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Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

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Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#71

Post by vintermann »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #61
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your traffic cross jurisdictional boundaries also adds a level of difficulty for tracking usage. Local law enforcement can tap a local ISP for their records, but it would take a scale more effort to then tap a non-local service provider for their records. Each additional level of difficulty adds a cost, and at some point those costs aren't worth the potential results. (assuming that the VPN provider doesn't ju…

the counterpoint is that making your traffic cross out of the US gives the NSA (by their ass backwards reading) permission to spy on you

Seems a bit optimistic to think they actually care whether they have that permission or not.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#72

Post by SXX »

curtisf wrote: post #62
fooker wrote: post #43

It seems surprising that people would expect a VPN to be comparable to Tor. It does seem ridiculous once you spell it out like that, and then you have to realize that it’s plausible to de-anonymize even Tor users by controlling exit nodes.

Most of the big consumer VPNs include "privacy" with an implication of anonymity in their marketing, so it shouldn't really be surprising

But what privacy do you think majority of people who not doing something badly illegal expect from VPNs?

Most likely these people just look to hide their torrenting, saying political shit on Twitter from employer and not share their choice of porn with local ISP. Also just adding one more layer between them and occasional scammer who can sometimes infer more broad geodata from their IP leaked from yet another database. Oh and now to avoid "Show your ID" page on the same porn sites.

It works well enough for this goal. Not everyone needs NSA-proof solution.

PS: Obviously more tech savvy people understand importance of hiding traffic on public WiFi, but I doubt average Joe the VPN user will buy VPN for this.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#73

Post by BLKNSLVR »

asdff wrote: post #65
solenoid0937 wrote: post #32

> As an example, imagine that you are a moderator on a forum and you suspect that a new face is actually a sockpuppet of a user you banned the day prior. You check the IP logs, and despite using different Mullvad servers, both accounts resolve to the overlapping float ranges 0.4334 - 0.4428 and 0.4358 - 0.4423. This gives you a >99% chance that they are the same person. This sounds like how I'd design a VPN if I were…

Makes you wonder...

Every now and then there are articles like this one about something that Mullvad may or may not be able to do better, and there are always comments about whether they're an intelligence front.

I don't know the answer, but there are two ways to take it:

1. Submarining to destroy confidence in an actually trustworthy, decent VPN company

2. They're an intelligence front.

For me, Mullvad have the appearance of the greatest likelihood of being legit since they're not aggressively pushing their product with lies and fear mongering. That gels with my vibe. If they're an intelligence front, well, most VPNs probably are as well, so I'm no worse off.

Luckily I'm not doing anything that would get me in the kind of trouble for which multi-jurisdictional cooperation is worthwhile.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#74

Post by gchamonlive »

dns_snek wrote: post #57
gchamonlive wrote: post #39

It's a game of cat and mouse. The service keeps banning IP ranges, the user keeps reconnecting to different servers and regions. The server can't know exactly who's who, just that a bunch of users are using mullvad, while the user just need to find one server on one IP range that works. Seems like a good deal to me. I don't care if they know I use mullvad, I care they don't know I'm me, and that's not something mullv…

> I don't care if they know I use mullvad, I care they don't know I'm me That's exactly what the article is about, a side channel information leak that de-anonymises users, did you read it?

Can it get my IP?

I'll go ahead and answer that it can't. It knows I'm mullvad user X, thus deanonimization, "it knows I use mullvad", but it doesn't know my original IP, so "it doesn't know I'm me".

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#75

Post by BLKNSLVR »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #61
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your traffic cross jurisdictional boundaries also adds a level of difficulty for tracking usage. Local law enforcement can tap a local ISP for their records, but it would take a scale more effort to then tap a non-local service provider for their records. Each additional level of difficulty adds a cost, and at some point those costs aren't worth the potential results. (assuming that the VPN provider doesn't ju…

the counterpoint is that making your traffic cross out of the US gives the NSA (by their ass backwards reading) permission to spy on you

Fair point, but I'm not sure if that was ever a boundary they wouldn't cross, but for 'a little while now' I'd say it doesn't matter.

From outside the US I should be using a VPN end-point within the US, so that my browsing traffic doesn't hit the NSA - only my encrypted VPN traffic does.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#76

Post by fortran77 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #70
faangguyindia wrote: post #63

I maintain a list of "23034 IPs to blocklist.txt" blocked IPs they contain all VPN providers. Often VPN providers seed Geofeeds with wrong data, this is why i use traceroute and ping network to locate their real location.

You know that people use VPNs for perfectly legitimate reasons, right? Like when I was travelling, sites would routinely use the language of my IP address location, not the language preference as I set it in my browser. So I would be served a site that I couldn't read. My only option was to use a VPN to spoof my location so that it would serve me a site in a language I understand.

I use aVPN when I’m traveling and want to order food delivery for my 93 year old mother in NY. UberEats and InstaCart will stop me from ordering when logged in my mom’s NY account if I’m in China, Saudi Arabia, India, Vietnam, etc.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#77

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

wg0 wrote: post #36
Cider9986 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPNs are not snake oil. They transfer the trust of your internet activity from a place of low-trust, your ISP, to a place of high-trust, ideally a trustworthy VPN like Mullvad, IVPN, or Proton. Among other benefits. If you don't like your ISP creating a profile of you and selling it to target ads to you, you should use a VPN. >Should I use a VPN? Yes, almost certainly. A VPN has many advantages, including: 1. Hiding…

How is private company (VPN) is more trustworthy than an other private company (ISP) and how do you expect them to protect your identity in face of determined state actors that are afer you? What power is in $2.99/month that it offers so much security? Why is that at least 40% of sponsorship to YouTube Creators seem to be from VPN industry? What is that they know and we don't know?

> How is private company (VPN) is more trustworthy than an other private company (ISP)

Well, my ISP sent me a nice letter saying they intend to monetize my metadata, and mullvad has demonstrated in court that they don't have user data to give up.

> and how do you expect them to protect your identity in face of determined state actors that are afer you?

That's moving the goalposts; your parent comment didn't say anything about determined state actors. And defending against commercial actors is useful even if it doesn't help against state actors. I tend to assume the NSA can compromise anything. I'd like to ensure only the NSA can compromise my stuff.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#78

Post by notpushkin »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #70
faangguyindia wrote: post #63

I maintain a list of "23034 IPs to blocklist.txt" blocked IPs they contain all VPN providers. Often VPN providers seed Geofeeds with wrong data, this is why i use traceroute and ping network to locate their real location.

You know that people use VPNs for perfectly legitimate reasons, right? Like when I was travelling, sites would routinely use the language of my IP address location, not the language preference as I set it in my browser. So I would be served a site that I couldn't read. My only option was to use a VPN to spoof my location so that it would serve me a site in a language I understand.

By the way, if you’re a webmaster doing this, look at the Accept-Language header instead: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#79

Post by charcircuit »

Reusing the same VPN between multiple identities is a horrible idea regardless. And let's be real. As a forum moderator if you ban a Mullvad user and then a new Mullvad user signs up the next day it is probably the same person. You should be using residential or mobile proxies if you want privacy and to blend in to everyone else.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#80

Post by jorvi »

lorenzohess wrote: post #23

The purpose of a VPN does not include anonymizing users with respect to the sites they visit,so it shouldn't be too surprising that Mullvad doesn't enforce unique exit IPs. Users who want anonymity should use networks like Tor.

That is exactly the point of public VPNs..

If I'm on a public VPN, I don't want anyone to know who is making the request, including the terminating IP.

Think about it. By your logic, VPNs shouldn't be used for torrents because VPNs shouldn't anonymize you to the terminating IP. Whereas they work gangbusters for that.

If you are talking about private VPNs.. Mullvad isn't one.

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