I don’t care for VPNs but I do want an adblocker. What are my options aside from using a public pihole dns or a vpn to a private dns server?
NextDNS.io
VPNs on iOS are a scam
61–70 of 260 posts
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#62It's also worth pointing out that tethered/hotspot data shared to the iPhone with a VPN enabled at the iPhone level will not travel through the VPN, but will rather leak your phone's IP: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/266871/is-there-a-...
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#63I think that the value of this article is perfectly summarized by the sentence “Not sure what SYN is.”
are you saying that a packet leaving iOS and hitting the router's logs, without going through the "VPN" does not leak either your IP to the destination or your destination to your ISP?
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#64This should trend to the top of HN. Apple bills themselves as a privacy-centric company. I hope they clean this up asap.
iOS devices create lot of weird traffic on local network. And the only meanigful-ish other packet trace seems like APNS subscription update and some kind of iCloud traffic, there is probably zero reason why would you want that to go through “VPN” tunnel.
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Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> VPNs were always meant to carry internal traffic to a private network, not the public internet This. And the idea that these so called ‘VPN’ services somehow improve your security and privacy on the internet is laughable. All they do is let you get onto the public, untrusted, internet through a different on-ramp. There is no point to them. The internet is just as untrustworthy through a VPN service as it is through…
> There is no point to them. What about this? "Under the provisions of the Investigatory Powers (IP) Act, it is now possible for the Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) community to lawfully obtain Internet Connection Records (ICR) in support of their investigations. Following the completion of some initial trial activities, work is now underway to provision a national ICR service." https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.go…
And what makes you trust that the VPN provider wouldn’t share these records if asked?
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#66This how routing behavior has been on Mac OS for about 15 years now. Mac OS route selection always takes into account the source address of the IP packet in addition to the routes in the routing table. If a socket binds to a particular address, the Mac OS kernel will choose routes associated with the interface that address is on and ignore the others.
thankfully Windows does not do this. if i set interface metrics manually, and a lower metric interface becomes connected, all external traffic will immediately go through the new interface. Likewise, if i switch between wifi and cellular on an android device, all existing connections stop and must be refreshed. to wit, on both windows and android, youtube videos will continue to play, but things like HN or reddit will stop loading until whichever connection takes precedence comes fully up.
I would argue that's the only "sane" way to do it, but then again i'm no network engineer. I just rely on my devices to work this way so i don't saturate the wrong links or get poor upload speeds when i need them.
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#67Is Android better in this regard?
Not really, no. Ref: https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/224
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#68I think Apple is transparent about Always on VPN (blocking traffic except over the tunnel) requiring provisioning using MDM tools. Apple Configurator is free and allows anyone to set this up. Any other VPN is just best effort. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/vpn-overview-depa...
That Apple documents that 'normal' VPNs are broken on iOS doesn't change the fact that they're broken.
That's the Apple Way though isn't it? Apple says "Do it exactly how we tell you" and you shouldn't expect anything to work if you deviate from the One True Path that Apple has laid out for you. "Think Different, Do As You're Told"
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no point to them. What about this? "Under the provisions of the Investigatory Powers (IP) Act, it is now possible for the Law Enforcement Agency (LEA) community to lawfully obtain Internet Connection Records (ICR) in support of their investigations. Following the completion of some initial trial activities, work is now underway to provision a national ICR service." https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.go…
And what makes you trust that the VPN provider wouldn’t share these records if asked?
Pick one in a suitable jurisdiction with a track record of sending such records and requests for them to the bit bucket?
Re: VPNs on iOS are a scam
#70I think that the value of this article is perfectly summarized by the sentence “Not sure what SYN is.”
are you saying that a packet leaving iOS and hitting the router's logs, without going through the "VPN" does not leak either your IP to the destination or your destination to your ISP?
I think he’s saying that any sort of network analysis done by someone that doesn’t understand basics of TCP is kinda suspect and may be more prone to errors in the analysis methodology or interpretation of results.
I tend to agree. My only takeaway after seeing that was “if I ever need a 100% leak free tunnel on iOS, validate it”. I certainly won’t be taking any of this at face value without replicating it.