using wifi at cafes or fast food places. The only time I use public wifi is if I'm staying long term, which basically only encompasses trains, airports, and hotels. Those are diverse enough that it's tough to build a complete profile. >If the receipt had a passcode on it, you've got a link between all of your browser fingerprint, radio fingerprint and payment detail fingerprint and possibly customer loyalty provided at time of payment. I don't think I ever saw a place that was that guarded about their wifi. The closest I've seen is hotels requiring your room/last name, which would allow them to identify you, but at the same time I'm not sure how much information they can glean, other than that I'm logging into gmail or airbnb. Persistent monitoring that ISPs can do is far more useful.
    - baby_souffle 1y ago
      > Those are diverse enough that it's tough to build a complete profile. Debatable; i promise you that somebody out there is willing to buy the info and will attempt to combine it with $otherInfo such that it becomes valuable enough for somebody else to buy. Lots of adtech/survalence-tech operates with thin margins at _massive scale_. > I don't think I ever saw a place that was that guarded about their wifi. It's rare; i'd run into it only a few times a year. Typically PoS systems and WiFi are not integrated. I also haven't really been paying attention since LTE is good now :).

ThatMedicIsASpy 1y ago

ISPs bad routing and peering

bilegeek 1y ago

3. Hosting websites with DDNS (though the abuse from that caused Mullvad and IVPN to drop port forwarding) 4. Though it hurts anonymity, and is relatively rare: I2P or Hyphanet, because some websites block known P2P nodes[1]. Important if your bank or work is being a jerk about it. 5. As ThatMedicIsASpy notes, ISP issues: some routers soil the bed from P2P, some ISP's throttle P2P traffic regardless of legality, etc. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/tc3bhs/is_anybody_else_blocked_from_wikipediawikimedia/ https://old.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/tc3bhs/is_anybody_else...

zer0tonin 1y ago

Those two are pretty big already to be honest. I guess a third one would be avoiding eavesdropping on public wi-fis.

justapassenger 1y ago
With TLS being everywhere, and just few clicks away from having DNS over TLS, I really don't get eavesdropping on public wifi prop value.
- octo888 1y ago
  TLS doesn't hide which websites (hostnames) you visit
  - IggleSniggle 1y ago
    It does if you do DNS over TLS or HTTPS, although I guess that information would still be knowable to your DNS provider if they terminate your TLS behind the scenes
    - optimalquiet 1y ago
      Not quite. In order to make TLS certs work on a per-site basis, requests sent over HTTPS also include a virtual host indicator in cleartext that shows the hostname of the site you’re trying to connect to, so if the IP on the other end is hosting multiple domains it can find the right cert. For this reason some people feel that DNS over TLS is pretty pointless as a privacy measure.
      - MrOwen 1y ago
        I think this is only true if SNI is disabled. Otherwise you really only get the IP of SRC and DEST.
        appointment 1y ago

gambiting 1y ago

3. Avoiding government-mandated record keeping by ISPs in a country like the UK, where all ISPs have to keep a year of your browsing history and it can be accessed warrant free by 17 different agencies(including DEFRA, the agriculture agency). And yes, I'm aware that you're most likely trading one surveilence for another - but honestly at this point I'd much rather trust my paid VPN provider with my browsing data than my ISP and ultimately the government.

justapassenger 1y ago
Given that most of the web has TLS and you can easily do DNS over TLS - that's very very high level metadata, where I personally just don't see much ROI vs to giving that metadata to random company with no regulations whatsoever.
- octo888 1y ago
  Many TLS deployments still leak the hostname in plain text as part of SNI
retube 1y ago
> but honestly at this point I'd much rather trust my paid VPN provider with my browsing data than my ISP and ultimately the government. Your ISP will need to comply with local laws and regulations, and you'll have some recourse if broken. A third-party VPN operating in an overseas jurisdiction could be doing anything with your data.
- anonym29 1y ago
  Unless it's selling the data back to my own government, I'd rather a foreign commercial VPN provider have that information rather than my own domestic ISP or my own domestic government. My government can do parallel construction, can send teams of armed gunmen to my house, and otherwise find far more methods to persecute me than the intelligence services of Russia or China can. Being innocent of any kind of crime does not necessarily remove one from the crosshairs of law enforcement organizations, particularly the FBI, who have an extensive, well-documented history of violating citizens' constitutional rights, conducting partisan witch hunts against political opponents, being a lawless menace to civil rights activists, anti-war activists, gay rights activists, both pro-abortion and anti-abortion activists, and is probably busy right now planning on being a menace to trans inclusivity activists. There is no such thing as a friendly government, but I'd much rather have my data in the hands of a government 10,000 miles away than in the hands of my own government. My own government hunts, injures, stalks, harasses, socially ostracizes, and even kills my fellow citizens far more than any foreign government ever has.

mr_mitm 1y ago

I VPN into my home network for added privacy in public wifis, and to access private services.

gruez 1y ago

Protection from IP tracking, especially if your ISP doesn't do CGNAT. Of course there's a trade-off here between a) your ISP (who knows your billing information) knowing which sites you visit, and any site you visit can correlate internet activity back to your household b) your VPN provider knowing all the sites you visit

Havoc 1y ago
CGNAT won't save you in a world where everything is fingerprinted to within an inch of it's life.
- TurboSkyline 1y ago
  But a VPN, commercial or self-hosed, also won't stop fingerprinting. It changes your apparent IP address, but the rest of the characteristics of your device and browser stay the same.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

hemabe 1y ago

In Germany (and probably in the UK too), you now have to be very careful about what you write online. There is actually a section 188 that makes insulting, defaming, or slandering people in political life a criminal offense. You can now face heavy fines for minor insults (“idiot”) or even have your home searched. A VPN can be useful here.

hansvm 1y ago
What idiot signed that bullshit into law?
- skrause 1y ago
  That law has existed since 1951 and is based on an executive order from 1931 by Hindenburg.
- dartharva 1y ago
  This is actually not uncommon in most of the world. American 1A is actually an extremely novel concept most other countries still haven't caught up on.
  - crossroadsguy 1y ago
    American 1A is as strong as it's proving to be right now and increasingly proving to be stronger and stronger by the day, since January this year! Many other countries have protections like that, "on paper" (!!!) - but the point is in how it is used or misused, or rather completely ignored - directly or indirectly, like in the USA currently and many other countries in the world.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    Novel in what sense? Are you familiar with the hisory of free speech in e.g. the UK, Sweden, and France?
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      The UK, where the government has literally smashed printing presses in the newspaper age when magazines were thought to be publishing embarrassing news about the Crown? Where the government's legal authority to do so is still intact? That UK?

hansvm 1y ago

A ton of ISPs use deep packet inspection for various kinds of filtering (and other shenanigans). When they get it wrong it manifests to the user as certain websites or access patterns being inaccessible and the ISPs customer support agreeing that you should have access and being able to do fuck all to fix it. A VPN in the middle usually solves the issue.

TZubiri 1y ago
Wait, I think an ISP cannot inspect the content of packets that are encrypted, say, with HTTPs. In order to inspect TLS encrypted packets you need access to the end-device, controlling the end-router is not sufficient since you would not have access to the device certificates. If you can prove that an ISP can inspect packets, it would be major news.
- calvinmorrison 1y ago
  They may not need the contents, seeing you're connecting to a netflix IP and having a lot of data transfer may be a good reason to throttle, for example.
- esseph 1y ago
  * Russia * Kazakhstan * China * Belarus * Iran * Mayanmar - list of countries that are known or suspected to MITM traffic, including SSL
  - coderatlarge 1y ago
    how so they supposedly do it?
    - walterbell 1y ago
      SSL certificates have a centralized hierarchy. Many browsers trust a long list of root certificate authorities from multiple countries. https://cyberscoop.com/russia-tls-security-certificate-authority/ https://cyberscoop.com/russia-tls-security-certificate-autho... https://jpgamboa.com/china-ssl-authority-revoked-by-browsers/ https://jpgamboa.com/china-ssl-authority-revoked-by-browsers...

msp26 1y ago

Accessing services from the UK without handing over your personal ID to a service that will inevitably get hacked. This happened to discord literally a few days ago.

hshdhdhehd 1y ago
Underrated comment. And why do we need to justify privacy? Justify our non-privacy!
JonChesterfield 1y ago
"Hacked" will be "left the data on a public S3 bucket until someone noticed" or similar.

WarOnPrivacy 1y ago

> Getting access to geolocked data I use VPNs when I'm trying to ferret out the scope of an outage. I have VPN servers on local ISP which moves me around different routing. I use a commercial service to move me further out and to other countries.

hshdhdhehd 1y ago
So you are doing a manual version of what uptime monitors do.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
  Sort of. I suppose the difference is that I don't need to know in advance where the fault is. ex: An upstream, 3rd party service provider appears offline.

ragequittah 1y ago

One others seem to have missed 3. ad blocking on your phone away from home. Almost all VPNs have a block ads / known malicious traffic function. This can be done with just a DNS but often mobile carriers will block using your own DNS.

baby_souffle 1y ago

The original use for a VPN - getting access to private resources - is still very much in play. I don't just mean being able to access some private web interface you have on a private server in your at home, I mean connecting a satellite office to the main corporate office. But for all of these consumer marketed VPNs, I think your list has 90%+ covered...

TZubiri 1y ago
Interesting that we use the same word to describe both technologies, but semantically and technically they are very different. Perhaps we use the same word to describe them because initially they did use the same technologies, but they have branched out ever since? Maybe IPSec would be a common tech used. But the algorithms are not the same anymore since they serve different purposes (Personal privacy vs corporate/sysadmin security) In the corporate world VPNs were usually a lower level abstraction security mechanism or a redundant security mechanism to either complement application layer_security, or to hot-patch modern security unto legacy LAN systems. VPN encryption is usually provided by the local router. Common algorithms are IPSec/IKev2. In the personal privacy world, we are talking about a proxy that hides identification such as IP addresses, and pools connections to provide privacy. The actual encryption is not the main security mechanism even, as it only covers the transit between consumer to proxy, leaving (a potentially longer transit) between the proxy to the actual destination. In terms of purpose and architecture it's closer to bitcoin tumblers, or Tor or Freenet, or money laundering placement. The fact that they call it VPNs seems to me more of a marketing scheme or political play to avoid association with all of the above, than an actual technical or academical description. If someone were to analyse these technologies, I'm sure a neutral or critical approach would avoid uncritically calling them VPNs in the same way that research is published not about Viagra, but on Sildenafil.
- baby_souffle 1y ago
  > Interesting that we use the same word to describe both technologies, but semantically and technically they are very different. That's where my head was at. When i hear my colleagues talk about a VPN, i'm thinking about an IPSEC tunnel and an afternoon of swearing at ios on some outdated ASA. When I hear regular people talking about a VPN, my mind immediately goes to "oh, so you want to watch rick and morty on netflix and don't know anybody hosting a jellyfin/plex server". When do we coin a new term? Or do we? Does "vpn" turn into a word like "truck" where it's only the context that tells you if we're talking about a 2 axle pickup truck in a home depot parking lot or something pulling a 40ft container unit?

noman-land 1y ago

3. Not revealing your IP/location with every outgoing web request.

whatever1 1y ago

Access sites the government has blocked in your state/country

eloisant 1y ago
I would put that in the "geolocked data" category

JonChesterfield 1y ago

Sharing corporate info with your employees and not everyone else. You know, the "go to work" thing some people do.

TZubiri 1y ago
Just because something is called with the same name, doesn't mean it's the same thing. Especially if the naming is done on a product by a company that wants to sell the product, and especially if the name is not a protected trademark. Express VPN, NordVPN and Surfshark belong to another category of software than the VPNs used by companies. Some differences are: 1- One is used by consumers, the other is used by businesses. 2- One protects communications to a client-controlled Local area network. The other protects communications with third party services. 3- One provides encryption, the other provides anonymization.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  1- If we both use a hammer, and you use it for business while I use it for DIY, the tool is still the same thing. 2- The hammer doesn't care where the nail is; local carpentry or third-party furniture still require the same tool. 3- Both sides of the VPN are encrypted to each other, and anonymous to anyone else. No difference that I can see.
  - TZubiri 1y ago
    I don't think it's a great metaphor. First, a hammer is a build (compile time) tool, while VPN is a runtime tech. Closer to a nail if you will. Additionally, millions of products use hammers, while there's two product categories that use VPNs. The product distribution of VPN products is bimodal, there's no inbetweens it's either a privacy oriented consumer VPN, or it's a security oriented corporate product. Regarding the specific technology, there is no technical definition of what a VPN is, it's not an industry term, it's a marketing term. Similar to "Web", it's not HTTP, it's not TCP. This is in stark contrast to Internet (as in Internet Protocol). Related technologies are IPSec, IKev2, WireGuard, but VPN is one of those trademarkless industry buzzword terms that companies are can latch onto for free and participate of a commodity market. On an unrelated note, this is not unlike the term AI, which can somehow apply to fake images and conversational software. And coincidentally, modern AI is also bimodal, it's either text or syntethic images, the common ancestor might have been that the textual product originally was also synthetic generated text, but with agents and text as thought (in a Sappir-Whorf fashion) have since greatly diverged.

TZubiri 1y ago

3. Creating multiple accounts with platforms to break their ToS without getting chainbanned. 4. Perform DDoS 5. brute force passwords 6. try out leaked passwords 7. exploit vulns. 8. CSAM 9. Phish 10. Spam 11. Evade taxes with crypto 12. Sell drugs 13. Terrorism Lots of malicious uses for VPNs, or was your question about legitimate usecases? In which case: 14. Sending emails about cryptography 15. Pornography 16. activism 17. Journalism/Whistleblowing 18. Military Although some of the legitimate/ilegitimate categories might be subjective, which is precisely why it's a grey legal area at all.

tick_tock_tick 1y ago

I mean the EU has completely given up on free speech so if you want to say anything you better be hiding who you are.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

Australian ISPs are legally required to retain metadata for two years. That's one of the best reasons to use a VPN if you're in Australia. Give up as little as possible. I have found, however, lots of sites block or Captcha-restrict IP addresses that are (somehow determined as) non-residential, and Netflix restricts its content as well.

globalnode 1y ago
Won't TOR browser block metadata collection?
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Probably, yes. TOR can be problematic for other reasons, primarily that it can be significantly slower than 'clear' internet or VPN-internet. It's all a game of who do you trust most / least versus convenience in the end.

miki123211 1y ago

3. When you know/suspect your ISP is more shady than the VPN you're using. This applies particularly when you're doing something your government doesn't like. VPNs don't increase privacy, they just change who has the opportunity to spy on your traffic. Sometimes, it's much better if it's some foreign random ISP instead of your local government, who can send law enforcement agents where you live.

miki123211 1y ago

Another one is getting around content filters / service-specific throttling (think college dorms and campuses, hotels, public hotspots etc).

klinch 1y ago

Accessing "the internet" while visiting your family in China/Russia/Iran/Thailand/...

wyre 1y ago

My vpn bypasses the paywall on the public xfinitywifi hotspots making internet essentially free because I would likely being paying for Mullvad regardless.

ornel 1y ago

Way too many services in Mexico only work from Mexican IPs, from paying your electricity or internet bills to topping up highway toll accounts and even ordering food from a supermarket

Gustomaximus 1y ago

I use a VPN for 3 main reasons: 1) I need to come out of a particular country for some systems access. If I'm travelling it's easier than having IT team change permissions. 2) I use dedicated IPs for some systems. 3) Testing websites where I want to appear local to a particular country.

apt-apt-apt-apt 1y ago

3. Watching porn without your ISP knowing you are into furry sharks wearing banana costumes

brisky 1y ago

Testing your app/website when it has different behaviour depending on locale

IAmBroom 1y ago
Real, but pretty minimal usage.

cess11 1y ago

I work from home and use a VPN service to get a bunch of IP:s I can easily switch between. Recently a SaaS supplier blocked my IP because I was logging in programmatically every thirty seconds to collect data on batch processing in a customer project, basically two HTTP requests to get an access key and then the data, and I was lazy so I just put those in a script and dumped the second response to a log file and put that in a scheduler. Turned out that another customer of the SaaS supplier somehow could see the traffic on my customer's SaaS instance and panicked because in their mind it was obviously the russians attacking or something, and when they brought this to the supplier they also panicked. So to keep doing this I had to move over to checking whether the previous access key was still valid and reuse it if so, as well as moving my 'location' to another country. Apparently this is fine but logging in two times a minute is not. It also happens that I need to do research on network services and cloud environments, where having the ability to just hit a couple of terminal incantations to switch 'where' I am helps out quite a bit sometimes.

walterbell 1y ago
> another customer of the SaaS supplier somehow could see the traffic on my customer's SaaS instance Is this common?
- cess11 1y ago
  I'm not sure, but it definitely shouldn't be. It was surprising in a way I don't hesitate to call bad, but this supplier is an enterprise style organisation so of course they've only ranted at me and don't plan to alter their infrastructure.

mrweasel 1y ago

It's probably more that a lot of people have been convinced that they need a VPN, but they don't. There are use cases, like I trust Mullvad more than I trust some random hotels WiFi. When traveling it can provide a slightly higher base layer of trust. If you live in a country that restricts your internet access, which to be fair is most these days, a VPN can help. Most of us just don't care about those restrictions or they are more easily circumvented using a 3rd. party DNS. Also if you're in country like Iran or Russia, you really need to trust your VPN provider and strange corporate structures and staff sharing really isn't helping in that respect. For the average person, no you don't need a VPN. You might need one for a few days or week per year, if you travel and need to access your bank or corporate infrastructure (in that case your employer most likely have their own VPN). VPNs are a niche business, but online influencers have convinced a lot of people that they need a VPN for everything, which simply isn't the case for the vast majority of us.

haskellshill 1y ago
> I trust Mullvad more than I trust some random hotels WiFi For what exactly? All sites are HTTPS now anyway, so the only thing you're leaking is the hostnames / IPs you visit. I don't exactly see how the whole "hotel WIFI" thing is relevant at all, except as a dishonest marketing strategy by VPN salesmen
- Citizen8396 1y ago
  ...and the IPs you connect from, which tend to correlate with where you live, work, and so on.
  - haskellshill 1y ago
    You connect to hotel WIFI from home and work?
    - Citizen8396 1y ago
      I plead the fifth.

kelvinjps10 1y ago

Why torrentingn Linux isos?

IAmBroom 1y ago
It's the classic "legal" use for torrenting, as many Linux orgs send users to torrents for updates. If someone also accidentally downloads a TB of movies and music on the way to the latest Mint upgrade, oops.