And if you use one, are you happy with it?
I’m trying to get more into privacy and security and VPN is currently a struggle for me (and it seems also for some people in my social circle). It’s mostly cost, effectiveness, but also connection issues (not being able to connect to servers, not reaching websites, sometimes slower speed.
deleted by creator
I connect to my home network via VPN if I’m out and about. There’s no additional cost, but I feel more secure in a public wifi and have access to all my internal services as I’m used to.
Native Mullvad app when home using my own DNS server, Tailscale through a gluetun container + headscale when away. The latter eats up battery quite a bit otherwise I’d just keep that on all the time.
I use Mullvad daily. Never turn it off.
Same
I don’t think most ppl need a vpn for at home stuff but I do use Mullvad since I spend a lot of time on college WiFi and they might not like how I access my textbooks and research papers.
VPN’s are like a condom for the internet. With much of the internet trying to fuck you putting on a wrapper is probably a good idea.
Eventually you get used to the slower speeds, rarely have issues with connection and if I do I just change IP. If a website doesn’t allow a vpn I really don’t need to go there and for the sites that I do want to visit there are optional different front ends I use.
A vpn and a good add blocker is pretty much a necessity for me at this point.
Slower speeds? I get my full 110 megabytes per second downloading with my VPN hahaha
Thanks for rubbing it in… and failing to mention what service you use.
That’s cuz I get a negative reaction when I mention it hahaha. I use Nord. Got it a few years ago to support Eric from Internet Comment Etiquette, and it just worked for me so I haven’t changed. It used to cap out at maybe 15/20MB per sec, but now I get my full-ass gigabit speeds when downloading stuff. I’ve considered switching but it works great for me and I get max speed, so ehhhh
lol… I get that ;]
I’d probably stick with it as well. My current view is that VPN mostly just provides a cover for general piracy. If “they” wanted to devote the effort they could figure out who I was. But I am sure a lot of vpns serve as honey pots and you wouldn’t want to blow your cover just for someone downloading a movie they never would have paid for anyway. They got the signature thing, but if I was doing something serious then that is going to be quite different than my general use signature and match every other user of Tails or whatever. The signature thing really sucks, but we do have control over what signatures we leave where and via vpns and tor those different “personas” don’t need to be connected by singular ip address.
Or at least that is my present opinion. If anyone here has a good argument against it, I’d like to hear it.
I’m fully with ya there. If I was doing anything more than downloading media, I’d be using something like tails with TOR or i2p or whatever. But without having any issues with my ISP chastising me in years (since I began VPNing), I’m happy with what I’ve got.
I strongly believe nobody is entitled to keep a registry of the sites that we visit online. Not the gov, not your ISP, not your carrier. Thats why its essential for me.
A few sites wont load sometimes, which is my only exception to turn it off, and then on again, but its a habit i have gotten used to and its not that much work, given the benefits of an always-on trustworthy VPN.
Unfortunately I live in a country where they once banned whole google drive because someone was sharing a pirated movie through it. And just recently they banned proton mail because someone used proton mail to blackmail some one else. OK I don’t condone second one but still would they have banned gmail if those idiots had used that. Yeah I know I don’t need a VPN I need a new government but till then a VPN and Tor is all I have
absolutely crucial. All my devices are always connected through a VPN, and usually I try to route my traffic through a different country. When your country is paying for a service to monitor citizen’s internet traffic, anonymity is worth paying for.
It’s not cost effective to lose your privacy, you’ve merely haven’t realized you’ve been paying all along. Also you are the product being sold.
It’s become a critical aspect of my online experience. I currently use Mullvad since leaving PIA. Mullvad seems to suffer from being too popular for it’s own good. An Increasing amount of websites are trying to identify and block traffic coming from VPN servers, sites like Kroger.com, USPS.com, Reddit. I never previously had this much trouble on PIA, but maybe it’s just that the times are a changing. I may search for alternative VPN when my service is up with Mullvad, though. I definitely don’t like the idea of using the internet without a VPN anymore.
My assumption is that Mullvad allowing port forwarding previously forced a large number of their IPs to be blocked due to misuse and that’s having carryover effects. I know very little about Mullvad or the IP address market though.
It isn’t just Mullvad. I’m sure it is also AirVPN and I presume that it includes all of the popular ones. I doubt port forwarding has anything to do with it.
PIA isn’t, and IIRC it’s also the cheapest. This is deeply suspicious and I’m trying to think of an alternative explanation to the obvious one.
it all depends what you do, the average person honestly does not need a VPN, is it still “nice”? sure, getting over streaming restrictions or getting cheaper flights, and if you desire to sail the seas to any degree than also yeah get a VPN, and ofc, getting over porn bans
The average person doesn’t know how to use a VPN, either. They turn it on once, expect magic, and don’t go beyond that.
Love the people coming into the privacy community to say they don’t value privacy rather than explaining the limits of a VPN in that regard
Very important, and becoming more important by the day as more and more regions agegate the internet. You need to change regions so you can access sites without guaranteed identity theft.
If you don’t use one, it’s fairly trivial to link your activity across the internet, as well as trace any internet traffic back to you, personally.
Connectivity is certainly a problem. For the most part, if they block my access, then I consider them not worth visiting.
commercial VPNs are sus. and israel have been buying up a lot of them.
i trust my ISP and my country’s laws more than i trust any of these shady providers which may or may not be tapped by the nsa. and that’s a low bar to clear let me tell you.
I have 2 that I use regularly. PIA to unblock things on the internet (and change how things are logged) and Tailscale to access my home network remotely. I’m happy with both of them.
Tailscale works really well for me as well.
10/10
If you’ve never lived in a place where you complain about having speeds being throttled, then 2 guys come to your house with a full color printout of your internet use over the last few months, then walk around looking at everything you have and basically asking for a bribe just becaise, then you haven’t fully understood the use case “masking traffic from your ISP.”
