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Mozilla VPN

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla VPN

#151

Post by Shank »

tafl wrote: post #129
r3trohack3r wrote: post #111

Every time someone mentions a VPN provider in my techie social circles, the "A VPN doesn't protect you" crowd piles in, usually with links to something like: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 I don't understand this argument, but would like to. I run https://everytwoyears.org , a political non-profit focused on ending the warrantless metadata collection of U.S. citizens' communications. From every…

Yeah I've heard this one before. I use Mullvad, paid using BTC that came straight from a tumbler. I don't use it for any nefarious reasons, just wanted to see how such a setup would work. It was surprisingly painless. I think it took 15 minutes in total from moving my btc to the tumbler and having the tumbler move the btc to my Mullvad account. Am I 100% secure? No, they know what IP I'm connecting from. Is my name a…

> I use Mullvad, paid using BTC that came straight from a tumbler. I don't use it for any nefarious reasons, just wanted to see how such a setup would work.

> But again, I didn't do it to stay "safe" or anonymous.

I sincerely hope that you're trying to stay safe if you're admitting to money laundering on a public forum.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#152

Post by NewJazz »

thesuitonym wrote: post #117
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.

I used to work at an ISP, and once a month I would stuff envelopes with DMCA letters. I can assure you, that the only thing your ISP is doing with this letters is laughing at whatever porn you downloaded. They're just a scare tactic, and if you get one, you can almost certainly ignore it.

I've had a connection shut off because of three letters. Spectrum.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#153

Post by satoshivpn »

dewey wrote: post #73
satoshivpn wrote: post #31

What good is a VPN if you have to reveal all of your personally identifiable information to the vendor? You're better off using Mullvad directly--it looks like they don't require you to fork over personal information to use their service. Shameless plug: SatoshiVPN ( https://satoshivpn.com ) gives you access to your own private and anonymous VPN server with Outline pre-installed, no questions asked. Payments in Bitco…

> What good is a VPN if you have to reveal all of your personally identifiable information to the vendor? Because most peoples threat model doesn't include actors that can force a VPN provider to give up their data. They just use it because it's making it easier to not get data stolen in a coffee shop and watch US Netflix.

If you have two equally great user experiences and in one case you have to share your personal information, and in another you don't, which would you choose?

Re: Mozilla VPN

#154

Post by Spivak »

Skunkleton wrote: post #103
offmycloud wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not if you run your own DoH endpoint on a VPS!

Re: Mozilla VPN

#155

Post by gnulinux »

DCKing wrote: post #141

Come on Mozilla, hurry up! I want to give you money for goods and services (I also donate monthly [1]), but I'm not that interested in a VPN (I can and do also pay Mullvad). Give me that real internet stuff - email, calendar, file sync, chat(?) - give me Firefox Premium. Bundle in the Lockwise password manager. I'd pay good money to see a company fill the void of paid, privacy first essential internet services and I…

I want this and want to pay for this. Hoping this will be a real product soon.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#157

Post by deepbreath »

closeparen wrote: post #140
r3trohack3r wrote: post #111

Every time someone mentions a VPN provider in my techie social circles, the "A VPN doesn't protect you" crowd piles in, usually with links to something like: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 I don't understand this argument, but would like to. I run https://everytwoyears.org , a political non-profit focused on ending the warrantless metadata collection of U.S. citizens' communications. From every…

A VPN is just a tunnel from one point to another. You'd have to establish why the remote end is more trustworthy than the local end. Being located in a hostile jurisdiction may be somewhat protective, but it would also seem likely that compromising foreign VPN services is within the NSA's wheelhouse.

If nothing else, it significantly reduces the entropy of your IP when websites are fingerprinting you, especially if your ISP assigns you a static IP.

Even if you don't have a static IP, I suspect the entropy of your /24 (IPv4) is also a lot smaller when over VPN.

Re: Mozilla VPN

#158

Post by cyberpunk »

Shank wrote: post #151
tafl wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've heard this one before. I use Mullvad, paid using BTC that came straight from a tumbler. I don't use it for any nefarious reasons, just wanted to see how such a setup would work. It was surprisingly painless. I think it took 15 minutes in total from moving my btc to the tumbler and having the tumbler move the btc to my Mullvad account. Am I 100% secure? No, they know what IP I'm connecting from. Is my name a…

> I use Mullvad, paid using BTC that came straight from a tumbler. I don't use it for any nefarious reasons, just wanted to see how such a setup would work. > But again, I didn't do it to stay "safe" or anonymous. I sincerely hope that you're trying to stay safe if you're admitting to money laundering on a public forum.

Tumbling coins has nothing to do with money laundering, it's just a way to anonymize them....

Re: Mozilla VPN

#160

Post by wongarsu »

closeparen wrote: post #140
r3trohack3r wrote: post #111

Every time someone mentions a VPN provider in my techie social circles, the "A VPN doesn't protect you" crowd piles in, usually with links to something like: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 I don't understand this argument, but would like to. I run https://everytwoyears.org , a political non-profit focused on ending the warrantless metadata collection of U.S. citizens' communications. From every…

A VPN is just a tunnel from one point to another. You'd have to establish why the remote end is more trustworthy than the local end. Being located in a hostile jurisdiction may be somewhat protective, but it would also seem likely that compromising foreign VPN services is within the NSA's wheelhouse.

Unless I set up my own VPN I'll share a VPN server and IP with other people. That makes my traffic inherently more anonymous once it has left the VPN server, since you can't correlate traffic to a single person anymore. So even if traffic in the data center is analyzed, that's better than my ISP analyzing traffic.

Thus we only have to establish that the VPN provider is at least as trustworthy as my ISP. That's a pretty low bar to clear in many places. I have no doubt some VPNs are operated by nefarious actors (no better way to collect high quality data), but I don't think that's a concern with Mozilla.

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