It's bad enough of an idea to connect to an open/untrusted WiFi network - now we're showing HN how to connect to random VPNs all over the world? My cursory opinion of this is that it's the worst idea ever I've ever seen make HN's front page.
Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
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Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#22It's bad enough of an idea to connect to an open/untrusted WiFi network - now we're showing HN how to connect to random VPNs all over the world? My cursory opinion of this is that it's the worst idea ever I've ever seen make HN's front page.
> My cursory opinion of this is that it's the worst idea ever I've ever seen make HN's front page.
Not disputing that it's the worst but it could be even more worse.
It's missing the key component: a curl | bash install and upgrade script running over HTTP (not HTTPS). In this case it'd be extra hilarious as upgrades would presumably go over your existing VPN connection which could then hijack the script and run arbitrary code on your machine.
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#23> Automatically connect you to a random VPN in a country of your choice. Why would someone do such a thing?
The source of the VPN servers is vpngate.net - an academic research that started 2013, at Graduate School of University of Tsukuba, Japan. From their about [0] page: - You can get through the government's firewall to browse restricted web sites (e.g. YouTube). - You can disguise your IP address to hide your identity while surfing the Internet. - You can protect yourself by utilizing its strong encryption while using…
I've taken a cursory look at SoftEther a few months ago.
It looks like a research project that was then unsuccessfully commercialized, and then released to the public somewhat hastily.
The code quality leaves a lot to be desired (there is nothing offensive, but it still does not inspire confidence for there not being security bugs), and the code style is not great either. The amount of marketing copytext is disproportionately large to the amount of code comments and design documentation.
It generally seems to go for a everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach in terms of features (which is not a bad thing per se, but an approach that I dislike). The SoftEther repository is 280k lines of C and headers, while OpenVPN is 80k.
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#24It's bad enough of an idea to connect to an open/untrusted WiFi network - now we're showing HN how to connect to random VPNs all over the world? My cursory opinion of this is that it's the worst idea ever I've ever seen make HN's front page.
Then make it better. It's opensource ;)
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#25I guess this tool is intended for command line operation and scripting. If all you want to do is get around regional restrictions to watch videos, see http://hola.org/ .
EDIT: Also, you should assume that any anonymous VPN service has a good chance of being spyware or even malware, so you should sandbox it in a virtual machine or similar.
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#26Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#27I guess this tool is intended for command line operation and scripting. If all you want to do is get around regional restrictions to watch videos, see http://hola.org/ . EDIT: Also, you should assume that any anonymous VPN service has a good chance of being spyware or even malware, so you should sandbox it in a virtual machine or similar.
If you do (don't!) be sure you pay: http://hola.org/faq#intro-cost
Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes (2 years ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993
Hola VPN Already Exploited by “Bad Guys”, Security Firm Says (2 years ago)
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#28> Automatically connect you to a random VPN in a country of your choice. Why would someone do such a thing?
This would have been really useful a few years ago, when the international version of NBA League Pass was a far better experience due to the complete lack of blackouts, as well as being roughly 50% of the price for the much more limited US version. Instead of fixing the US version, they've simply doubled the price of the international version and made it worse, from what I understand.
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#29It's bad enough of an idea to connect to an open/untrusted WiFi network - now we're showing HN how to connect to random VPNs all over the world? My cursory opinion of this is that it's the worst idea ever I've ever seen make HN's front page.
It's only bad if you think it's secure. It's not like a secured wifi is likely to be secure, either.
Re: Show HN: Easily connect to a VPN in a country of your choice
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Netflix is able to detect you're using a VPN, and advices to switch back to enjoy its services, I'm sure. At least I got that alert recently. So is there another bypass?
Can they detect I'm using bittorrent?
I didn't realize people had ripped Netflix original content.