VPNs

[Sanshain]

Does anyone else use Bright VPN or know anything about it? It's free and came with my installation of Win10, and I've been using it for a little while.

 

[Marino Jasper]

Bright VPN

>You allow Bright Data to use your Internet connection.

You are literally part of a botnet. Congrats.

 

[Sanshain]

You are literally part of a botnet. Congrats.

And how exactly is this supposed to affect me?

 

[Roland TB-303]

Does anyone here use pfSense OS? Thinking about getting a Protectli Vault and installing it so I can get speeds above 50Mbps. Is it easy enough to set up if you’re only used to DD-WRT and have basic to intermediate knowledge of networking?

 

[AnOminous]

And how exactly is this supposed to affect me?

I guess you're okay when some weirdo downloads CP from your IP and you get raided.

 

[Sanshain]

I guess you're okay when some weirdo downloads CP from your IP and you get raided.

How can this happen? I look up their website and this is what they say about criminal activity;



Furthermore, this is what they say about data usage.



Now, maybe all this is an absolute bold-faced lie, but if so, I'd really appreciate an explanation of why and what the dangers are. I'm not worried about a random company knowing my IP address; if they're the only ones who know and it's hidden from the sites I visit, that's still a 99% increase in privacy right there. Maybe that's a very naïve approach, but if so, please educate me.

 

[Never Scored]

How can this happen? I look up their website and this is what they say about criminal activity;

View attachment 4745928

Furthermore, this is what they say about data usage.

View attachment 4745942

Now, maybe all this is an absolute bold-faced lie, but if so, I'd really appreciate an explanation of why and what the dangers are. I'm not worried about a random company knowing my IP address; if they're the only ones who know and it's hidden from the sites I visit, that's still a 99% increase in privacy right there. Maybe that's a very naïve approach, but if so, please educate me.

Bro, a decent VPN that doesn't do that shit is like $50 a year.

 

[Sanshain]

Bro, a decent VPN that doesn't do that shit is like $50 a year.

And before I sink $50 into a service that is nebulous in terms of its potential benefits, I want to know exactly what I'm getting. I've already been fed plenty of magical technobabble about how great and wonderful and essential and perfect a VPN is, and how awful, terrible, dreadful and herpes-causing the vile VPN honeypot is. Frankly under my current set of knowledge I'd rather use a product that's completely up-front and honest about the way it uses my data than a product that could effortlessly be lying to me without any way for me to tangibly verify said fact.

 

[Never Scored]

And before I sink $50 into a service that is nebulous in terms of its potential benefits, I want to know exactly what I'm getting. I've already been fed plenty of magical technobabble about how great and wonderful and essential and perfect a VPN is, and how awful, terrible, dreadful and herpes-causing the vile VPN honeypot is. Frankly under my current set of knowledge I'd rather use a product that's completely up-front and honest about the way it uses my data than a product that could effortlessly be lying to me without any way for me to tangibly verify said fact.

If you are not torrenting, getting around geo-blocks, doing hardcore fed-posting or connecting to a lot of questionable public wi-fi networks, you do not need a VPN.

 

[Aidan]

And before I sink $50 into a service that is nebulous in terms of its potential benefits, I want to know exactly what I'm getting. I've already been fed plenty of magical technobabble about how great and wonderful and essential and perfect a VPN is, and how awful, terrible, dreadful and herpes-causing the vile VPN honeypot is. Frankly under my current set of knowledge I'd rather use a product that's completely up-front and honest about the way it uses my data than a product that could effortlessly be lying to me without any way for me to tangibly verify said fact.

Mullvad has a good track record. If you think you need a VPN, pay for a reputable one. If you don't, then don't use one and trust your ISP.
You are 100% the product for Bright Data and their free VPN, they're going to sugarcoat and likely lie to make it sound like it's a win/win. ProtonVPN's free tier is probably the best free modern VPN.

 

[AnOminous]

How can this happen? I look up their website and this is what they say about criminal activity;

So great, after you're raided maybe you can prove you're innocent. Your shit's still smashed up. And jack-shit will happen to that Romanian or Nigerian or whatever. Similar to the situation where you left your wifi open and your neighbor or some guy in a car outside your house does something illegal. Sure when you get raided they're not going to find anything, but your front door is still smashed in and you had to spend some quality time with your face shoved into the carpet and a gun to the back of your head.

Seriously, acting as an exit node for anyone else is absolutely fuckass retarded.

And before I sink $50 into a service that is nebulous in terms of its potential benefits, I want to know exactly what I'm getting.

If you want to give VPNs a test drive, try ProtonVPN. It's free. About the only thing you can't do with it is torrenting or other p2p. There are also free trials (with a credit card). If you find giving a credit card to someone for a "free and then they bill you after the free trial" thing sketchy (and it is), create a one-time use credit card on privacy.com with a buck in it or something, so they can't sneakily bill you if you cancel.

Also you can even put a fake name on the credit card.

My personal preference is using VPNs that take crypto and don't want your name. They still have your IP but you can even daisy chain VPNs.

 

[Marino Jasper]

How can this happen? I look up their website and this is what they say about criminal activity;

View attachment 4745928

Furthermore, this is what they say about data usage.

View attachment 4745942

Now, maybe all this is an absolute bold-faced lie, but if so, I'd really appreciate an explanation of why and what the dangers are. I'm not worried about a random company knowing my IP address; if they're the only ones who know and it's hidden from the sites I visit, that's still a 99% increase in privacy right there. Maybe that's a very naïve approach, but if so, please educate me.

You WILL be reported to the authorities when your IP is used to do illegal stuff and (((Bright Data))) might ban the person but won't do shit to protect you (they have no incentive to do so).

 

[skykiii]

At the risk of being a bit of a thread hijack, someone on page 15 mentioned that Protonmail will ban you for hate speech (even if its a false accusation)...

.... This makes me want an alternative to ProtonMail itself.

 

[Dell Conagher]

At the risk of being a bit of a thread hijack, someone on page 15 mentioned that Protonmail will ban you for hate speech (even if its a false accusation)...

.... This makes me want an alternative to ProtonMail itself.

im happy with mullvad, they accept cash in the mail

 

[Marino Jasper]

what's the problem with lifetime VPNs

• unless owned (which most aren't) servers cost money monthly/yearly
  • if owned, electricity for running, cooling, networking, bandwidth is paid monthly/yearly, not once
• employees (developers, support, etc.) are paid monthly, not once
• audits, which any reputable VPN should do, should be done periodically
• marketing, if any, is paid for periodically, not once
• any sort of r&d
• inflation

With something that has always had and will always have periodical expenses, how do you expect it to function on a one time payment?

 

[skykiii]

im happy with mullvad, they accept cash in the mail

Mullvad has an email client as well? Cuz that's what I should've stated plainly (brain rot).... that I use Proton currently but I don't know if I wanna continue with a service that will ban for "hate speech" (you'd think any privacy-oriented company would be against that stuff just from an economic incentive alone--I'm sure troons don't use VPNs--but still)

 

[Coffee Mugshot]

At the risk of being a bit of a thread hijack, someone on page 15 mentioned that Protonmail will ban you for hate speech (even if its a false accusation)...

.... This makes me want an alternative to ProtonMail itself.

Edit: Nevermind, I searched poorly. They will ban for 'hate speech' as being against Swiss law.



Reddit thread about it
Archive

I tried to look into this a little bit and all I found was a couple reddit threads where one guy had his protonmail account nuked for telling someone else to kill themselves, which protonmail apparently interpreted as violating Swiss law. I read through their terms of service as well and nothing really jumped out at me. There is no 'you may not harass other people' clause or anything like that.

Their responses in the reddit threads are pretty dodgy though. If you were to send someone an email saying 'YWNBAW' I suspect you'd run the risk of being banned, but it's pretty unclear. They talk about how it's fine for two consenting people to talk about whatever they want, but they dodge the question of what happens if one person suddenly doesn't like the direction the conversation took and reports something 'abusive'.

 

[skykiii]

I tried to look into this a little bit and all I found was a couple reddit threads where one guy had his protonmail account nuked for telling someone else to kill themselves, which protonmail apparently interpreted as violating Swiss law. I read through their terms of service as well and nothing really jumped out at me. There is no 'you may not harass other people' clause or anything like that.

Their responses in the reddit threads are pretty dodgy though. If you were to send someone an email saying 'YWNBAW' I suspect you'd run the risk of being banned, but it's pretty unclear. They talk about how it's fine for two consenting people to talk about whatever they want, but they dodge the question of what happens if one person suddenly doesn't like the direction the conversation took and reports something 'abusive'.

This stuff bothers me, because I'm starting to take my artistic aspirations seriously and was going to set up a new Protonmail account just for my artist penname, but... why bother with Proton if I, say, make an artistic rival or something who decides they can fuck with me with a false accusation?

 

[Fomo Hoire]

With something that has always had and will always have periodical expenses, how do you expect it to function on a one time payment?

Well, look at the use case before you jump to conclusions, it would be used for exactly long enough to make one online purchase

I would not trust my entire browsing history to such a cheap VPN but I've considered maybe getting one and leaving it in stasis just in case I ever get in a chicken and egg situation where I need to buy a VPN but I need to be using a VPN while I do it so I can't be monitored buying a VPN. A shitty 100MB/year quota would be more than enough for that purpose, provided I know the company is likely to exist 2 years from now.

Sometimes, even services you pay for on a recurring basis close down. Sometimes, this is not the company's decision, so they can't give users a warning to migrate. Consider MegaUpload and Lavabit. In such a case, someone who already has a (now defunct) VPN may need a second (shitty) VPN to use to purchase a third (new primary) VPN. I'm considering something to fill that middle slot.

I would expect it to be barely fit for purpose: it would keep logs, lack resources, and maybe vanish. All it would do is circumvent geographic blocks and make it take an additional step if someone wants to access those logs. The logs thing is not critical for my use case, it's just nice for the principle of the matter. That covers literally all your points, but part two of my question is still unanswered:

Is it that the usage limits are prohibitively low in order to force you onto a real plan, or that the companies just cease to exist?

I expect the company to either:

• Try to live by overselling services, packing users into old servers and allowing quality to drop
  • If they are smart they will try to upsell users to a recurring subscription, so the company lives
• Close up shop

An oversold VPN that functions at dialup speeds is not fit for daily usage, but it is sufficient to get online long enough to purchase a better VPN.

A VPN that no longer exists can't be used to purchase a VPN, but if it was say... $20 for 3 years, and all the use I got out of it was checking that it worked twice a year, that would be worth it. That would be $7/year for a backup plan, and it would be worth paying for a replacement when the plan stops working. It is just more of a hassle to maintain.

Spoiler: $20/3 years

The numbers were chosen by looking at a cheaper option on StackSocial and noticing the oldest review was from 2019.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

And how exactly is this supposed to affect me?

If you're lucky, Botnet DDoSes KF.net, you are forced to touch grass for the day.

If you're unlucky, your IP address is traced back to you for reasons.

this is what they say about criminal activity

There are two ways to prevent a behavior:

1. Ask nicely, live on the good faith of others (Bright VPN)
2. Make it literally impossible even if you want to break the rules (encrypting messages locally before upload).

If you're in this thread right now because of the chudbud story, you're here because they went with option #1 and it failed. People who are interested in things like VPNs tend to have a bias in favor of option #2.

At the risk of being a bit of a thread hijack, someone on page 15 mentioned that Protonmail will ban you for hate speech (even if its a false accusation)...

.... This makes me want an alternative to ProtonMail itself.

What do you need from your email, how nerdy are you, and what is your budget?

If you have some budget and technical know-how, I would start with buying a domain. If you have your own domain, you can change out the email system one bit as a time as you run into trouble. If you don't have your own domain, you will have to tell everyone your new email address and update all your accounts when you jump ship. And updating accounts is hell - even if you can do it without contacting support, if it is a paid service, sometimes you have to contact support anyways just to make sure that both your account email and your billing email changed.

Spoiler: Rabbit Hole

Depending on level of nerdiness you want to engage in, there are maybe 4 levels of provider you will need:

1. Incoming Mail
2. Outgoing Mail
3. Inbox (Storage)
4. Domain Registrar / DNS Provider / Top Level Domain

Usually, 1-3 are a package deal, but it is possible to separate them depending on what your threat model is and who you want to trust. This is usually what people are referring to when they ask about email providers.

4-6 are similarly usually a single package that can be subdivided if necessary, but I combine them into one thing because it is rarer to need to change that half if you aren't a high profile pain in the ass like KF.net. Whether you have this or not may affect which plans you're eligible for in the 1-3 family.

#1 can be made layered with something like SimpleLogin or AnonAddy. These services can encrypt your emails before they hit your inbox, but that's only helpful if you know how to decrypt them

#2 might be necessary if you choose to self-host your email; getting other email providers to not send your messages into the recipient's spam box can be a pain. These are not typically considered on the privacy/security side of things, but that's fair given once your message hits the recipient's inbox the message contained therein will be subject to the weaknesses of that system. The important things here are usually deliverability, send limits, and price.

#3 is rarely standalone, and is mentioned primarily because it doesn't always combine with #1 or #2 in the same way.

#4 can be a problem if you're high profile, look at KF.net. Porkbun is known to be cheap but also they are based in Portland so you know, judge your threat level... Just don't get a .gay domain to start and you'll probably be good to go.