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VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

ipinfo.io

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

#291

Post by ryandrake »

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.

Wow, very shitty, but I don't expect anything nice out of Reddit. What gets me is: Imagine being the developer writing the system for unaccountable shadowbanning. How do you justify it, ethically? I mean, we all need a paycheck, but come on, at some point one must take a break, walk outside, and think about the effects of the software they are writing. It makes me sad that there are so many in our profession who see that JIRA ticket and say "Yes, boss, no problem, boss, I'll write whatever you ask for, boss!"

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

#292

Post by YouAreWRONGtoo »

ssl-3 wrote: post #230
YouAreWRONGtoo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

links2 is still a work horse in 2025 for occasional debugging.

I know of links and have used it, but I don't think I've ever used links2. Am I correct to assume that links2 is more of the same/better? (Also: Your comment seems perfectly sane, but it was already marked as "flagged" by the time I saw it 18 minutes after it was submitted. I vouched for it. But I wonder: Whose ruffles did you panty in order for your comments to land this way?)

> Am I correct to assume that links2 is more of the same/better?

Most distributions install links2 as links.

> But I wonder: Whose ruffles did you panty in order for your comments to land this way?)

I don't know, but most people on voting based forums don't like what I have to say, even though I am almost always right. For example, when I say that Linux is an operating system using a software development methodology from the 1970s, that hurts some people's feelings. Similarly, when I say that I use Linux, because I am poor (read: not a decabillionaire), not because it's good (Mac/Windows are obviously even worse), that just rubs people the wrong way. So, ultimately, it's because most people are political and stupid in nature.

I think almost everything sucks relative to my standards, which is only natural, because I am engineer and I only exist to fix broken shit.

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

#293

Post by monerozcash »

reincoder wrote: post #256
dsl wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous company we had a subscription to Spur Intelligence. It is like Palantir for IP address info, and probably the closest to what you are talking about. They recently added GeoIP to their data and in the bit of testing I was able to do before I left it was scary good . I also had an amusing chat with one of their engineers at a conference about how you can spoof IPInfo's location probes...

> how you can spoof IPInfo's location probes... Interesting. I would love to know how this is possible. Like with Geofeed or something else?

If you're doing latency-based probing, location spoofing is presumably possible to an extent by adding artificial delays and possibly spoofing ICMP "TTL expired" packets like https://github.com/blechschmidt/fakeroute

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

#294

Post by preinheimer »

reincoder wrote: post #173
preinheimer wrote: post #134

I'm a co-founder at WonderProxy, we didn't make their list (we target people doing application testing, not consumer VPNs). We're in 100+ countries, and I'll stand by that claim. It's a huge pain in the neck. In our early years we had a lot of problems with suppliers claiming to be in Mexico or South America who were actually just in Texas. I almost flew to Peru with a rackmount server in my luggage after weeks of pr…

I work for IPinfo. I have raised a ticket internally, but I think we focused on consumer VPNs for this test. For our ProbeNet, we are attempting to reach 150 countries (by ISO 3166's definition). We are at around 530 cities. Server management is not an easy task. We do not ship hardware, but operate using dedicated servers, so this reduces one layer of complexity. To maintain the authenticity of our server locations,…

We really don't want to operate our own hardware. The situation in Peru at the time was that there wasn't anyone offering the bandwidth we needed who could actually back up their bandwidth claims. Forget 95th percentile, bandwidth there was straight "you pay for a pipe, we give you that size pipe (but somewhat oversold)". But no one could do more than like 5mbit that was actually more like 3.

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

#295

Post by citizenpaul »

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.

I went in on Monero (which Mullvad accepts for now...)the only early crypto that had a viable usage plan from the beginning. That was of course before I realized that crypto would of course just be turned into a massive scam wheelhouse and any coin with real utility value to challenge fiat currency would of course be regulated against. (not salt its still worth a lot)

I am aware most crypto is not anon without extra effort.

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

#296

Post by citizenpaul »

OutOfHere wrote: post #263
neoromantique wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on crypto, and even on public ledger ones, there are ways to on-ramp cash to a new cold wallet.

For payments, a cold wallet affects only its security, never its transparency. When you pay from it, you expose an IP.

So what if i say.... use my Mullvad vpn to pay from cambodia or something.

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

#297

Post by ignoramous »

prosody wrote: post #156
ignoramous wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windscribe and iVPN up there with Mullvad in TFA. > Mullvad ... security and privacy _very_ seriously. Not surprised to see them shine here. ? TFA reflects on dishonest marketing on part of public VPN providers more than privacy / security. That said, VPNs don't add much security, though, they are useful for geo unblocking content and (at some level) anti-censorship. In my experience, the mainstream public VPNs don't…

Advertising a VPN endpoint in country A which in reality is in country B is a security concern for users trying to reduce their visibility to country B’s authorities. You’re right about the more fit to purpose tools, of course, but they’re more of an impediment to normal internet usage.

> Advertising a VPN endpoint in country A which in reality is in country B is a security concern for users trying to reduce their visibility to country B’s authorities.

Mullvad in their Terms of Service say they'll abide by Swedish and EU laws. This, among other things, means a VPN is in no way going to save your bacon from "authorities".

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

#298

Post by DavideNL »

hopelite wrote: post #252
fguerraz wrote: post #231

ProtonVPN clearly marks these “virtual locations” in their UIs as “smart routing”, so there really isn’t any deception here https://protonvpn.com/support/how-smart-routing-works

That seems reasonable, but they seem to be suffering their own problem with UI and UX design by not making that inherently clearer. I was getting a bit disappointed about Proton based on this evaluation even though the only problem I’ve had is their really lacking client UI/UX. They should make that visualization clearer. I don’t know the answer, but maybe offering a toggle or expansion for virtualized servers, might…

I've been using ProtonVPN for many years, and agree, the UI is quite terrible...

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

#299

Post by devilbunny »

ninkendo wrote: post #285
ebb_earl_co wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the instructions from Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/kb/1280/appletv

I wish there was a way to use the tailscale app to connect to my own vanilla WireGuard endpoint at home. I don’t want to use and pay for tailscale when I can run WireGuard myself. But there seems to be no good WireGuard app for tvOS (there is for iOS and macOS though) and if the TS app works as well as it says, I’m jealous I can’t use it with my setup. (There’s another really shitty VPN app for tvOS that I tried, but…

Personal-level Tailscale is free for up to 3 users. So your immediate family is covered even on trips.

You could create an account with any one of their identity providers (or roll your own OIDC, it's possible) and just have it not have a linked credit card. The account you use to authenticate Tailscale doesn't have to be the Apple account that you use to log into the hardware device itself - my wife's laptop, phone, and iPads are logged in under my Tailscale account but separate Apple/iCloud accounts (we have family sharing for our apps, etc., but the TS is usually going to be up to me, so I haven't created another account for her). Free gets you 100 devices, so we're nowhere close to running out of those.

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

#300

Post by systemtest »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #147
xandrius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy traffic to access a bunch of gov websites? There's definitely more to your story then. I'd say, anything heavy and random, use the general VPN and the rest use an rpi at your parents' home.

No it’s his parents who don’t want him interfering with their thriving warez empire

I don’t do FXP anymore :)
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