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Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#51

Post by throwaway378037 »

UK ISPs are legally required to collect browsing data like a log of URLs visited and store them long-term. I hate being snooped on. And I need to feel free to read and research whatever I want without that being logged somewhere that is open to data brokering, profiling, or the usual data breach vulnerabilities. Finally, I’ll do anything and everything to disrupt the pervasive internet marketing machine.

“Privacy is not about having something to hide.”

Plus I torrent a bunch of stuff of course :v

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#53

Post by armitron »

YPPH wrote: post #33
anderiv wrote: post #5

The term “VPN” has become a bit overloaded. It can mean, among other things: 1) a corporate VPN you connect to in order to gain access to corporate resources. Cisco AnyConnect, OpenVPN, IPsec/L2TP are examples of this type. 2) An overlay network that allows seamless (and secure) access to systems on disparate networks. Wireguard (and thus Tailscale), ZeroTier are examples of this type. 3) A way for individuals to obs…

>Are there situations where using a VPN (#3) is warranted Anonymity and therefore privacy. An ISP-assigned IP address reveals a lot of information about you. With a court order it can be traced back to you. Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.

Dissidents should use Tor (best done in a RAM-only environment that’s not running on their own computer) and not fuck around with VPNs because it’s go to jail or worse. There are countless ways for someone, even an expert, to hang himself using a VPN.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#54

Post by imwillofficial »

YPPH wrote: post #33
anderiv wrote: post #5

The term “VPN” has become a bit overloaded. It can mean, among other things: 1) a corporate VPN you connect to in order to gain access to corporate resources. Cisco AnyConnect, OpenVPN, IPsec/L2TP are examples of this type. 2) An overlay network that allows seamless (and secure) access to systems on disparate networks. Wireguard (and thus Tailscale), ZeroTier are examples of this type. 3) A way for individuals to obs…

>Are there situations where using a VPN (#3) is warranted Anonymity and therefore privacy. An ISP-assigned IP address reveals a lot of information about you. With a court order it can be traced back to you. Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.

Unfortunately, these days fingerprinting is pretty advanced, a VPN offers you almost no protection.

Even tor, if not used very carefully.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#55

Post by peeters »

idontwantthis wrote: post #45
muzani wrote: post #4

1. Security on a public wifi. 2. Playing games on the internet with creeps who will dig through IP logs for my location. Yes, they can fingerprint my device, but device is easier to change and safer than location info. 3. Tricking Netflix into thinking I'm in Australia so I can watch Rick & Morty.

Why does it protect you on public Wi-Fi? Won’t MitM just be between you and the VPN?

If you're questioning whether it's trivial to MitM a VPN connection, no it's not.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#56

Post by r0m4n0 »

I was poking around a government website one day, noticed a security issue, later showed someone that vulnerability I found, this person proceeded to poke around with the website for hours (unbeknown to me) without causing any harm. A few weeks later I had the somewhat local police take a lot of my belongings and charge me with a multi felony crime. I had to pay an attorney 10s of thousands of dollars to basically have the whole thing go away. Now I have a felony arrest record that I still have pop up on background checks even 10 years later.

If I would have been using a VPN, I think the barrier would have been too high for the local police to do this on their own. According to the warrants, the local cyber investigators literally emailed comcast and they just sent them over my physical address.

With a good VPN, I think there would have been some red tape or at least a few more hurdles to complicate the situation.

This probably isn't the normal use case... but I now try to use a VPN, not because I'm doing anything nefarious or that I think it's truly anonymous. I just know it will raise the effort required to ruin my life in this same way again.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#57

Post by raunak »

bruce511 wrote: post #50
YPPH wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are there situations where using a VPN (#3) is warranted Anonymity and therefore privacy. An ISP-assigned IP address reveals a lot of information about you. With a court order it can be traced back to you. Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.

That's one, but a bigger one is accessing out-of-region media. Most (all?) streaming services are geo-locked, and do not contain the same libraries in different markets (if they are available at all.) So VPNs are a common way of accessing streaming which would otherwise be unavailable. While this is "piracy of a sort", it does imply an actual paid subscription, albeit in the wrong territory. So its more-honest than t…

Piggybacking off of this comment, I’d be very curious to know the HN sentiment on piracy as a whole

Net good, net bad, somewhere in between?

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#58

Post by wolrah »

YPPH wrote: post #33
anderiv wrote: post #5

The term “VPN” has become a bit overloaded. It can mean, among other things: 1) a corporate VPN you connect to in order to gain access to corporate resources. Cisco AnyConnect, OpenVPN, IPsec/L2TP are examples of this type. 2) An overlay network that allows seamless (and secure) access to systems on disparate networks. Wireguard (and thus Tailscale), ZeroTier are examples of this type. 3) A way for individuals to obs…

>Are there situations where using a VPN (#3) is warranted Anonymity and therefore privacy. An ISP-assigned IP address reveals a lot of information about you. With a court order it can be traced back to you. Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.

> Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.

In what case would a commercial VPN provider, which will have a payment path associated to you, be better than something like Tor for the sort of user who fears government retribution?

Commercial VPN services are pretty much exclusively for doing things that annoy copyright holders. They're great for that, but for almost any other use case where one might want a VPN they're not the best choice.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#59

Post by knodi123 »

hammock wrote: post #36
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #34

My ISP quite openly says that they spy on your traffic to monetize it. This is violently unacceptable to me, so I do my best to deny them that data.

Dumb question, how can they spy on it if it’s https?

They can't see what you're doing on HTTPS sites (barring any probably-illegal tinkering like MITM), but they can mostly recognize which sites you visit, your level of traffic to them, and enough schedule-based information to build a pretty good profile of you.

Re: Ask HN: Why do you use a VPN?

#60

Post by docdeek »

wutbrodo wrote: post #47
tyingq wrote: post #41

"aside from nefarious purposes" It's not that nefarious to go around region blocks to get access to content that probably shouldn't have been blocked from you in the first place. If I'm traveling, I'm still the same person they let watch the same program at home. Or, if I want to watch Russian State controlled news, why does my government get to block it?

> Or, if I want to watch Russian State controlled news, why does my government get to block it? Woah, is this a real example? Where do you live?

Not OP but, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian state-backed media in France has been blocked/blacklisted. RT had three (or four?) different channels on TV here (English, French, Spanish, and Arabic I think) and they all have been disconnected.
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