VPN discussion

sinner wrote

does anyone else here use a VPN? if so what provider do you use?

personally i have used private internet access for a little over a year now and so far they've served me pretty well. they claim to be privacy centered and encrypt your data as they say no logs are kept and such, it's pretty inexpensive too i just hope they are being truthful.

I don't tend to trust privacy claims from American companies. I used to use PIA - their service was alright.

I used AirVPN for 2 months. I liked them as a company, but the service wasn't too great, i.e. speeds were pretty low, and a maximum 3 connections was a bit of a hinderence for me.

I'm currently in the first month of using AzireVPN, and I'm pretty happy with them. You get a public IP address, so port forwarding is no longer an issue, though you have to make sure your firewall is properly set-up. 5 connections max, which is fine for me, and I seem to be able to get ₁₀₀/20Mb/s out of 200/20. Only issue is that they are pretty barebones - all you get is a .ovpn file, they don't have their own custom client or anything, so setting up a kill switch is a pain in the ass.

malmon wrote

sinner wrote

does anyone else here use a VPN? if so what provider do you use?

personally i have used private internet access for a little over a year now and so far they've served me pretty well. they claim to be privacy centered and encrypt your data as they say no logs are kept and such, it's pretty inexpensive too i just hope they are being truthful.

I don't tend to trust privacy claims from American companies. I used to use PIA - their service was alright.

I used AirVPN for 2 months. I liked them as a company, but the service wasn't too great, i.e. speeds were pretty low, and a maximum 3 connections was a bit of a hinderence for me.

I'm currently in the first month of using AzireVPN, and I'm pretty happy with them. You get a public IP address, so port forwarding is no longer an issue, though you have to make sure your firewall is properly set-up. 5 connections max, which is fine for me, and I seem to be able to get ₁₀₀/20Mb/s out of 200/20. Only issue is that they are pretty barebones - all you get is a .ovpn file, they don't have their own custom client or anything, so setting up a kill switch is a pain in the ass.

did you set something up to work as a killswitch?

Lately i've been using Bitmask its a program that you can use with your own provider you set up on a vps or one of the free providers setup by RiseUp and Calyx. I get decent speeds with Riseup servers, planning to moving to a provider set up on my own vps

sshuttle is also a good tool to direct all your (tcp) traffic through ssh on a vps you own.

I use a ssh SOCKS proxy (ssh -D 1080 -N rx14.co.uk) then set up chrome to use that. If I needed more I would run OpenVPN on my dedi.

This isn't exactly a provider, but an interesting project that you may be able to emulate if you feel like you are up to the task.

One could build a few raspberry pi nodes, attach a small backup battery (for about 2-4 hours without an external power source, in case it looses mains power) build a very basic circuit that sends 12v through the SD card data lines if the case is opened while in operation. This wont work if the backup battery is dead, but hopefully the person who may tamper with it does not know that and discharge it before opening it.  The SD should also be encrypted using LUKS though, so once powered off it should be pretty hard to get to any of the data.

These could be placed in public locations, mostly in Libraries, where they use a self built DDNS-like service to update a VPS with their current address and status.

One can then use these to proxy their connections, host micro instances of small projects, tor nodes, or whatever they like really.

The biggest danger of this is really someone finding the physical device and finding a way around the "security" system while keeping the machine running. Also, keep in mind, some sysops keep track of MAC addresses and will kick them off if they see suspicious traffic, or even just after a period of time. In most public ethernets you shouldn't have to worry though.

I am not sure about the legality of this, but some sneaky individuals could do it pretty easily and cheaply. With a bunch of these distributed around the globe it would be pretty secure as well.

If you need any more specific schematics or anything, I think you can PM me here.

Hexd wrote

malmon wrote

sinner wrote

does anyone else here use a VPN? if so what provider do you use?

personally i have used private internet access for a little over a year now and so far they've served me pretty well. they claim to be privacy centered and encrypt your data as they say no logs are kept and such, it's pretty inexpensive too i just hope they are being truthful.

I don't tend to trust privacy claims from American companies. I used to use PIA - their service was alright.

I used AirVPN for 2 months. I liked them as a company, but the service wasn't too great, i.e. speeds were pretty low, and a maximum 3 connections was a bit of a hinderence for me.

I'm currently in the first month of using AzireVPN, and I'm pretty happy with them. You get a public IP address, so port forwarding is no longer an issue, though you have to make sure your firewall is properly set-up. 5 connections max, which is fine for me, and I seem to be able to get ₁₀₀/20Mb/s out of 200/20. Only issue is that they are pretty barebones - all you get is a .ovpn file, they don't have their own custom client or anything, so setting up a kill switch is a pain in the ass.

did you set something up to work as a killswitch?

Lately i've been using Bitmask its a program that you can use with your own provider you set up on a vps or one of the free providers setup by RiseUp and Calyx. I get decent speeds with Riseup servers, planning to moving to a provider set up on my own vps

sshuttle is also a good tool to direct all your (tcp) traffic through ssh on a vps you own.

Yeah, I put together a kill switch using Comodo firewall using one of the various online guides. Personally I don't like the solution, since I don't like the Firewall software, but what can you do?

qzo wrote

This isn't exactly a provider, but an interesting project that you may be able to emulate if you feel like you are up to the task.

One could build a few raspberry pi nodes, attach a small backup battery (for about 2-4 hours without an external power source, in case it looses mains power) build a very basic circuit that sends 12v through the SD card data lines if the case is opened while in operation. This wont work if the backup battery is dead, but hopefully the person who may tamper with it does not know that and discharge it before opening it.  The SD should also be encrypted using LUKS though, so once powered off it should be pretty hard to get to any of the data.

These could be placed in public locations, mostly in Libraries, where they use a self built DDNS-like service to update a VPS with their current address and status.

One can then use these to proxy their connections, host micro instances of small projects, tor nodes, or whatever they like really.

The biggest danger of this is really someone finding the physical device and finding a way around the "security" system while keeping the machine running. Also, keep in mind, some sysops keep track of MAC addresses and will kick them off if they see suspicious traffic, or even just after a period of time. In most public ethernets you shouldn't have to worry though.

I am not sure about the legality of this, but some sneaky individuals could do it pretty easily and cheaply. With a bunch of these distributed around the globe it would be pretty secure as well.

If you need any more specific schematics or anything, I think you can PM me here.

Legality would likely vary from region to region, but it would most certainly be against any ToS of whatever public network you're using. But I actually quite like this idea, except that while RPis themselves aren't that expensive, it would start creeping up to over £100 for 4 of them, + whatever extra components.
Also, I'm interested as to how you apply 12V to the SD card, since the Pi can only provide 5V. I suppose a boost converter would work?

i run OpenVPN on my logless seedbox

Personally I prefer Crypto Storm due to the added amount of security they have over other providers.

Senpie wrote

Personally I prefer Crypto Storm due to the added amount of security they have over other providers.

What've they got?

I use zenmate and PIA(Private Internet Access) I like zenmate since it's cheap and PIA since I've never seen any downtime nore have I ever had issues with them. If you do ever have any issues with them they have a 24/7 support team

Lokorfi wrote

Does anyone know any decent free VPN's?

I really wouldn't recommend using a free one.

Lokorfi wrote

Does anyone know any decent free VPN's?

TunnelBear offers a free version, up to 500 megs a month. If you're just browsing and sending IMs, that ought to suffice.

Im using SSH connection to bypass internet quota..(making it free to use/no need to pay monthly)
And also the privacy is good (encrypted on the host)
and also hiding my ip as well..

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Lokorfi wrote

Does anyone know any decent free VPN's?

Bitmask is nice, internet kill switch i believe it protects DNS as well and you can run your own server as an isntance if you dont trust the default providers

malmon wrote

Lokorfi wrote

Does anyone know any decent free VPN's?

I really wouldn't recommend using a free one.

What could a vpn provider do if you dont browse http sites?

Hexd wrote

malmon wrote

Lokorfi wrote

Does anyone know any decent free VPN's?

I really wouldn't recommend using a free one.

What could a vpn provider do if you dont browse http sites?

They would still know what sites you browse, and be able to see any other unencrypted communication. Of course, this would also be true for paid VPNs, but they wouldn't have as much of an incentive, seeing as they don't really need to make money from selling your data.

Private Internet Access is super nice, I've been using them for two years and never had an issue. $40 a year is super reasonable too for unlimited usage, and speeds are fantastic.

I'm currently using AzireVPN. They're rather barebones, so they don't have their own killswitch app or whatever, but I'm very happy with the performance, and I like that there is no NAT on their end - firewalling is done by you. I also idle in their IRC channel for no real reason other than to be able to bug them if shit goes wrong.

malmon wrote

Hexd wrote

malmon wrote

Lokorfi wrote

Does anyone know any decent free VPN's?

I really wouldn't recommend using a free one.

What could a vpn provider do if you dont browse http sites?

They would still know what sites you browse, and be able to see any other unencrypted communication. Of course, this would also be true for paid VPNs, but they wouldn't have as much of an incentive, seeing as they don't really need to make money from selling your data.

anything malicious they could do? I dont mind if my current providers knows the sites i visit as long as they keep me safe from irc trolls and p2p strikes

Hexd wrote

malmon wrote

Hexd wrote

malmon wrote

I really wouldn't recommend using a free one.

What could a vpn provider do if you dont browse http sites?

They would still know what sites you browse, and be able to see any other unencrypted communication. Of course, this would also be true for paid VPNs, but they wouldn't have as much of an incentive, seeing as they don't really need to make money from selling your data.

anything malicious they could do? I dont mind if my current providers knows the sites i visit as long as they keep me safe from irc trolls and p2p strikes

Well, it would be rather silly of them to do something obviously malicious. More likely they would just do the classic Google/Facebook/Microsoft thing of selling off your data/browsing history, or worst case scenario, your PC becomes part of their "free" VPN network, kinda like the the Hola VPN extension for Chrome does/did.

I also use PIA. They're solid AF, never had any downtime, good speeds and very good price. And not to mention the most important thing, they've had their word tested in the public arena against the FBI
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