Can't trust any VPN these days

Great write up! Do you have any plans to create your own Arch Linux installer that bundles all your steps together so other users in your situation might be able to have a simpler time getting all the mechanics operating if they're Linux users but not as skilled as you?

Re: Can't trust any VPN these days

#5

Post by axegon_ » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

I have honestly never trusted VPN providers in any shape or form. I had a university professor back in the early 2010's who said something very accurate: "Proprietary services providing anonymity provide everything but anonymity". I'm far more comfortable running a vps somewhere when I need to. And even then, VPN is kind of an exception since I hate fiddling with the setup(as easy as it may be). For most of my usage, an SSH tunnel as a socks proxy does it all and when I'm done, kill the vps and move on.

Re: Can't trust any VPN these days

#6

Post by endymi0n » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

jrvieira wrote: post #2

These days?

Had the same thought from the headline, but the punchline is that he's using the VPN he completely built himself and can't even trust that one.

Re: Can't trust any VPN these days

#7

Post by Etheryte » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:32 AM UTC

I would say that the title is misleading. The author set up their own VPN, but didn't delve into what the config options they used actually do until they ran into problems. Everything else follows from that.

Re: Can't trust any VPN these days

#8

Post by anakaine » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:34 AM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #5

I have honestly never trusted VPN providers in any shape or form. I had a university professor back in the early 2010's who said something very accurate: "Proprietary services providing anonymity provide everything but anonymity". I'm far more comfortable running a vps somewhere when I need to. And even then, VPN is kind of an exception since I hate fiddling with the setup(as easy as it may be). For most of my usage,…

The article doesnt quite match the headline in the way your reply suggests. Trust, in this instance, is more about accidental leakage and installers not tailoring the OS to have Up and Down watchers to apply DNS changes.

It's not about whether the VPN provider can be trusted.

Re: Can't trust any VPN these days

#9

Post by nofunsir » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:34 AM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #3

Run your own exit node for tailscale or zerotier somewhere

or bog-standard ssh server + bitvise local client.

EDIT to clarify because i feel many might not be aware how easy it is: 1) enable port forwarding in your sshd config (implies you can't just do this on a server which you don't admin and which has this disabled) 2) point bitvise's socks5 proxy server feature at the ssh server 3) point anything that needs to be tunneled at the bitvise client's port (default 1080) e.g. firefox. 4) voila, packets leave and return via the ssh server's public IP.

Re: Can't trust any VPN these days

#10

Post by arcade79 » Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 10:34 AM UTC

The tragedy here is that expectations differ.

I would expect my laptop to use my local DNS server if the VPN is up. My local DNS server is the one I have on my home network. The rest of my traffic, I would expect to go through the VPN tunnel.

Problem of course is that VPNs used to be expert-level stuff. This kind of "avoid government blocks" use of VPN wasn't even common when I started fiddling with OpenVPN around 2001/2002.