Tomorrow's story: "Residents of Montana discover VPNs and how to use them!"
Between Utah and Montana the awareness and use of VPNs is rising among the non-security-conscious, and this is a good thing.
Between Utah and Montana the awareness and use of VPNs is rising among the non-security-conscious, and this is a good thing.
Well, then, two things happened back-to-back. The VPN provider Mullvad was unsuccessfully raided, and Utah passed hyper-totalitarian laws. On the recent PR news, I investigated Mullval, and... they're fantastic. You don't have to use their app; they support straight openvpn or wireguard and are Linux native. AND I can pay them in BTC, further obscuring myself.
Because of Utah's law, the vast majority of my traffic is now directed over a VPN. I don't even really go to porn sites all that often. It's more the principle of it.
The more the state pushes to limit and remove freedoms, the more I will do everything in my power to push the other way. It's the Hacker Mindset =D
...but I still haven't bitten the bullet on a VPN yet.
See also: Monty Hall problem
I haven't actually seen anything about a Utah law yet, only the Montana ban of TikTok. What exactly does "hyper-totalitarian" mean compared to totalitarian, and what was the Utah law passed recently?
Guess I was expecting something a bit worse, I don't see how online age requirements will help but it doesn't land as "hyper-totalitarian" to me either. Feels like a less enforcement version of age limits on buying alcohol or cigarettes - a hit on personal freedoms but can't say I've ever heard those labeled as totalitarian.
Which is not really impressive since BTC can be tracked. What is impressive, however, is you can just mail them cash with a piece of paper with your account number on it and they will add that money as credit on your account.
You can either by BTC locally from an anonymous source, use a coin tumbler, or, in the BTC world you can do CoinJoins[1]
The only reason to use a VPN is when you want to hide your IP address from the other end of your communication. You get effectively the same service from public WiFi at a cafe.
Most non-technical people I hear talking about VPNs get them completely confused with encryption. VPNs do not hide the content of your communication: that is already happening with SSL.
You would need to setup a new Apple ID/Google account with no credit card billing information.
And then deal with all of the inconvenience that entails i.e. no more paid apps, need to cancel subscriptions etc.