scottmaciver
Puritan Board Sophomore
Just a quick question, do any of you use a VPN? If so, what do you use and why?
VPN
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I've used them in the past to mitigate security-related risks and concerns. I'd recommend ExpressVPN and/or ProtonVPN.
dsanch1120
Puritan Board Freshman
I made my own vpn server once with open vpn and a raspberry pi, probably not very secure, but it was a fun side project. I think I used a vpn in high school to get around my school’s YouTube blocking. And, I suppose I have to use a vpn on my work laptop every day to do my job. Otherwise, I don’t use a vpn for personal reasons. As a computer scientist, the main reason to get vpn is to watch Netflix shows that are only available in other countries. With https, things like passwords are fairly secure. There’s an Interesting video about it.
And in general, if you’re using the internet, someone’s going to be tracking you, even with a vpn. If you’re like the average person, it’ll be the big tech companies. If you actively try and make yourself anonymous on the internet (using Linux, tor browser, etc.) the government might check up on you a bit more. So.. pick your poison.
And in general, if you’re using the internet, someone’s going to be tracking you, even with a vpn. If you’re like the average person, it’ll be the big tech companies. If you actively try and make yourself anonymous on the internet (using Linux, tor browser, etc.) the government might check up on you a bit more. So.. pick your poison.
Logan
Puritan Board Graduate
VPNs do have a use case, and VPN providers certainly think you need one!
But what does a VPN actually do? It encrypts the data between you and the VPN server, so that no one between you and that server can intercept your data, mostly your Internet Service Provider (Cox, AT&T, Earthlink, etc.). Or, as Daniel said, this is useful if there is a site or service that is region-locked: you just tunnel to a server in a different country and now it looks like your traffic is coming from there.
As far as security though, most sites use HTTPS (including Puritanboard, notice the little lock next to the website address in your browser). So most of your traffic is already encrypted. Thus the only additional security you really get is hiding what sites you visit from your ISP (all your ISP can see is that you have a lot of traffic going to one particular VPN server, but not what it is).
Does it stop Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. from tracking you? No, definitely not if you're logged into their services and then visit other sites while logged into their services.
So while VPN providers tout it as amazing security and encrypting all your data, it's really only useful to
1. prevent your ISP from knowing exactly where your traffic is to (and although your ISP can't, the VPN company can, do you trust them more?),
2. or in securing a connection between you and a site that isn't secure (in which case, why are you trusting that site with sensitive data anyway?),
3. or in getting around region-locked services. It's definitely not going to prevent you from being tracked or really protect your privacy.
If privacy is your goal, then you'd be much better off de-googling and de-facebooking and there are lots of great tools and articles listed at privacytools.io
Here's a somewhat humorous video I enjoyed a while back on this subject:
But what does a VPN actually do? It encrypts the data between you and the VPN server, so that no one between you and that server can intercept your data, mostly your Internet Service Provider (Cox, AT&T, Earthlink, etc.). Or, as Daniel said, this is useful if there is a site or service that is region-locked: you just tunnel to a server in a different country and now it looks like your traffic is coming from there.
As far as security though, most sites use HTTPS (including Puritanboard, notice the little lock next to the website address in your browser). So most of your traffic is already encrypted. Thus the only additional security you really get is hiding what sites you visit from your ISP (all your ISP can see is that you have a lot of traffic going to one particular VPN server, but not what it is).
Does it stop Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. from tracking you? No, definitely not if you're logged into their services and then visit other sites while logged into their services.
So while VPN providers tout it as amazing security and encrypting all your data, it's really only useful to
1. prevent your ISP from knowing exactly where your traffic is to (and although your ISP can't, the VPN company can, do you trust them more?),
2. or in securing a connection between you and a site that isn't secure (in which case, why are you trusting that site with sensitive data anyway?),
3. or in getting around region-locked services. It's definitely not going to prevent you from being tracked or really protect your privacy.
If privacy is your goal, then you'd be much better off de-googling and de-facebooking and there are lots of great tools and articles listed at privacytools.io
Here's a somewhat humorous video I enjoyed a while back on this subject:
scottmaciver
Puritan Board Sophomore
Thanks all for the helpful responses.
BTW, setting up a pi-hole for your home is much better than having a VPN.
Ploutos
Puritan Board Junior
What makes a Raspberry Pi better than a VPN? Have you done this yourself, and could you recommend a good user guide for a beginner?
I wasn't referring to the device per se but this service on your network: https://pi-hole.net/
I have it running on my NAS.
Synology. It is available as a Docker image, so if you can set up Docker on your NAS then you can run it as a container. You can also set up a Raspberry Pi and either dedicate the Raspberry Pi to it or run it as a container on that device.
Logan
Puritan Board Graduate
Nice. I run a Synology at home as well (Plex server, security cams, music server, and backups for all the computers as well as file sharing). I use Adguard Home instead of Pi-hole. Seems to work quite well.
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