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Comment by ben1040 | Hacker News Reader

The one thing to keep in mind about running a VPN on AWS is that some services just block whole AWS net blocks to stop scrapers.

For instance I used to run a VPN on a free tier micro instance, and I remember not being able to hit Yelp or StackOverflow from a VPN.

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Yeah, this is a big problem. I set up a Streisand instance last year just to play around with, and while the set-up was pleasantly simple and the results were great as far as the VPN functionality, it shut down Netflix entirely for me. Definitely a deal-breaker.

interesting! Haven't had any issues w/ netflix yet; wondering if it's an eventually-consistent thing or a static config on their part (i.e. will I eventually get blocked? not sure lol)

From the stuff I was reading/folks I was chatting with when I ran into the problem, it sounds like restarting your instance could sometimes fix it - I assume Netflix is basically playing whack-a-mole with AWS-based scrapers.

One of the more annoying things, while traveling is when I forget to turn off my (Linode) VPN and try going to Delta's website https://imgur.com/a/5lllN6J

Shopping on Amazon generally becomes quite difficult with most VPN providers as well.

Accidently did my taxes with an out of country for active...

Yup, I've had similar issues trying to visit Hulu through a personal VPN in Google cloud.

This can be fixed with a split tunnel. vpn for adblock dns, your regular isp for tcp traffic.

Then you might as well use 1.1.1.1 and not bother with VPN maintenance.

right. but the vpn allows to have the ad, malware filters on mobile

There is a 1.1.1.1 "VPN" app you know. And with that you don't have to maintain a backend.

1.1.1.1 doesn't block the advert/malware domains, you need something with a blocklist inbetween

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