Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#11

Post by mod »

tmaly wrote: post #9

You could always setup your own VPN on a VPS with https://github.com/jlund/streisand

FWIW I tried this on DO and had a bitch of a time.

I'm a developer and I run linux as my primary OS, so there weren't any new concepts, exactly. I had to do a lot of google searching of error messages.

In the end, it kept failing after droplet creation, I think when whitelisting my IP or something similar.

This happened 2 days ago.

Anyway, I couldn't even get it running on the droplet, let alone get all connected and ready to go. Might try again with AWS.

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#12

Post by thomastjeffery »

fav_collector wrote: post #5

VPNs aren't really private. They can see everything that an ISP could see if you weren't using one. It's just a level of indirection. I trust ISP companies more than I trust VPN companies because ISP companies are in the USA and are much larger (so engage in less risky behavior), so they at least have to sell data in aggregate and scrub PII

> I trust ISP companies more than I trust VPN companies because ISP companies are in the USA and are much larger

That fact only supports their practice of selling user data. If we did not have such a barrier of entry for new ISPs, the market would be able to react to this abuse. But instead, large ISPs like AT&T, Verison, Comcast, Time Warner, etc. hold the market so tightly that they can get away with abusing their customers without a serious reaction.

Because ISPs have so much control over the market, the only viable response without regulation are VPNs. A VPN can sell privacy to a customer who feels abused by their ISP. Since privacy is essentially the foundation of the VPN provider's business, VPN providers compete to prove to customers they can protect their users' privacy.

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#13

Post by blibble »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #7
seanp2k2 wrote: post #3

Wherever you VPN to, your connection still comes out somewhere. If that happens to be in the US, datacenters still have ISPs. If you're visiting a site hosted in the US, that's on some ISP too. Basically, if Level3, CenturyLink, and Verizon decide that they want to collect and sell profiles based on browsing profiles, there's not a way around it. It'd be easier to build a profile on a direct subscriber (e.g. Comcast…

There is not much useful data to gleaned from an encrypted VPN connection. If you're referring to the ISPs monitoring what the VPN proxies for you that data would be useless as well since it would be the aggregate over everyone using the VPN. It wouldn't be possible to build browsing profiles if every request originates from the VPNs IP address.

you only need to leak a few bits here and there once or twice and the connections can be linked together

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#14

Post by amorphid »

mod wrote: post #11
tmaly wrote: post #9

You could always setup your own VPN on a VPS with https://github.com/jlund/streisand

FWIW I tried this on DO and had a bitch of a time. I'm a developer and I run linux as my primary OS, so there weren't any new concepts, exactly. I had to do a lot of google searching of error messages. In the end, it kept failing after droplet creation, I think when whitelisting my IP or something similar. This happened 2 days ago. Anyway, I couldn't even get it running on the droplet, let alone get all connected and…

If you want to pair on this, I'd be interested. Even if I don't use it, it's something I've wanted to do for the learning experience. I have enough knowledge of all the pieces to be dangerous, but haven't actually tied all the pieces together.

My email is in my profile if interested.

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#15

Post by mancerayder »

mod wrote: post #11
tmaly wrote: post #9

You could always setup your own VPN on a VPS with https://github.com/jlund/streisand

FWIW I tried this on DO and had a bitch of a time. I'm a developer and I run linux as my primary OS, so there weren't any new concepts, exactly. I had to do a lot of google searching of error messages. In the end, it kept failing after droplet creation, I think when whitelisting my IP or something similar. This happened 2 days ago. Anyway, I couldn't even get it running on the droplet, let alone get all connected and…

I did exactly this, using DO. It works beautifully, and my droplet is in a foreign country. Two things I'd recommend if you have trouble are:

a) Look up Digital Ocean's own instructions for setting up OpenVPN. Follow exactly.

or

b) look at HN threads from today, some people wrote Ansible playbooks and scripts to set it up.

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#17

Post by randomnumber314 »

mancerayder wrote: post #15
mod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW I tried this on DO and had a bitch of a time. I'm a developer and I run linux as my primary OS, so there weren't any new concepts, exactly. I had to do a lot of google searching of error messages. In the end, it kept failing after droplet creation, I think when whitelisting my IP or something similar. This happened 2 days ago. Anyway, I couldn't even get it running on the droplet, let alone get all connected and…

I did exactly this, using DO. It works beautifully, and my droplet is in a foreign country. Two things I'd recommend if you have trouble are: a) Look up Digital Ocean's own instructions for setting up OpenVPN. Follow exactly. or b) look at HN threads from today, some people wrote Ansible playbooks and scripts to set it up.

There's a good chance I'm wrong here, but isn't directing your traffic overseas the exact thing that makes it fair game to state-level inspection?

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#19

Post by URSpider94 »

The recent law enacted by Congress countermanded an Obama-era regulation that had never gone into effect. Thus, the current situation is the same as it ever was - ISP's can sell anonymized and aggregated customer behavior data today, just like they could yesterday.

Also important to note -- existing regulations still in effect prevent selling un-anonymized data. Selling someone the browsing habits of a particular identifiable customer is not allowed, never has been.

Re: Ask HN: When do ISPs begin selling your data, and is a VPN all that's needed?

#20

Post by unlikelymordant »

URSpider94 wrote: post #19

The recent law enacted by Congress countermanded an Obama-era regulation that had never gone into effect. Thus, the current situation is the same as it ever was - ISP's can sell anonymized and aggregated customer behavior data today, just like they could yesterday. Also important to note -- existing regulations still in effect prevent selling un-anonymized data. Selling someone the browsing habits of a particular ide…

I'm not sure where this 'nothing has changed, no need to panic' talking point has come from.

The 'Obama era regulation' was an attempt to maintain privacy regulations after internet businesses were found to be exempt from ftc oversight in late 2016. So now there is no privacy regulation from the ftc or fcc. Things are not the same as they always were.

Post reply on HN