VPNs

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

I chose IVPN in the end because they're based in Gibraltar.

Gibraltar is an overseas territory of the U.K., which is a Five Eyes country.

 

[GHTD]

Gibraltar is an overseas territory of the U.K., which is a Five Eyes country.

But from what I understand, they keep their own autonomy even if it's a UK territory.

ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands, also a UK territory, and maintains it's own set of regulations on data.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

But from what I understand, they keep their own autonomy even if it's a UK territory.

ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands, also a UK territory, and maintains it's own set of regulations on data.

Being a territory, though, the British will always have more access to their internet than they would if they were a foreign country; autonomy or no, the British government is still suzerain, so if the Brits want to spy on you, they will always have easy access.

 

[Never Scored]

Does Proton VPN allow me to download a simple .ovpn file or do I have to use their app?

 

[The Real SVP]

Does Proton VPN allow me to download a simple .ovpn file or do I have to use their app?

They offer .ovpn files. Even for the free service. At least they did the last time I cared.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

I've been eyeing Speedify as my new VPN since they allow network bonding which would be extremely useful, and like all other VPNs they allege to not keep any user log activity. Have they been proven in court or no?

" TunnelBear does not collect traffic logs or monitor any user activity. It does collect some data, including your OS, whether or not you’ve been active this month, and the total amount data used within a month. However, “TunnelBear does NOT store users originating IP addresses when connected to our service and thus cannot identify users when provided IP addresses of our servers.” "

List of VPNs confirmed to log IPs
Banana VPN
Buffered
F-Secure Freedome
Faceless.Me
FlowVPN
FlyVPN
FreedomIP
HideMyAss
Hola
IdentityCloaker
Iron Socket
LeVPN
MyIP.io
PandaPow
PrivateWifi
SecurityKISS (10 days)
Speedify
SunVPN
SwissVPN (6 months!!!)
TotalVPN
Unlocator
VPN.ac (one day)
VPNBook (one week)
VPNLand (sign-up)

Not proven to NOT store IP Logs
Privatoria

Oh I see, this answers my question. Dodged a bullet on this one, too bad.

 

[Jones McCann]

I've been eyeing Speedify as my new VPN since they allow network bonding which would be extremely useful, and like all other VPNs they allege to not keep any user log activity. Have they been proven in court or no?

Oh I see, this answers my question. Dodged a bullet on this one, too bad.

Still have ProtonVPN. Glad to see they're not on the list, although you never know. It's hard to keep tracking of everything spying you when literally everything does it.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

I'm curious if there's not a way to use Speedify with PIA so Speedify can't record your activity, I know you can use the internet access of another computer by plugging one into the other with a CAT5, so what if you used Speedify on the patsy computer and used PIA on the main computer?

 

[totse]

I don't think you should need two separate machines to do that. There should be a way to modify the routing table to route one VPN interface through another or, if nothing else, establish one VPN connection on the PC while using the VPN config of the router to establish the next one. This is called double VPN if you want to look into it, you can probably do it all in software.

 

[Aidan]

I don't understand why you're so fixated on Speedify, but I also don't know anything about it. The short answer is "yes" because where there's a will there's a way, but it may just not be worth the headache.
If you're just trying to route traffic through a computer that has the sole purpose of forwarding traffic with a specific VPN client, you could just use a virtual machine for that.

 

[ditto]

proXPN only have one working server left .. in Toronto. All the other servers are still up but the certs have all expired.

Like the company has been completely abandoned, with all the servers running

 

[Rozzy]

This guy claims encrypted VPN traffic was interfered with, possible deep packet inspection.

 

[Bongocat]

This guy claims encrypted VPN traffic was interfered with, possible deep packet inspection.

tbh if you're using a VPN server inside American jurisdiction, you should just assume everything is being logged. If you want privacy, check different country laws and use the servers there. You can switch between them depending on your activity.

Most applications where you need speed are not significantly benefited by privacy anyway. Like really, who gives a dick what you're watching on youtube or gaming on.

Also, for the record, I DID notice this was happening during the times he talked about. During that time I had to exclusively use servers out of the country.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

If you're just trying to route traffic through a computer that has the sole purpose of forwarding traffic with a specific VPN client, you could just use a virtual machine for that.

That would be absolutely easiest way to do it. I use VPN exclusively in a virtual machine so gmail and other things that I need to keep running won't freak out and start sending me text messages about hackers.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Linux has network namespaces. All namespaces have their own routing tables, network stack and such . You can easily run different programs via different interfaces without the programs even knowing of the other interfaces or about their nature of connection. I can for example set up a torrent client downloading via an openvn connection, while I have a browser instance running via tor and another browser instance running via direct network connection, for online banking and other places that freak out over known Tor IPs for example and where hiding my IP doesn't really do any good.

It's also a good way to not allow network access at all (this is the default on my machine, a network connection is a distinct privilege which has to be given to a process) and also makes so called "leaking" pretty much impossible. Contrary to things like VMs it's a very lightweight and effective way of resource isolation (if you only need this network isolation) and I'm surprised it's not more known or popular.

 

[AnOminous]

tbh if you're using a VPN server inside American jurisdiction, you should just assume everything is being logged.

Even if you don't, odds are good it's going through Spook Central in Virginia at some point, like about half of all Internet traffic.

 

[Dick Justice]

Is web browsing on a VM an effective defence against fingerprinting?

 

[Bongocat]

Is web browsing on a VM an effective defence against fingerprinting?

Unlikely. Fingerprinting works by a combination of device, browser and rendering info. Most of that stuff will remain the same unless you physically switch operating systems and actual computers each time. Find a browser that offers native counter-fingerprinting techniques. Brave does this by default by making a new fake 'fingerprint' every time you visit a website.

 

[AnOminous]

Is web browsing on a VM an effective defence against fingerprinting?

Maybe if it's unaltered TAILS or something. Ordinarily I'd say use the most common browser but currently that's Chrome. Then Safari in a distant second. Probably a completely vanilla Windows install would be reasonably good. Just don't resize the window or any other number of things.

Even TAILS leaks some information, and in general. A real problem with anti-fingerprinting is just doing it at all itself puts you in a minority of users.

Brave does this by default by making a new fake 'fingerprint' every time you visit a website.

That autistic asshole at archive.today was still able to detect Brave even when I faked User-Agent.

 

[Aidan]

Is web browsing on a VM an effective defence against fingerprinting?

It can help provide disinfo but you can also just have a dedicated browser to avoid fingerprinting or provide misinformation. Hardened firefox avoids pretty much all fingerprinting. You can test this by using the links below.

Device Info - Web browser security, privacy, and troubleshooting tool.

Device Info is a web browser security testing, privacy testing, and troubleshooting tool.

www.deviceinfo.me

Cover Your Tracks

See how trackers view your browser

coveryourtracks.eff.org

Librewolf, as I understand it, is basically vanilla Firefox with a hardened config out of the box and some minor privacy-oriented tweaks that ruins fingerprinting, which itself is a sort of fingerprint.
Brave also does some anti-fingerprinting stuff but I am less familiar and think they subscribe to disinfo instead of outright blocking fingerprint techniques.

Braxman has some videos on this but I've only seen this one, covering fingerprinting basics and using various browsers for different activities.