Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

frootvpn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 65 posts

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#51

Post by desdiv »

teamhappy wrote: post #44
beagle3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a VPN but not anonymous. Amazon knows who you are.

There is always a server that knows who you are. Whether it's an OpenVPN server hosted on an EC2 instance or a TOR entry node. Hosting you own VPN server seems overkill for this kind of use case. There are many trustworthy VPN providers that I'd recommend for use cases unrelated tor BitTorrent. A couple of years ago people recommended SwissVPN over and over to me, though I've never used it. I was a happy IPredator cu…

    There is always a server that knows who you are. 
    Whether it's an OpenVPN server hosted on an EC2 
    instance or a TOR entry node.
Correction: the TOR entry node only knows the data came from you, but there's no way for it to know whether the data originated from you or not. For all it knows, you could be a relay and the data came from someone else.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#52

Post by beagle3 »

driverdan wrote: post #42
beagle3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US and many other places, prepaid cards are not anonymous. IIRC you need ID of some kind to buy them in Germany, for example (similarly for SIM cards)

You do not need an ID to get a prepaid card in the US.

True, but they are not technically anonymous - you have to provide a name and address. And while the average person will not care, I'm sure an enterprising US district attorney will find a way to pile CFAA and other charges for providing wrong details on a prepaid card if they already are trying to nail you.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#53

Post by darkstar999 »

caractacus wrote: post #32
darkstar999 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your needs, you can just roll your own with Amazon EC2. I use it for an SSH tunnel, mostly to use while at work. Not that I'm doing any weird browsing, I just don't like the thought of my employer keeping a log of what I am doing on my free time ( https://xkcd.com/303/ ). I wrote a script to spin up a new instance when I need it, and to terminate it when I don't. It should cost less than $10/mo, and I on…

Can you share the script on a pastebin or something? Sounds like an excellent solution.

Here it is in all its Bash glory. It works locally on Linux Mint / Ubuntu. I hacked this together just yesterday so I'd be happy to see any improvements.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/223853355d67123fdda8

This assumes that you are somewhat familiar with EC2 and have already set up a keypair and a security group that allows incoming port 22. Just read the instructions at the top and change the settings to fit your needs.

Set your browser to use SOCKS host 127.0.0.1, port 5222 (or whatever you change it to). This allows you to have a browser using the tunnel and everything else using your native connection.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#54

Post by beagle3 »

teamhappy wrote: post #44
beagle3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a VPN but not anonymous. Amazon knows who you are.

There is always a server that knows who you are. Whether it's an OpenVPN server hosted on an EC2 instance or a TOR entry node. Hosting you own VPN server seems overkill for this kind of use case. There are many trustworthy VPN providers that I'd recommend for use cases unrelated tor BitTorrent. A couple of years ago people recommended SwissVPN over and over to me, though I've never used it. I was a happy IPredator cu…

Right, but the discussion is about anonymous VPN use.

There's always a server that knows something - but using EC2 means it is extremely easy to tie to your identity through your credit card, shipping and billing addresses, etc.

And Amazon is in bed with everyone VPN users might want to stay anonymous from - so EC2 is an exceptionally poor choice if you care about anonymity.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#55

Post by icebraining »

jdiez17 wrote: post #50
icebraining wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is a service.

Wikipedia is a service puts up a huge banner every year asking you to please give them money if you don't want them to be forced to show advertisements, implicitly making you the product.

I say, the lengths people go to justify a trite thought-terminating cliché don't fail to astonish me.

If the mere possibility than a service you use might in the future have ads is sufficient to justify the phrase "you are the product", then I don't see how anything can be an exception to that. After all, the next release of Tor might have ads! Who knows?

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#56

Post by click170 »

beagle3 wrote: post #52
driverdan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not need an ID to get a prepaid card in the US.

True, but they are not technically anonymous - you have to provide a name and address. And while the average person will not care, I'm sure an enterprising US district attorney will find a way to pile CFAA and other charges for providing wrong details on a prepaid card if they already are trying to nail you.

You can buy a prepaid card in most local grocery stores in Canada, no personal info required - though you can't buy a prepaid card with a prepaid card.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#57

Post by teamhappy »

desdiv wrote: post #51
teamhappy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a server that knows who you are. Whether it's an OpenVPN server hosted on an EC2 instance or a TOR entry node. Hosting you own VPN server seems overkill for this kind of use case. There are many trustworthy VPN providers that I'd recommend for use cases unrelated tor BitTorrent. A couple of years ago people recommended SwissVPN over and over to me, though I've never used it. I was a happy IPredator cu…

There is always a server that knows who you are. Whether it's an OpenVPN server hosted on an EC2 instance or a TOR entry node. Correction: the TOR entry node only knows the data came from you, but there's no way for it to know whether the data originated from you or not. For all it knows, you could be a relay and the data came from someone else.

My bad, this is actually an important distinction.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#58

Post by beagle3 »

click170 wrote: post #56
beagle3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but they are not technically anonymous - you have to provide a name and address. And while the average person will not care, I'm sure an enterprising US district attorney will find a way to pile CFAA and other charges for providing wrong details on a prepaid card if they already are trying to nail you.

You can buy a prepaid card in most local grocery stores in Canada, no personal info required - though you can't buy a prepaid card with a prepaid card.

Interesting ... what's the logic in that?

Can you use it to get money (ATM or cashback)? I assume so, in which case this restriction makes it extra stupid.

Re: FrootVPN – Surf anonymously on the Internet

#59

Post by click170 »

beagle3 wrote: post #58
click170 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy a prepaid card in most local grocery stores in Canada, no personal info required - though you can't buy a prepaid card with a prepaid card.

Interesting ... what's the logic in that? Can you use it to get money (ATM or cashback)? I assume so, in which case this restriction makes it extra stupid.

I always assumed money-laundering was what they were trying to protect against.

At first I figured if it was possible to buy a gift card with a gift card they wouldn't be able to track that very easily / as easily. But then, what about cash. So it does seem like kind of a moot point to me, maybe someone in Finance can explain the reasoning better?

Post reply on HN