41–50 of 86 posts
It's not that nefarious to go around region blocks to get access to content that probably shouldn't have been blocked from you in the first place. If I'm traveling, I'm still the same person they let watch the same program at home. Or, if I want to watch Russian State controlled news, why does my government get to block it?
Avoid IP-based geo-location of street address. Combine with anti-fingerprinting. Avoid restrictions from non-network-neutral ISP.
Translating your IP to your street address would require some larger network compromise (probably at the ISP level) or actually getting PII from your ISP.
1. Security on a public wifi. 2. Playing games on the internet with creeps who will dig through IP logs for my location. Yes, they can fingerprint my device, but device is easier to change and safer than location info. 3. Tricking Netflix into thinking I'm in Australia so I can watch Rick & Morty.
My ISP quite openly says that they spy on your traffic to monetize it. This is violently unacceptable to me, so I do my best to deny them that data.
Dumb question, how can they spy on it if it’s https?
"aside from nefarious purposes" It's not that nefarious to go around region blocks to get access to content that probably shouldn't have been blocked from you in the first place. If I'm traveling, I'm still the same person they let watch the same program at home. Or, if I want to watch Russian State controlled news, why does my government get to block it?
Woah, is this a real example? Where do you live?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dumb question, how can they spy on it if it’s https?
AFAIK The ISP still obtains and stores full urls, time stamps and log all http requests even if content is encrypted In the uk they are legally required to store it for 12 months as well
International travel. My bank (credit union) and cell phone provider (AT&T) both block non-US access. I also use it to get around Vietnam's blocking of websites e.g. BBC.
The term “VPN” has become a bit overloaded. It can mean, among other things: 1) a corporate VPN you connect to in order to gain access to corporate resources. Cisco AnyConnect, OpenVPN, IPsec/L2TP are examples of this type. 2) An overlay network that allows seamless (and secure) access to systems on disparate networks. Wireguard (and thus Tailscale), ZeroTier are examples of this type. 3) A way for individuals to obs…
>Are there situations where using a VPN (#3) is warranted Anonymity and therefore privacy. An ISP-assigned IP address reveals a lot of information about you. With a court order it can be traced back to you. Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.
Most (all?) streaming services are geo-locked, and do not contain the same libraries in different markets (if they are available at all.)
So VPNs are a common way of accessing streaming which would otherwise be unavailable.
While this is "piracy of a sort", it does imply an actual paid subscription, albeit in the wrong territory. So its more-honest than the alternative (plex etc)