Mozilla VPN • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla VPN

#101

Post by flatiron » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #36

badRNG wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Want to do something illegal? Don't expect a VPN to save you. I'm not condoning piracy, but VPNs are generally a foolproof way to avoid DMCA letters from your ISP. Privacy means something different to every individual, everyone's threat model is different. And many models can benefit from a VPN; journalists, activists, and many others might find benefit from using a VPN.

Are DMCA letters still a thing? It seems like Torrenting died out significantly over the last 5 years.

i torrent from home, i also work from home.

i just never wanted my job to hire some dumb IT consulting firm to do some cross between IPs on a swam and IPs VPNing in as a "threat analysis" and my dumb name getting dragged into an office. I know it's far fetched, but $40 a year of PIA keeps my mind at ease.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#102

Post by orra » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #76

orra wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but not enough people do directly pay for the development of Firefox. Of course, you are welcome to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. Also, your complaint about an ethical business model seems unfounded, especially in this instance.

> you are welcome to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. Which does not pay for the development of Firefox.

The Mozilla Foundation annual financial statement include its subsidiary Mozilla Corporation. And most of the Foundation's expenditure is staff costs, for the Firefox project.

If that doesn't satisfy you, note that targetted donations are also a thing.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#103

Post by Skunkleton » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

offmycloud wrote: post #95

Maximus9000 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it to avoid your ISP collecting browsing data off you and selling it? Perhaps using 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 as your DNS might be good enough. Wouldn't your ISP still see what IP's you are visiting? Then, your ISP could just reverse DNS that IP to get the domain name, right?

Maybe, but most ISPs are lazy/cheap and can't do a full-take packet capture of all customers data at the same time. The ones that I have seen usually have a custom or logging DNS server that associates each domain request with a customer account. So yes, in many cases, changing your DNS server is enough to avoid the larger DNS sniffing operations. You should also use an IP check query to make sure that you are really…

DNS is super trivial to redirect. I've been on ISPs that redirect _all_ DNS traffic to their servers regardless of where it was sent. The best solution here is to switch to DoH. Of course then your DoH provider gets to log all of that sweet info instead.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#104

Post by nix23 » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

helloooooooo wrote: post #24

pipermerriam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use ProtonVPN. Same company as ProtonMail. Highly reputable with a business model around doing privacy and encryption well.

NordVPN shares offices in Estonia with ProtonVPN. For that reason I find it sketchy.

>NordVPN shares offices in Estonia with ProtonVPN

What really? Some proof for that? ProtonVPN and ProtonMail is located in Switzerland Genève, i dont see any open positions for estonia

https://careers.protonmail.com/

Re: Mozilla VPN

#105

Post by johnklos » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

Why the hell would anyone trust mozilla.org while they work tirelessly to make money?

Google, who are unapologetically pro-money, at least listened to feedback about DoH.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#106

Post by johnklos » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #71

cgb223 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it to avoid your ISP collecting browsing data off you and selling it? Perhaps using 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 as your DNS might be good enough. 8.8.8.8 is Google’s DNS so you’re really just trading being tracked by an ISP to a giant advertising company...

The privacy policy for 8.8.8.8 is actually really good: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy I wish more google products were so explicit in what they log and for what purposes. (Disclosure: I work for Google)

Not related to this thread: Do you have any way to communicate with actual humans inside of Google who can do anything? There are demonstrable issues with 8.8.8.8, yet I cannot get anything but the occasional form response from every address I've tried.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#107

Post by 29athrowaway » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #22

haunter wrote: post #15

Every single time I start researching VPN services I end up more confused and with more questions than before because basically every vouched service has the same amount of negative comments too. Like feels like the whole sector is a honeypot (lol) of shady stuff and also they figthing against each other (or not?). So I just wait until when turns out Mullvad is also one of the bad guys.

Ask yourself why you want a VPN. Is it to avoid your ISP collecting browsing data off you and selling it? Perhaps using 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1 as your DNS might be good enough. Is it to watch geo region blocked videos? Then pretty much any service will work for you. Except that video streaming sites have caught on and blocked hosting provider IP blocks. So that might require you to shop around. Do you want the most priva…

Your ISP can sniff your DNS traffic as it is just a plaintext protocol.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#108

Post by flatiron » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #77

What is the main benefit of using a VPN? I download music, movie, tv, etc files via torrent using my Canadian IP address and I have never seen anything more than an email from my ISP saying essentially "so and so company thinks you downloaded their material, don't do that ok?". Is the general public so afraid of getting the odd email that paying $5/$10 month to make them disappear is a good deal for them? Why wouldn'…

tor begs you not to use their service for torrenting. it would also be a lot slower than a VPN

i use a VPN (to Montreal since it supports port forwarding) because i work from home and i don't want my IP that VPNs to work for a major company also being part of a torrent swarm.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#109

Post by cube00 » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #36

badRNG wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Want to do something illegal? Don't expect a VPN to save you. I'm not condoning piracy, but VPNs are generally a foolproof way to avoid DMCA letters from your ISP. Privacy means something different to every individual, everyone's threat model is different. And many models can benefit from a VPN; journalists, activists, and many others might find benefit from using a VPN.

Are DMCA letters still a thing? It seems like Torrenting died out significantly over the last 5 years.

They're too busy working through Twitch at the moment.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#110

Post by cecida » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

j_koreth wrote: post #54

numbsafari wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here. And a hosted suite of productivity tools that have documented, public formats that contain all of your data (and not just a link to the cloud-hosted copies). Amazing that GSuite's only real competitor in 2020 in Office365.

Would a Nextcloud instance work?

I've checked out Nextcloud a few times, but it really needs a sizeable and trustworthy brand that would host it for you, allow you to point a custom domain at it, and provide zero config email/calendering out of the box.

I'd trust Mozilla.