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Why You Should Start Using a VPN

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11–20 of 133 posts

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#11
post #2

I'm starting to consider this pretty seriously due to a flurry of incoming snooping laws in the UK. I normally do a bit of SSH tunneling out to a VPS if I need a proxy; is SSH my best option/most secure option? What do others recommend?

ssh is certainly save. some find it not very comfortable though. (but if you know your way around ssh, you should be fine)

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#12
post #2

I'm starting to consider this pretty seriously due to a flurry of incoming snooping laws in the UK. I normally do a bit of SSH tunneling out to a VPS if I need a proxy; is SSH my best option/most secure option? What do others recommend?

Likewise. General options:

1. Don't do anything the state considers naughty. I suggest you kill yourslf now if you consider this viable.

2. Steal someone else's WiFi and deal with the moral consequences. You can do this by finding a "VendorA7E4B4" lookalike SSID (default configuration) and using the password calculator here: http://www.nickkusters.com/Services/SpeedTouch/Lookup - I only know of this as I had to lock my router down due to unauthorised access.

3. Use a VPN and risk being logged or falling foul of RIPA.

4. Use a dead drop http://deaddrops.com/ and risk being bagged at site.

5. Use SSH tunnels + proxy and risk misconfiguration + logging and RIPA.

6. Use paper or sneaker net and risk stop+search and RIPA.

Welcome to the machine.

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#13
post #5

I can't recommend enough the use of sshuttle: https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle Way better than a SSH tunnel (check the readme) and you don't need to have a VPN server on the remote server, just ssh access. Supports both Linux/OSX, been using it for nearly one year without issues.

I'm a fan too!

Just a correction: you need ssh and python, since it launches a daemon on the server (it uses a clever way of doing that, by packing and pushing all the necessary code over the SSH connection to the Python interpreter).

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#14
post #5

I can't recommend enough the use of sshuttle: https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle Way better than a SSH tunnel (check the readme) and you don't need to have a VPN server on the remote server, just ssh access. Supports both Linux/OSX, been using it for nearly one year without issues.

Really great tool and dead-simple to set up. However, the last time I checked, there was no DNS and UDP support. Do you know if that changed?

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#15
post #2

I'm starting to consider this pretty seriously due to a flurry of incoming snooping laws in the UK. I normally do a bit of SSH tunneling out to a VPS if I need a proxy; is SSH my best option/most secure option? What do others recommend?

Best/most secure option for tunnelling traffic through to your VPS? SSH is definitely secure enough for that, provided you have a strong password or even better key-based authentication.

To make something like that more user friendly though you could just install VPN software like OpenVPN on your VPS. This also ensures things like DNS queries are sent over the VPN so they can't be intercepted on their way to the server.

Of course this assumes you trust your VPS provider, at least more than your ISP.

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#16
Shameless plug: I've just spent the last few days figuring out how to correctly configure OpenVPN and pptpd on my Ubuntu servers + Android & OS X clients (it's a real pain in the ass). I'd be happy to install and configure those on your own server(s) for 5 BTC per install (I'm kind of short on money right now :().

If you want to give it a try by yourself, I recommend the following articles (doesn't seem that complicated but trust me, you can be stuck on a bug for hours!): http://library.linode.com/networking/openvpn/ubuntu-10.10-ma... http://blog.riobard.com/2011/11/12/pptp-vpn-on-ubuntu. I can help with minor problems on Skype as well (o-lalonde).

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#17
post #14
post #5

I can't recommend enough the use of sshuttle: https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle Way better than a SSH tunnel (check the readme) and you don't need to have a VPN server on the remote server, just ssh access. Supports both Linux/OSX, been using it for nearly one year without issues.

Really great tool and dead-simple to set up. However, the last time I checked, there was no DNS and UDP support. Do you know if that changed?

Looks like it supports DNS now, from looking at the readme.

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#18
post #2

I'm starting to consider this pretty seriously due to a flurry of incoming snooping laws in the UK. I normally do a bit of SSH tunneling out to a VPS if I need a proxy; is SSH my best option/most secure option? What do others recommend?

as long as you're sure you tunnel all the traffic through, so nothing "leaks" out to your local network. If you just do port-forwarding, you'll miss DNS, for example.

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#19
The What Makes for a Good VPN section lacks one major and important aspect. Ping times (latency).

If you play games online, you want a VPN that is either close to you, or close to the game servers, or which traffic is highly prioritized. If you are lucky, you might increase your latency going through a vpn than if you went without. It sound illogical, but routing is not equal for all, and traffic might be boosted if your VPN's network has higher priority than your ISP.

Going from europe to US, I found that different AS had latency up to 200-300 MS in difference, and this does not take into account the stability of it. One net had a average of 80ms which only differentiated with 50m over time (the Swedish national university ISP). The Swedish ISP's that offer services to the public almost all uses a other backbone network than the university ISP, and that has an average of 250 ms to US, and which latency goes up and down between 150-800ms.

Re: Why You Should Start Using a VPN

#20
post #5

I can't recommend enough the use of sshuttle: https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle Way better than a SSH tunnel (check the readme) and you don't need to have a VPN server on the remote server, just ssh access. Supports both Linux/OSX, been using it for nearly one year without issues.

I don't understand, what does this do that ssh -D doesn't?
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