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Comment by why-o-why | Hacker News Reader

I tried to use ProtonVPN when I switched over to ProtonMail a year ago. But so much of the web does not work when you're on a VPN. For example even HackerNews has VPN restrictions. More and more sites know where VPN endpoints originate. How will VPNs prevent this in the future without them just become easy to block?

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Apple, for better or worse, has been able to use their size to pressure sites into accepting connections from their Private Relay service.

If VPN usage becomes the norm, sites will have to give in eventually.

Only one I have issues with is Ticketmaster, other than that I forget that it’s even on all the time

I can’t access Reddit on Mullvad via Tailscale

There are working end-points and they tend to be stable. If you find a Mullvad server which works with Reddit, you can configure a socks5 proxy for a Firefox container assigned to Reddit (or any domain). This way, Reddit will always use the connection of the working route and your general internet experience isn't affected otherwise. Eg. you can still switch around connections to find a working one for Youtube... Don't forget about this setting, since sometimes a Mullvad server is down temporarily and the container's assigned domains won't resolve (usually enough to count up/down the Mullvad proxy id). This will also prevent you from accessing Reddit without a Mullvad VPN connection.

Socks5 proxy addresses can be found here: https://mullvad.net/en/servers

You need to prefix them with 'socks://'.

This is a good shout. Thanks!

It’s better than most VPNs, but the amount of Cloudflare challenges I get is really annoying.

It’s a little weird because Apple has device attestation which is run via Cloudflare and Fastly. You’d think that would get you around the challenges, but that doesn’t seem to happen.

Presumably Cloudflare's answer to that would be to use Cloudflare warp. (i.e. they're not a neutral party.)

You should only get more challenges with VPN if the VPN users are abusing the websites. I actually get fewer CF challenges with NordVPN than without it.

My bank app forces me to turn my VPN off. I’m not going to change my bank over that and I imagine most others do the same anyway or will eventually. I imagine many sites and services will just continue go “we’re gonna break this thing you need until you turn the vpn off.”

You can split tunnel most VPNs to let the bank through.

Not sure I can on an iPhone but yes on my desktop I’ve done that

It’s not a VPN service in the usual sense, and does not allow you to change locations, and they also have a mapping of IP addresses and the served geographical users.

I also assume being a service that requires an expensive device and that the browsing happen through Safari limits the abuse somewhat.

They can ban VPNs and Tor because it's affordable. Most of their users aren't using VPNs or Tor. Get enough people to use VPNs and Tor and they'll suddenly become unable to drop the traffic.

The ideal world is one where everyone is using Tor. They can only discriminate against you if you're different from others. The idea behind Tor is to make everyone look like the same user. The anonymity set must be maximized for that to work.

thank you. that is a really good point. the economic incentive! i will keep using mine!

Even worse is the Reddit approach, where leaving your VPN on will get your account shadow banned permanently. But you are not notified of that, so if you are wondering why nobody is replying to your comments, check in a private session if you can visit your profile page.

Check reddit.com/appeals some time after creating an account. If you are auto shadow banned, you can appeal.

Something like that happened to me, my 10+ year account and everything I've ever written just vanishing one morning. Even posts to a subreddit I moderate were repeatedly removed after every approval.

No idea why, (the "wrong" public Wi-fi?) but my appeal was granted and nothing was fixed.

Now I can't contact anyone, and the appeals page falsely claims that my account is in good standing and refuses to operate.

When I went looking for help from a throwaway account that I made many years ago for resume reviews, the exact same thing happened.

So at this point, I only lurk occasionally, because I'm not going to go through that social hell again, and it sounds like moderation failures have only gotten worse in the years since.

It happened to me too. I'm better off without Reddit, I decided.

> So at this point, I only lurk occasionally, because I'm not going to go through that social hell again

I feel ya. Sad thing is, there really isn't anywhere else to go for niche interests, or really much any particular information. AI fallout has finally killed the struggling web and online community. I think, there isn't much left besides cutting losses, resetting your dopamine receptors and finding community in the real world and all...

Well, now that's gonna be a bit of a challenge living outside big cities, where you can't afford rent, of course. I guess, if meeting other people is out, you can still always watch brain rot TV, or strap in the amyl nitrite inhaler and goon away for the time between work shifts. Until things are worth remembering again. When those investment trillions finally paid off and humanity accelerates into the new age of blissful meaning.

Pretty sure this was one of the Deus Ex endings. :p

i can live without reddit and hackernews. i can't live without online banking, bill paying, insurance, healtchare portals, etc.

it is funny i have been probing HN for years, and i've found a number of cases when everything is normal, but i check the account from another device and it isn't there, or is free of posts despite having made many. yet i would do the same if i was an admin trying to keep a walled-garden free of trolls.

How about not using Reddit at all? It's awful.

Had exactly this with reddit.

I wasn’t even aware of that, but it does not at all surprise me, since it fits right in with the trajectory Reddit has long been on; from freedom of information, to full spectrum thought control and digital psychological reprogramming dungeon.

Wow, very shitty, but I don't expect anything nice out of Reddit. What gets me is: Imagine being the developer writing the system for unaccountable shadowbanning. How do you justify it, ethically? I mean, we all need a paycheck, but come on, at some point one must take a break, walk outside, and think about the effects of the software they are writing. It makes me sad that there are so many in our profession who see that JIRA ticket and say "Yes, boss, no problem, boss, I'll write whatever you ask for, boss!"

As VPN usage proliferates such discrimination starts hurting sites more. For example, a VPN may be left on by a user for whatever reason and when the site they visit doesn't work or makes them jump through hoops they are less likely to visit the site in the future or view it with contempt and abandon it a soon as they are made aware of an alternative.

It takes time for sites to realize the danger, especially with mobile users where fiddling with a VPN is often more hassle than its worth and its just left always on. It's often a good idea to impersonate a mobile user agent for this reason as some sites (or perhaps cloudflare?) started treating them differently. The impersonation needs to be done well (SSL and HTTP fingerprints should also match mobile).

Usually, the more expensive the VPN offering the better the reputation of their IP's. Avoid VPNs that have any kind of free tier like the plague.

> less likely to visit the site in the future or view it with contempt and abandon it a soon

> fiddling with a VPN is often more hassle than its worth and its just left always on.

Not to saying this is wholly preferable, but I have often found this to be beneficial for me in that it tends to deter me from wasting disproportionate amounts of time on crap web content (either that, or HN wins over that remaining browsing time when it's not blocking me :)

ProtonVPN stinks. Websites refuse to load and I get autobanned on Reddit etc.

Mullvad just worked everywhere. I'm going back when my year plan on Proton ends.

The consumer VPN heyday has long passed. Most Mullvad endpoints i use are blocked in increasingly more places, including and especially reddit.

It's the only VPN I've tried thoroughly, so i don't know how they and Proton compare today (or, really, ever). The landscape has been degenerating across the board, I reckon.

I wonder if using the wifi at a data center has the same broken browsing experience as using a VPN

Yes and No. The internet sees it as a datacenter ip and some will degrade the experience based on that. Other are more strict and use a service like ipinfo.io (the op) to know exactly which Ip are used by a VPN provider and block access based on that list.

From a datacenter IP, if the IP address is not shared with other users, you still get blocked from sites like Reddit, but you don't get most annoying captchas (for example on Google).

Same. If this is the situation then what is the use case for most "average" consumers?

Same issue exists with Tor exit nodes. It’s anonymous in that you have a hoodie on with a giant spotlight right on you.

A better metaphor would be that Tor and VPNs are like wearing a mask in public. It's obvious that you're trying to be anonymous, but you're still wearing a mask, so no one knows who you are.

You may be denied entry to certain establishments, but some of the bouncers don't block all masks and if you're persistent with changing your mask (Tor or VPN exit node), there's a good chance you'll get in. CTRL+SHIFT+L works on Tor Browser to change your circuit. The linked article blocks Tor, but after pressing CTRL+SHIFT+L a few times, I was able to read it.

For the sites that don't let me view them via Tor, I can install FoxyProxy and try some IPs from the free public lists. Lots of sites that block Tor don't block these IPs, although it's a bit of a pain. Another option is to load an archived version of the site on archive.org or archive.md (or .is or the various different TLDs it uses).

As for HN - it sometimes gives a "Sorry." if you try to access a certain comment directly, but after a few tries it works. This account was created over Tor and I've only accessed it through Tor. I think my first comment was dead and someone vouched for it, but now my comments appear instantly.

I've heard that banking sites don't work over Tor, but I haven't had a need to use Tor for banking, as the bank already knows who I am pretty well.

Most of the big social media sites don't allow Tor, but if I wanted to create a fake account, I'd most likely buy a residential proxy.

So it's not that bad, considering what you get from Tor (and with some VPNs, depending on your threat model) - no tracking, anonymity and so on.

To continue on the analogy, many people using a VPN wear a mask but they also keep the same unique combination of clothes that they were wearing a few minutes earlier without a mask.

Wearing a mask in public while wearing your unique style of clothing, BUT you may be able to exit your apartment building through the service entrance if your landlord is into spelunking and replaced the front door with a nutty putty cave imitation.

I cannot overstate how much of a pain it was to share 51Gbps of peering with 40M other homes and 60M mobile customers. Luckily they now have made generous upgrades, shoving an additional 15M to 20M customers through a whopping 371Gbps.

Unless of course the network your traffic is headed to has deep, widely open and sufficiently climatized pockets.

Do you use Tor for everything? How do you deal with the latency?

Pretty much for everything, except for things that are already tied to my real world identity like email and a few sites that know who I am.

It accomplishes 2 things:

* I'm not tracked as much. Less data points for the companies to gobble up.

* More Tor users lead to better anonymity for everyone as it's easier to blend in - you won't be the only one wearing a mask at the club every weekend.

I got used to the latency. It's not that bad. Some sites load instantly, others take 1-2 seconds. A few take a while.

Sites from one regional hosting provider in my country just don't load at all. I get "Server not found". I'm not sure how that works - are they blackholing an ASN or using something else with BGP?

The main issue for me is not the latency, though, but the CAPTCHAs and 403's (HTTP Forbidden). If I were to search for a recipe, for example, I'd open 5-10 of the results in new tabs (with the middle mouse button; idk why people use CTRL+click), then close the ones with "Attention Required" or "Forbidden" so I'm left with 3-5 usable sites. That way I always have something to read. When I open a few sites one after the other, at least one will usually load instantly.

I haven't used Tor without Whonix on Qubes OS for a while, so I'm not sure if the latency is different on a standard OS with just Tor Browser installed. My workflow is that I use disposable VMs for different things I do. Right now I have a VM with HN and a few links I've opened from it and another VM with other research I started earlier today that I plan on finishing a bit later. When I'm done with my HN session, I'll close this VM, which will destroy it. For me this compartmentalization is good not only for security and privacy, but for productivity, as well.

there was a talk about this at defcon maybe 7 years ago how even going to a tor entry node could get you disappeared in türkiye. same in china (it was something about ethically exploring networks in authoritarian regimes where even pinging a chinese address from the united states could get someone arrested... methinks harvard student was presenting it?)

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