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

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

#21

Post by eb0la » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 8:25 AM UTC

DNS and Certificates are the key:

You should remove all CA certificates installed by software that show like it were "installed by you".

Some AV software does MITM sending you a "trusted" certificate signed by their own CA whilst acting as a proxy between the actual site and the AV.

Theoretically anybody could do the same on the network side transparently.

Also if you don't trust your ISP, you shouldn't use their DNS servers. I don't know about commercial integration between DHCP and DNS requests to track people but it is feasible with some work.

For DNS just grab a raspberry pi and setup a dns resolver. You only need the right root zone seed file. Just don't make it available to the whole internet.

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

#22

Post by unstatusthequo » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 1:45 PM UTC

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'm not a developer nor run Linux as my primary and got this working on DO and Vultr and XenServer. The github issue community is pretty active. Check out some of that info. The main maintainer is also easy to contact.

I set it up using MacOS. It's all about the playbooks. Get that right and you're good.

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

#23

Post by tedmiston » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

tedmiston wrote: post #4

Answering the question of choosing a VPN is complex and varies by what's important to you. Like with security, there are few black and white answers. The VPN comparison chart [1] is the best reference I've seen on the dozens of factors one might care about. [1]: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/

It's unclear to me why this got downvoted as it addresses OP's question with one of the most popular and detailed references for choosing a VPN which also explains the specific privacy implications to consider (which of course cannot be answered universally as they vary by person).

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

#24

Post by sigjuice » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

If you use a VPN, you are just trading one ISP for another.

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

#25

Post by auganov » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 2:03 AM UTC

VPNs only give you indirection. And you have to trust your VPN provider. You're just moving your trust. Now if you diversify well enough you are probably less likely to be effectively snooped on, but then you're just reinventing TOR[0].

Adopting HTTPS across the board is so much more important.

[0] Which too only gives you indirection, remember that!

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

#26

Post by entrocode » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 1:33 AM UTC

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 tried first with streisand and ran into problems... but Algo with AWS worked great for me.

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

#27

Post by iends » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 3:24 AM UTC

sigjuice wrote: post #24

If you use a VPN, you are just trading one ISP for another.

Yeah, but I trust Digital Ocean or AWS (and whatever providers they rely on) more than I trust AT&T, Time Warner, and Comcast combined.

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

#28

Post by mancerayder » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 2:48 AM UTC

randomnumber314 wrote: post #17

mancerayder wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fair game legally or technically?

Legally maybe, probably, who knows. Personally I don't feel protected legally anymore with regards to privacy. It's a good thing I don't really do anything illegal, even if it both saddens and angers me that the world is letting this happen.

Technically I'm assuming without some serious cooperation with Digital Ocean it's going to be hard. Sure, if someone gives the authorities (or the hackers get) root, then my OpenVPN software will be more Open than "VPN."