Surely from an ideological perspective, running a Tor relay node or two would provide about the same amount of fuzzies at much less risk?
Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
21–30 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd consider myself tech savvy and I happily pay for a VPN (PIA). I don't want to manage a node, and at $40/year it's about equal to what I'd pay otherwise.
I guess it takes an average HN reader 1 hour to setup a VPN. If the purpose is have a secured gateway for using public wifi, it serves the purpose. However, if you want to gain anonymity, it does not work since the node has a unique IP and only you are using this IP. You still need different users to use this VPN to gain anonymity. Therefore, we could only choose one of the following: security or anonymity, but not b…
In my country, VPNs sometimes get blocked. Along with half of the AWS and other random stuff.
So I've set up my VPN and also pay for another third-party VPN service, having best (or worst) of both worlds.
My gateway host is private, and I've decided that if it gets detected, I'll add an obfs4 layer on top of it. (Luckily, that hadn't happened - and I'm moving to another country in about a week. But that's a different story.)
All my first VPN does, is merely routing the traffic to an upstream VPN provider. This way I get a private entry point but also enjoy some degree of anonymity as my "final" IP addresses are shared with lots of other users. (Well, I share my gateway VPN with a few close friends. Maybe that's borderline cheating on the upstream VPN, but I don't see a way to pay them for my network-sharing guests anyway.)
Oh, and I don't need to reconnect to switch regions. I just made myself a tiny web service that changes the routing table used by my TAP connection, so whenever something doesn't work from one region I just need to click on a flag icon.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#23I've also toyed with the idea of doing something like this, and would like to know more about this as well. Like you said, the technical side seems easy. I imagine handling legal issues is going to be the bulk of the work. How are you going to handle abuse reports? How are you going to handle requests from authorities asking to turn over user data? And most importantly: how much information about your users are you g…
> how much information about your users are you going to collect
Not collecting any data would be the obvious choice.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#24Surely from an ideological perspective, running a Tor relay node or two would provide about the same amount of fuzzies at much less risk?
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#25I've also toyed with the idea of doing something like this, and would like to know more about this as well. Like you said, the technical side seems easy. I imagine handling legal issues is going to be the bulk of the work. How are you going to handle abuse reports? How are you going to handle requests from authorities asking to turn over user data? And most importantly: how much information about your users are you g…
> how much information about your users are you going to collect Not collecting any data would be the obvious choice.
Which isn't legal in many parts of the world, especially if you take any kind of payment for your services.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it takes an average HN reader 1 hour to setup a VPN. If the purpose is have a secured gateway for using public wifi, it serves the purpose. However, if you want to gain anonymity, it does not work since the node has a unique IP and only you are using this IP. You still need different users to use this VPN to gain anonymity. Therefore, we could only choose one of the following: security or anonymity, but not b…
In my country, VPNs sometimes get blocked. Along with half of the AWS and other random stuff. So I've set up my VPN and also pay for another third-party VPN service, having best (or worst) of both worlds. My gateway host is private, and I've decided that if it gets detected, I'll add an obfs4 layer on top of it. (Luckily, that hadn't happened - and I'm moving to another country in about a week. But that's a different…
> In my country, VPNs sometimes get blocked.
This is why I love* Tunnelbear's[0] GhostBear feature and it uses obfsproxy[1]. Very few VPN providers provide censorship circumvention like that
[0] https://www.tunnelbear.com/
[1] https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/TrafficObfuscatio...
[*] No affiliation with Tunnelbear, just thought I would point out this feature
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#27The successful companies appear to be run at least partially anonymously and based in tax havens. I figure that is because there is legal responsibility that they are trying to dodge.
People use vpn for illegal stuff, and the least worst is Netflix then p2p. P2p if you are a facilitator could land you in jail.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#28I'd be most worried about the legal liability, what happens if someone starts using your service to download or sell pirated movies or child porn? Whats your legal exposure?
Yeah this is my issue. I'm not too worried about it being a successful business (more like a small side project), but I don't have the resources to fight any legal claims.
If you don't have any resources to fight the legal claims you should not do it. You won't last very long because you can be sure that there will be some legal claims, valid or not. Even a frivolous claim will take resources to defend.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#29By and large, people are interested in VPNs because they're vulnerable, in some way or another. By becoming a VPN provider, you become a "pinch point" for the connections of a number of vulnerable people.
That way, a hypothetical bad actor only needs to compromise one entity (you) in order to gain access those people who rely on you.
Aggregating vulnerability makes you a target, and puts your customers at risk - Especially when you're relying on third-party virtualisation providers for your infrastructure.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to run a VPN as a business?
#30The successful companies appear to be run at least partially anonymously and based in tax havens. I figure that is because there is legal responsibility that they are trying to dodge. People use vpn for illegal stuff, and the least worst is Netflix then p2p. P2p if you are a facilitator could land you in jail.
[deleted]