VPNs

Posting here since I think the "No stupid questions thread" has died.

So I just got a standardized message from my ISP on my browser, apparently they are pissy i yarr harr'd a little to hard over the past month. Is there anything using a decent VPN (like Proton) will NOT guard against when it comes to that kind of thing?
 
Venomine said:
Posting here since I think the "No stupid questions thread" has died.

So I just got a standardized message from my ISP on my browser, apparently they are pissy i yarr harr'd a little to hard over the past month. Is there anything using a decent VPN (like Proton) will NOT guard against when it comes to that kind of thing?
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The free service blocks peer to peer. I also don't think it would block any kind of client fingerprinting, for whatever clients are vulnerable to that. So at least change to a new client if you're not sure.

And I don't know how resilient something like Proton is against serious lawfare. I'd look for guaranteed no log VPNs with a track record of actually not turning anything over. PIA used to be in this club, and may still be, but was recently sold to a seriously shady company.
 
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AnOminous said:
The free service blocks peer to peer. I also don't think it would block any kind of client fingerprinting, for whatever clients are vulnerable to that. So at least change to a new client if you're not sure.

And I don't know how resilient something like Proton is against serious lawfare. I'd look for guaranteed no log VPNs with a track record of actually not turning anything over. PIA used to be in this club, and may still be, but was recently sold to a seriously shady company.
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just for clarity, i was not using proton at the time i yarr harr'd. I only mentioned proton since it seems to be null's replacement endorsement for PIA since that buyout. he mentions they don't keep logs.

once more just to avoid any confusion for anyone glancing at this thread: I was NOT using proton (or any other vpn) at the time i got that message.

so lets assume you're in my shoes, and proton lives up to the standards of PIA (pre-buyout). would you be concerned?
 
Dick Pooman said:
I hadn't seen this discussed anywhere as of yet. More NordVPN bullshit.

www.theregister.co.uk

NordVPN quietly plugged vuln where an HTTP POST request without authentication would return detailed customer data

Fiddle with some numbers and voila
www.theregister.co.uk www.theregister.co.uk
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Interesting. I know I've seen various dumps around of 'NordVPN credentials'. This vulnerability obviously doesn't provide passwords. I'm guessing the people behind those might have gotten email addresses associated with NordVPN accounts that way, then tested those against passwords from other dumps.

Obviously, you should set up a throwaway email via cock.li or similar and pay with a secure cryptocurrency like Monero, in which case this unfortunate failure is nothing to worry aobut.

At least they're still owned by trustworthy actors, unlike PiA.
 
3119967d0c said:
Interesting. I know I've seen various dumps around of 'NordVPN credentials'. This vulnerability obviously doesn't provide passwords. I'm guessing the people behind those might have gotten email addresses associated with NordVPN accounts that way, then tested those against passwords from other dumps.

Obviously, you should set up a throwaway email via cock.li or similar and pay with a secure cryptocurrency like Monero, in which case this unfortunate failure is nothing to worry aobut.

At least they're still owned by trustworthy actors, unlike PiA.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call repeatedly covering up vulnerabilities rather than disclosing them, often after months of vulnerability, "trustworthy."
 
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My NordVPN 1-year subscription is set to expire in a couple days, and I've been planning on switching to another company, but each one I look into seems to have its own problems. Nord covers up any vulnerabilities they discover (and I have to assume for every one that we DO hear about, there are 10 we don't). ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands and logs timestamps and bandwidth. ProtonVPN is based in Switzerland, but don't they cooperate with 5 Eyes? PIA is based in the US and seems to have been bought out by sketchy characters.

Starting to think I might be better off sticking with Nord, after all... *sigh*
 
Any good VPSs with OpenVPN? I'm looking for a cheap seedbox/private vpn.
 
JustSomeDong said:
Any good VPSs with OpenVPN? I'm looking for a cheap seedbox/private vpn.
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So, a couple points on this:
  1. Any VPS provider you choose should provide a recent enough system image to allow you to readily install and setup an OpenVPN server. There are a number of scripts on GitHub that automate that process across all common distributions and which should work on any random VPS. The second one I linked has an affiliate link on its README.md for a provider that offers memory restricted, disk restricted, but relatively bandwidth heavy instances (probably sufficient for a single-user VPN server, definitely not for anything more complex) for $1.25-2.5 a month. You can find a lot of offers like this if you look around.
  2. What do you see the 'private VPN' being useful for?
    1. If for privacy, this is questionable.. rather than having your traffic from client devices come from whatever home and work and public networks you connect to, everything will come from one IP, which is a step back.
    2. If you want to dodge IP bans on chan sites etc, just bear in mind that many of these may apply access controls to traffic from known datacenter IP ranges.
    3. If you want to get around a China-level protective firewall, it is better to camouflage your traffic more by using something that looks more like regular HTTPS traffic. Use something like ShadowSocks. There are easy install scripts to set that up too.
Now.. if you mainly want the seedbox, maybe research your options for what will get you the best seedbox solution, and then if you can easily do the VPN too and it's going to allow you to do something actually useful, then that's a bonus. Or, go with a regular VPN offering that's going to allow you to download torrents and mix in your traffic with others some.
 
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3119967d0c said:
So, a couple points on this:
  1. Any VPS provider you choose should provide a recent enough system image to allow you to readily install and setup an OpenVPN server. There are a number of scripts on GitHub that automate that process across all common distributions and which should work on any random VPS. The second one I linked has an affiliate link on its README.md for a provider that offers memory restricted, disk restricted, but relatively bandwidth heavy instances (probably sufficient for a single-user VPN server, definitely not for anything more complex) for $1.25-2.5 a month. You can find a lot of offers like this if you look around.
  2. What do you see the 'private VPN' being useful for?
    1. If for privacy, this is questionable.. rather than having your traffic from client devices come from whatever home and work and public networks you connect to, everything will come from one IP, which is a step back.
    2. If you want to dodge IP bans on chan sites etc, just bear in mind that many of these may apply access controls to traffic from known datacenter IP ranges.
    3. If you want to get around a China-level protective firewall, it is better to camouflage your traffic more by using something that looks more like regular HTTPS traffic. Use something like ShadowSocks. There are easy install scripts to set that up too.
Now.. if you mainly want the seedbox, maybe research your options for what will get you the best seedbox solution, and then if you can easily do the VPN too and it's going to allow you to do something actually useful, then that's a bonus. Or, go with a regular VPN offering that's going to allow you to download torrents and mix in your traffic with others some.
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Thanks! I'll probably just go with a vpn thats also good for torrenting and keep running torrents on my home server. I appreciate the info!
 
3119967d0c said:
At least they're still owned by trustworthy actors, unlike PiA.
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I use NordVPN but these vulnerabilities made me decide to find out who owns it, and I can't seem to find this info. How can you say they are trustworthy? Do you know who owns NordVPN?
 
Coffee Anon said:
I use NordVPN but these vulnerabilities made me decide to find out who owns it, and I can't seem to find this info. How can you say they are trustworthy? Do you know who owns NordVPN?
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Actually, you're quite right there. The better phrasing is 'we have no idea who owns them' (like most VPN services)- as opposed to PiA where we know that evil people own them.
 
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Is there some Ruskie based VPN where the glowies won't have any actual influence over that I can use to get around ISPs being gay about torrenting?
 
Does anyone have the Plus or Visionary tiers on ProtonVPN? If so what speeds do you normally see? When I had the free trial I was getting about 350 megs, but I have 1gps and want to try to get as much speed on a VPN as possible.
 
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I bought a NordVPN subscription back in 2019 for two years and it's been great to me. With that in mind, I am looking to switch over to ProtonVPN when my Nord subscription expires next year.

clyde1VP said:
In my humble opinion, there is no better VPN than ProtonVPN.
Swiss based.
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I use Protonmail and it's a damn good email client, so I am definitely inclined to believe that ProtonVPN won't be any different. Problem is that I've seen a lot of mixed reviews for the ProtonVPN paid tiers where apparently, the free service is better than the paid one? Idk how true that is these days because those reviews were written in late 2019 and a lot has changed. Even so, I'd love to see what someone has to say about the Plus/Visionary tiers of ProtonVPN before I make the switch.
 
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