I’ve been using one but I’m not sure what benefits I’m getting from it. I feel like the only thing happening is I’m adding a little bit of latency to all my requests for no reason.
i enjoy not getting threatening letters from my ISP about downloading shit.
Most people in the US use it to avoid getting letter from their ISP from downloading illegal content.
Some people use to access other country content.
Some people use it to avoid ISP snooping their browsing habits
Genuine question: How can an ISP detect that someone is downloading illegal material if the actual content is encrypted using SSL/TLS? Is it all approximated based on the domains/IPs and the amount of data that is sent? If they can’t tell with a 100% certainty, can it be used as proof when trialed in court?
Isn’t that mainly just torrent trackers that publish your IP address and then the ISP gets a request for who was using that particular IP address. I don’t think an ISP would itself be interested in detecting whether their customers download illegal content - there is no business case for them to do that.
A few ways I’ve used it.
Odd, a site seems to be non-functional. (Enable VPN). Site begins to work. Oh, my ISP was fucking with me.
A site is stuttering. (Enable VPN). Magically works. Oh, my ISP was fucking with me.
The most annoying, my family’s Internet over the holidays was blocking my laptop from updating Ubuntu, enabled VPN, udpate went just fine.
In general, it stops ISPs from dictating if they approve or disapprove of your behavior. Hide what you’re doing and all traffic is just anonymous bits and bobs.
As it fucking should be by law… but in the US the conservative party continually repeals the law that enforces non-interference. So for now, we need VPNs.
Just for privacy reasons?
I can decouple the traffic fingerprinting of some sites, like amazon, youtube, reddit, etc.
And because I have a squid proxy router through the vpn set up via a couple of docker containers, I have a firefox container to always send the traffic over the proxy which allows me to easily search for stuff outside and inside the vpn.
Aside from that I also use the proxy to send requests in scripts over the vpn so my real IP doesn’t get rate limited.
And what VPNs are actually for: looking for geo-blocked content.
You should consider your threat model first before using something without being unsure of the benefits.
If you’ve never thought about it, here are some questions to get you started.
- List the assets that require protection. (Like credit card info)
- Who might want to gain access to those assets? (e.g. Hackers)
- How can you mitigate the risks? (Updates)
You may have a lot to say, so write things down to clarify your thoughts. Once your threat model document is complete, it will be easier for you to figure it which tools you really need, and which ones are only nice to have.
