Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

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> All they do is let you get onto the public, untrusted, internet through a different on-ramp. There is no point to them.

Not true, at all. There are several good reasons to use VPNs to get a different on-ramp to the otherwise untrusted internet.

  - Avoid ISP tracking: Your ISP should see only traffic to and from the VPN. 

  - Access content intended for those in other regions: Many sites and services only show certain content to people who enter the internet from specific places. 

  - Limit the amount of activity linked by trackers: Visiting certain sites only from different IPs/browsers will help keep logs of that traffic isolated from the logs of your other browsing.

  - Allows you to connect to sites and services that cannot connect back to you once you've disconnected: A lot of people, even those with dynamic IPs, keep their address for months or years at a time. VPNs provide a great way to cycle through IPs.

VPNs don't solve every problem, but they're a powerful tool to keep in your tookbox.

There are many many very valuable uses for VPNs some that offer privacy/security benefits and some that are just plain useful. It's wild to hear anyone say that "There is no point to them."

Thank you for saving me the typing.

No it's not gonna make you an invisible unhackable ghost, but at least I don't have to worry about my ISP screwing me over.

Why are you worried about your ISP tracking you but not the VPN company? In effect you've simply added another ISP on top.

Most people can switch VPN companies more easily than they can switch ISPs.

This is the case for me. I _know_ that my ISP is untrustworthy, I've read the ToS.It's also bundled with my apartment and I can't switch.

What I can switch however is what VPS company I use, or what commercial VPN I connect to.

Plus, the harm from being banned by a VPN is a lot lower than an ISP, as low as the chances of either are.

Wouldn't a VPN also prevent traffic sniffing if you're connected via a public wi-fi point?

It would, but that’s already generally impossible thanks to everything being on HTTPS (including DNS).

HTTPS typically still have the site domain in clear due to SNI.

> HTTPS typically still have the site domain in clear due to SNI.

Can you eli5 that please?

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-is-encrypted-sn...

To support multiple sites per IP the browser has to send DNS name of the site to the web server. Moreover, since certificates that the server uses for encryption depends on the site name, the name cannot be encrypted within HTTPS. So the browser sends the name in clear when initiating the connection. This is called SNI, server-name-identification.

It is possible to encrypt SNI, but most sites do not support that as the setup is non-trivial and error-prone.

Huh

So HTTPS doesn't really stop tracking, it only prevents people from snooping on what data you are sending to and receiving from the website

I use CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 DNS to mitigate my ISP tracking the domains I visit. They have an iPhone app too. I don't know enough about the space to say whether it's 100% effective.

Again, due to SNI tracking sites that one visits is possible even if DNS traffic is encrypted. At the very least one needs for the site to support ESNI or encrypted-site-name-identification.

But then in practice for ESNI to be effective one needs for the site to use CDN or similar solutions to ensure that there are a lot of sites for the given IP.

There has been some work on encrypted server name indication: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-is-encrypted-sn...

You just replaced ISP tracking with VPN tracking

And your "VPN in YouTube ads" surely does that

Most people who use VPNs for privacy will readily admit that their use is based on relative trust. They know that ISPs are notorious for harvesting and granting access to browsing data, and they trust that their reputable VPN provider of choice is truthful about their logging and internal data handling policies.

There are levels to trustworthiness. I mostly trust my ISP enough to not bother with VPN at home, but when I'm traveling I'll take my VPN provider over a hotel WiFi any day.

> You just replaced ISP tracking with VPN tracking.

Yeah, that's the point. People have infinitely more choices for VPN providers than for ISPs. The VPN provider could be in another country. You can even run your own VPN on hosted infra.

> You can even run your own VPN on hosted infra

True. But we know very few people do that

So now you trust the infra hoster AND their own ISP.

You will always have to trust someone. Having more options when choosing who you trust is a good thing. Does that make sense to you?

> You can even run your own VPN on hosted infra.

This comes with its own risks and you lose some advantages of a commercial service, such as being "lost among the crowd" of other VPN users.

What if you provision a new IP address every other week/month? i.e Assuming the provider allows it and the cost is negligible

If your hosting provider makes similar privacy guarantees to a similar VPN provider, then perhaps. For bonus points, use a hosted VM and commercial VPN in serial.

Again though, if the US Government is a potential adversary, there's still risk here. Intelligence services could have a 0-day on your linux distro, or an operative within the hosting company. If they get access, they can turn your hosted VM against you.

I think you just have to assume there's a possibility that the infrastracture can be compromised at any moment. For both of these two options. Guarantees from providers are valid until the day they are not.

Though a point has to be made about using a hosted VM for VPN purposes, you have some level of control about which specific software, configuration and encryption schemes etc. you want to use for your stack. Only downside is that currently there isn't sufficient hypervisor protection from the host kernel afaik.

However I do agree with you that either way, the risk threshold is too high if you are concerned about high level state actors. Neither commercial VPNs nor hosting providers can solve the "anonymity" problem for you.

I rather have my VPN track me than ISP does. For example, connection to Signal and Kakaotalk servers is used as an evidence of being a member of a terror organisation (!) in Turkey. Evidence is gathered by Ministry of Communications from the ISPs, whom they have to provide real-time connection data to the State including CGNAT records. With a VPN, it is almost impossible (depending on setup, i.e. NAT) to obtain such an evidence - especially for political purposes, even if the VPN provider willingly give logs, no way to prove that info is legit.

I guess it depends who your adversary is. If it's the Turkish government, then you are probably safe to trust a foreign mainstream VPN. If you're trying to avoid scrutiny by a five-eyes western government, you need to be somewhat more careful.

But that’s a general trueism in security. Whether your changes are effective depends on what and whom you’re trying to protect against.

> For example, connection to Signal and Kakaotalk servers is used as an evidence of being a member of a terror organisation (!) in Turkey.

And you are sure your connection to a VPN service won't get you flagged ?

I'm not paranoid, and I have no evidence of anything at all, but it does occur to me that if I ran the US CIA/FBI, I would totally start a company like NordVPN and give them enough money to advertise widely and get sponsor spots on popular YouTube channels.

Sure, you'll probably end up facilitating a few petabytes of copyright infringing torrent traffic every day, but you'll also have a direct connection to countless people who think they're totally anonymous.

> Sure, you'll probably end up facilitating a few petabytes of copyright infringing torrent traffic every day, but you'll also have a direct connection to countless people who think they're totally anonymous.

This is the best part really. No three letter agency is going to spoil their honeypot in order to bust some kid for downloading movies and video games. They've got bigger fish to fry. The more successful they are at keeping their users safe from the copyright goons the more popular and "trustworthy" their little honeypot will seem. Your downloads will still probably earn you another black mark in your dossier, one more thing they could use against you if you ever became a problem for them, but still, free movies, music, and games! Might as well make oppression work for you.

> You just replaced ISP tracking with VPN tracking

Huge benefit in my opinion.

I see a lot more ads for VPNs that I do for ISPs.

You can choose your VPN. Your ISP, not so much. It's also possible to run your own VPN on a public cloud or VPS. You might still need to worry about your provider then, especially if a government might request who is renting the server that is sending certain traffic.

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