Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes • Hacker News Board

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#91

Post by developer1 » Thu, May 28, 2015, 4:42 AM UTC

albertoleal wrote: post #4

Anyone have VPN recommendations?

For technically inclined people, setting up your own SOCKS proxy is the simplest method possible.

1. Get a cheap server (ex: DigitalOcean $5/month) in the city/country you want to connect through.

2. Add these 2 lines to /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

AllowTcpForwarding yes

GatewayPorts yes

3. Restart sshd (service ssh restart), or restart the server.

4. Connect to the server setting a dynamic port forward. On linux or Mac, this is just "ssh -D 8000 user@domain.com". On Windows, putty lets you set a dynamic port forward.

5. Personally I use Chrome for my real browsing, and then use Firefox for the proxy since it allows configuring a proxy for the browser only rather than the entire operating system. You just set the SOCKS proxy under advanced networking settings (host 127.0.0.1, port 8000).

6. If you want all internet traffic to go over the proxy rather than just Firefox, this is easy on Mac through the Network Preferences panel. I'm not able to comment on linux/Windows in this regard.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#92

Post by artichokeheart » Thu, May 28, 2015, 4:43 AM UTC

zxcvcxz wrote: post #79

albedoa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I googled gamer gate and they seem to be against people exactly like you Incredible that you just learned about GamerGate and are already an expert. Oh wait: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394472 And More: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394708 Heh: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9556077

So are you saying SJWs have something to do with the gamergate thing?

God how I do love that acronym. As soon as I see it I know to ignore anything the person using it says. It's like a giant flashing fuckwit sign.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#93

Post by marssaxman » Thu, May 28, 2015, 5:12 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #27

dchuk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your logic here. They've come up with a clever way to create a sustainable, free vpn service, with the ability to easily opt-out for a still reasonable price. All the while clearly stating how it all works in their FAQ. What more do you want them to do?

What happens when the Feds are knocking on your door because someone routed kiddie pr0n or drug deals through your connection?

What happens when an asteroid falls on your head?

So far as I have been able to discover, the number of times your scenario has occurred in real life could be counted on one hand.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#94

Post by marssaxman » Thu, May 28, 2015, 5:19 AM UTC

artichokeheart wrote: post #92

zxcvcxz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you saying SJWs have something to do with the gamergate thing?

God how I do love that acronym. As soon as I see it I know to ignore anything the person using it says. It's like a giant flashing fuckwit sign.

Yes, exactly! It is meaningless as a term, lacking any referent, but oh so useful as a shibboleth: anyone who believes in it can be killfiled on sight.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#95

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 28, 2015, 5:27 AM UTC

eyeareque wrote: post #19

This made me laugh--I wonder how many innocent people are going to have the FBI kick their doors down for things that past through their "exit nodes" that they hosted.

[deleted]

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#96

Post by rumsfeld » Thu, May 28, 2015, 5:33 AM UTC

asquabventured wrote: post #16

bifrost wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually point people to this: http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-revie... As a former privacy VPN operator I can tell you its extremely hard to operate one securely.

There is no such thing as total security, there is only what we know and then what we do not know.

...but we don't know what we don't know.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#97

Post by eps » Thu, May 28, 2015, 5:46 AM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #93

TylerE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when the Feds are knocking on your door because someone routed kiddie pr0n or drug deals through your connection?

What happens when an asteroid falls on your head? So far as I have been able to discover, the number of times your scenario has occurred in real life could be counted on one hand.

You should become a tor exit node and look at the traffic. It will shock the fuck out of all your libertarian thinking.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#98

Post by webdigi » Thu, May 28, 2015, 5:56 AM UTC

bifrost wrote: post #2

This is basically why you never want to use a proprietary client with any VPN service, you don't know what you're getting into at all. At least with PPtP/L2TP/OpenVPN based services you can use well known clients or OS vendor provided clients that are unlikely to have little goodies like this.

Never use proprietary clients if possible. Also on the VPN server side, you could investigate the option to create your own VPN server in a few minutes https://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2015/how-to-setup-your-own-pr...

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#99

Post by makeitsuckless » Thu, May 28, 2015, 6:09 AM UTC

8chan wrote: post #29

dchuk wrote: post #3

They explicitly state in their FAQ how this works and why their service is able to be free: http://hola.org/faq#in_how_is_free They even have a non-free option that eliminates the VPN as a proxy feature. "Hola built a peer to peer overlay network for HTTP, which securely routes the sites you choose through other Hola users' devices and not through expensive servers. Hola never takes up valuable resources from these u…

Hello, Fredrick Brennan here (8chan owner). They changed their FAQ IN RESPONSE to my breaking the story on this. Proof: Google cache of Hola FAQ as of 26 May: https://archive.is/tgujS As you can see, there is no mention of Luminati, or the underlying mechanics at all. I published hola.html and updated my global announcement just hours before the FAQ change: https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/603178141650026498 T…

Not do downplay this issue, but wouldn't one simply assume it works this way.

I mean, how else would it work, Hola operating their own proxies and giving all of that infrastructure and bandwidth away for free?

Of course it would be P2P and would turn the user into a supplier of data and bandwidth to others. This basic model has been in use for "illegal" content for well over a decade now.

Now how they exploit that bandwidth is a different matter. Conflating those two is what will give you the "meh" reaction.

Also, "accusing" Hola of being unethical because it has no recognizable signature is another red herring. Of course it hasn't, otherwise it would get blocked by the geotarded services it is supposed to unblock. It's not an evil feature in itself.

The Luminati exploitation angle is the issue. Everything else about Hola is either transparant or at least pretty damn obvious.

Re: Hola VPN turns 10M users into exit nodes

#100

Post by Moru » Thu, May 28, 2015, 6:11 AM UTC

NeutronBoy wrote: post #15

bifrost wrote: post #2

This is basically why you never want to use a proprietary client with any VPN service, you don't know what you're getting into at all. At least with PPtP/L2TP/OpenVPN based services you can use well known clients or OS vendor provided clients that are unlikely to have little goodies like this.

Hola explicitly say this is why they're able to offer the service for free http://hola.org/faq#in_how_is_free dchuk beat me to it!

Yes, now it says so. Didn't do that earlier :-)