Slightly off topic, but I'd be interested while I have the VPN people here to hear opinions about Softether. I've been using it for a while and like it. But I can't get much independent information about it from a security point of view.
Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
31–40 of 64 posts
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People should NOT trust free VPN services at all, as you don't pay level of service is not guaranteed. The corollary is that ones you pay for should not be trusted either: a service can both take your money and insert ads. huh.... reminds me of pay/cable tv....
Actually, I missed this point. Thank you for pointing out ;-) I think that's why more and more open source tools (scripts or automation {cook,play}books, etc.} have been made available to enable people to self serve and build their own VPN service ;-)
The problem with personal VPN services is that it can be pretty trivial to reverse who the traffic is coming from (eg by requesting the billing address from the VM hosting provider).
This may not be an issue for some people and for those who it is an issue, there are ways around it (I'll leave that part of the post for someone more experienced than I as I don't want to risk giving out bad advice). But it's worth baring in mind when signing up for a VPS in view of running a VPN.
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A VPS from DigitalOcean or something beats most providers' pricing. Does it? A VPN subscription costs around $40 a year, DigitalOcean starts from $60 a year for the lowest level standard droplet. Am I overlooking something?
You can get a VPS for far cheaper than DO's prices. https://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendspirit.com/ I'm currently posting through a VPN running on a VPS I discovered through Low End Box, works just fine for browsing and downloading. 500GB transfer per month for $10 a year.
You could setup a free instance on AWS for 1 year then create a new account the following year.
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#34From TFA:
> We test individually each one of the 150 VPN apps under consideration.
> Two people executed a total of 5,340 tests manually for three months and connected to all end-points mentioned in the GUI of a given VPN app.
Okay, that's brilliant, but I'd love to see the actual data as well. Even if it's impractical to include the data in an appendix (page number limitations in the published work, et cetera), hosting it online and linking to it in the article would be great.
I'm a scientist and geek. Show me the data!
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I missed this point. Thank you for pointing out ;-) I think that's why more and more open source tools (scripts or automation {cook,play}books, etc.} have been made available to enable people to self serve and build their own VPN service ;-)
The problem with personal VPN services is that it can be pretty trivial to reverse who the traffic is coming from (eg by requesting the billing address from the VM hosting provider). This may not be an issue for some people and for those who it is an issue, there are ways around it (I'll leave that part of the post for someone more experienced than I as I don't want to risk giving out bad advice). But it's worth bari…
And your VM hosting provider can still MITM you.
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#36TL;DR Get yourself a good, paid VPN service
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#37Why would you need a third party app on Android? I just use the native VPN support over ipsec. Or are people using them for older Android installs?
What I've noticed is that if you pay for premium service, the apps keep the connection up way better and offer nice features, like switching your country from an easy menu. Tha being said I've been quite happy with http://privateinternetaccess.com/ . A good Android client, fast, don't ask any personal information when you register, they say no logging, the Android app doesn't ask any permissions and so on. I can choo…
I agree, PIA is fantastic, been using it for years. Works great on mobile, I use it on my Android phone and iPhone.
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate where you are seeing this? Is this as the post-secondary level or lower? I worked in higher-ed in the US and almost uniformly our institution and those we talked to in mailing lists were adamantly anti-blocking. Remembering back to when I was in HS and our library was outfitted with a few donated computers that shared a 56k connection, I know they had a net-nanny installed, but that was quite some t…
Schools blocking stuff is very active still- it's extremely prevalent up to and including high school, and only a handful of colleges do any sort of filtering. Furthermore, kids find increasingly shady free vpns as IT blocks more and more free vpns. Lots of kids will use free vpns to get their SAT/ACT/AP scores a day or so early.
wow, thats a good use-case you dont think of often.
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#39People should NOT trust free VPN services at all, as you don't pay level of service is not guaranteed. What's worse, who knows what the service provide is doing with the data flowing through the tunnels (to)? cover the operational cost (and goal for profits) Install and configure your own VPN services (IPsec or OpenVPN), use strongSwan (Android native client which works great with RSA authentication with x509 certs,…
There's not much to trust anyway. If you're using it for geoblocking, you probably don't care that some company knows you're watching some movie. HTTPS websites are still safe if the app isn't somehow hacking the browser. Non encrypted traffic was never hidden from much anyway. My ISP even injects ads into HTTP websites.
Re: Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A VPS from DigitalOcean or something beats most providers' pricing. Does it? A VPN subscription costs around $40 a year, DigitalOcean starts from $60 a year for the lowest level standard droplet. Am I overlooking something?
You can get a VPS for far cheaper than DO's prices. https://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendspirit.com/ I'm currently posting through a VPN running on a VPS I discovered through Low End Box, works just fine for browsing and downloading. 500GB transfer per month for $10 a year.
How much can you trust these lowend box providers?
I talked to one guy who was utterly incompetent and another one who was really shady...