[deleted]
VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
41–50 of 333 posts
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#42[deleted]
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#43I'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 message. For doing taxes in my home country I then have to disable VPN since all VPN access is blocked but it's OK to use a foreign residential IP.
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.
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#44Contrasting take: RTT and a service providing black box knowledge is not equivalent to knowledge of the backbone. To assume traffic is always efficiently routed seems dubious when considering a global scale. The supporting infrastructure of telecom is likely shaped by volume/size of traffic and not shortest paths. I'll confess my evaluation here might be overlooking some details. I'm curious on others' thoughts on th…
> I'll confess my evaluation here might be overlooking some details.
Yeah like... physics. If you're getting sub-millisecond ping times from London you aren't talking to Mauritius.
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#45Contrasting take: RTT and a service providing black box knowledge is not equivalent to knowledge of the backbone. To assume traffic is always efficiently routed seems dubious when considering a global scale. The supporting infrastructure of telecom is likely shaped by volume/size of traffic and not shortest paths. I'll confess my evaluation here might be overlooking some details. I'm curious on others' thoughts on th…
The speed of light provides a limit on distance for a given RTT, and taking the examples in the article which are less than 0.5ms and considering the speed of light (300km/ms) the measured exit countries must be accurate.
The speed of light in fiber which probably covers most of the distance is also even slower due to refraction (about 2/3).
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#46Is 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 saturation, so exact geography isn't always what matters most anyways.
And if your main interest is privacy from your ISP or local WiFi network, then any location will do.
I'm trying to think if there's ever a legal reason why e.g. a political dissident would need to control the precise country their traffic exited from, but I'm struggling. If you need to make sure a particular government can't de-anonymize your traffic, it seems like the legal domicile of the VPN provider is what matters most, and whether the government you're worried about has subpoena power over them. Not where the exit node is.
Am I missing anything?
I mean, obviously truth in advertising is important. I'm just wondering if there's any actual harm here, or if this is ultimately nothing more than a curiosity.
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
With CGNAT becoming more widespread, formats like this might need expansion to include location data for ports. Ie. Port 10,000-20,000 are consumers in New york, port numbers 20000-30000 are in Boston, etc.
Sounds awful, though. Maybe we should get more widespread usage for IPv6 instead.
Yes. I’ll never forgive IETF for standardizing CGNAT back in 2013. They should have just said “no, deploy IPv6 with a transition technology”.
If that had happened, IPv4 would likely already could be regarded as a relic of the past.
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also use Mullvad VPN exclusively for my VPN needs. The fact I can get 6 months of access with a scratch card bought from a store & my account is just a random integer number is an example of privacy by design: no email, no phone numbers, no credit cards. I don't even do anything illegal, I'd just rather have a (what I feel) trusted option when I want to browse the Internet anonymously.
Can you buy those in US stores? I’ve been paying for Mullvad with Monero for years. Love it
Amazon, but that kind of defeats the point.
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#49I'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…
> 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.
Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple, for better or worse, has been able to use their size to pressure sites into accepting connections from their Private Relay service. If VPN usage becomes the norm, sites will have to give in eventually.
Only one I have issues with is Ticketmaster, other than that I forget that it’s even on all the time
I can’t access Reddit on Mullvad via Tailscale