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VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

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Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#111

Post by twosdai »

AndroTux wrote: post #62
crazygringo wrote: post #46

Is there any real-life situation in which this matters, though? If you're picking a country so you can access a Netflix show that geolimits to that country, but Netflix is also using this same faulty list... then you still get to watch your show. If you're picking a country for latency reasons, you're still getting a real location "close enough". Plus latency is affected by tons of things such as VPN server saturatio…

Yes. Let’s take an extreme example: you think you exit in Japan, but you’re actually exiting in China. This means your traffic will be analyzed and censored by China. The routers don’t care about where the provider says the IP comes from. If the packet travels through the router, it gets processed. So it very much matters if you do things that are legal in one country, but might not be in another. You know, one of th…

A more general case is for legal and SLAs. If a company uses one of these vpns to make sure their traffic only travels through a specific legal path, and then it's found that their traffic entered a different territory, there can be a lot of consequences.

The case I can think of most accessible would be anything that streams copywriten video.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#112

Post by bakugo »

nemomarx wrote: post #53
simlevesque wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would easily pay €30 a month for a VPN in my home country that uses a residential IP and isn't noticeable. I am aware that those exist, but 99% of them are shady. For residential IPs you can't even pay per month like normal VPNs, normally they charge per GB, usually over $2 usd per GB.

Is this be cause they're paying the residential proxy owners some of it?

Most of the people whose devices and connections are being used as residential proxy exit nodes are not aware of it.

They likely charge per GB because these residential connections are slow and limited compared to datacenter connections (doesn't help that they're often located in third world countries), and are often used for aggressive scraping, so charging a fixed monthly price would not be viable.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#113

Post by tallytarik »

Most of these providers are in fact open about the fact that these locations are “virtual”, so it’s misleading to say they don’t match where they claim to be.

There is however an interesting question about how VPNs should be considered from a geolocation perspective.

Should they record where the exit server is located, or the country claimed by the VPN (even if this is a “virtual” location)? In my view there is useful information in where the user wanted to be located in the latter case, which you lose if you only ever report the location of servers.

(disclaimer: I run a competing service. we currently provide the VPN reported locations because the majority of our customers expect it to work that way, as well as clearly flagging them as VPNs)

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#114

Post by ctippett »

eek2121 wrote: post #72
ctippett wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be your use case, but it by no means it's reflective of anyone else's. I live in a country that actively blocks and limits your connectivity to (ordinarily) public websites. Choosing an exit point that's in a different country is very relevant and important.

You are in the minority. Most folks that subscribe to VPNs are folks in the US, Canada, EU, and other "First World" countries. (I had a source a while back for something completely unrelated, however I didn't save it) I'm not discounting you at ALL, I'm simply stating that the majority of traffic originate from these countries. Most of these folks just want to hide their IP address for various reasons. Privacy, Pirac…

Last time I checked the UK was considered a first world country.

Edit: I commented earlier that I never considered myself part of the market that VPN companies hawk their services to. I've been living in the UK for 5 years now and the number of sites that have become unavailable to me are material and concerning for what their abolishment means for free speech. I'm as square as they come, if I feel this strongly you bet others do too.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#115

Post by withzombies »

chmod775 wrote: post #57
systemtest wrote: post #43

I'm a big VPN user since I am the citizen of one country and the resident of another. Even for government services I have to use a VPN. I tried to access the bureau of statistics of my home country through my foreign residential IP and got 404s on all pages. Enabled VPN and everything magically started working. For watching the election result video stream I also had to VPN but at least that one gave me a clear messa…

Do you know anyone in that country who will let you stick an rPI behind their modem?

AppleTV has a Tailscale client that you can use an exit node. That's what I do to VPN back to home when I'm traveling.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#116

Post by bawolff »

cyanydeez wrote: post #97
citizenpaul wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of sounding sale pitch'y. Mullvad is the only VPN the longer I use the more I like it. I've tried MANY competitors first and all the other ones so far seem to only get worse over time. I love that I can pay directly with a crypto wallet and have true anonymity.

crypto is a public ledger. If someone wanted to find you, that's pretty easy target.

That depends how you obtained the crypto in the first place.

In any case, its certainly better than visa, but if you dont trust your vpn provider the real issue is they have your IP address and at best just a pinky-promise they dont log.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#117

Post by why-o-why »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #39
why-o-why wrote: post #11

I tried to use ProtonVPN when I switched over to ProtonMail a year ago. But so much of the web does not work when you're on a VPN. For example even HackerNews has VPN restrictions. More and more sites know where VPN endpoints originate. How will VPNs prevent this in the future without them just become easy to block?

They can ban VPNs and Tor because it's affordable. Most of their users aren't using VPNs or Tor. Get enough people to use VPNs and Tor and they'll suddenly become unable to drop the traffic. The ideal world is one where everyone is using Tor. They can only discriminate against you if you're different from others. The idea behind Tor is to make everyone look like the same user. The anonymity set must be maximized for…

thank you. that is a really good point. the economic incentive! i will keep using mine!

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#118

Post by Terr_ »

jijijijij wrote: post #108
systemtest wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse is the Reddit approach, where leaving your VPN on will get your account shadow banned permanently. But you are not notified of that, so if you are wondering why nobody is replying to your comments, check in a private session if you can visit your profile page.

Check reddit.com/appeals some time after creating an account. If you are auto shadow banned, you can appeal.

Something like that happened to me, my 10+ year account and everything I've ever written just vanishing one morning. Even posts to a subreddit I moderate were repeatedly removed after every approval.

No idea why, (the "wrong" public Wi-fi?) but my appeal was granted and nothing was fixed.

Now I can't contact anyone, and the appeals page falsely claims that my account is in good standing and refuses to operate.

When I went looking for help from a throwaway account that I made many years ago for resume reviews, the exact same thing happened.

So at this point, I only lurk occasionally, because I'm not going to go through that social hell again, and it sounds like moderation failures have only gotten worse in the years since.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#119

Post by why-o-why »

systemtest wrote: post #37
why-o-why wrote: post #11

I tried to use ProtonVPN when I switched over to ProtonMail a year ago. But so much of the web does not work when you're on a VPN. For example even HackerNews has VPN restrictions. More and more sites know where VPN endpoints originate. How will VPNs prevent this in the future without them just become easy to block?

Even worse is the Reddit approach, where leaving your VPN on will get your account shadow banned permanently. But you are not notified of that, so if you are wondering why nobody is replying to your comments, check in a private session if you can visit your profile page.

i can live without reddit and hackernews. i can't live without online banking, bill paying, insurance, healtchare portals, etc.

it is funny i have been probing HN for years, and i've found a number of cases when everything is normal, but i check the account from another device and it isn't there, or is free of posts despite having made many. yet i would do the same if i was an admin trying to keep a walled-garden free of trolls.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#120

Post by why-o-why »

barfoure wrote: post #12
why-o-why wrote: post #11

I tried to use ProtonVPN when I switched over to ProtonMail a year ago. But so much of the web does not work when you're on a VPN. For example even HackerNews has VPN restrictions. More and more sites know where VPN endpoints originate. How will VPNs prevent this in the future without them just become easy to block?

Same issue exists with Tor exit nodes. It’s anonymous in that you have a hoodie on with a giant spotlight right on you.

there was a talk about this at defcon maybe 7 years ago how even going to a tor entry node could get you disappeared in türkiye. same in china (it was something about ethically exploring networks in authoritarian regimes where even pinging a chinese address from the united states could get someone arrested... methinks harvard student was presenting it?)
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