[Crypto-chi] VPNs and your anonymity

Wed Feb 18 10:46:28 CST 2015

Joe,

While the topic of torrents is something a subset of people may be 
interested in, the topic at hand lends little to the discussion of 
privacy and anonymity with the use of cryptography.

VPNs while good, do not protect your anonymity as Freddy said, but, do 
provide a certain level of privacy when on unfamiliar networks like 
coffee shop WiFi. A VPN can assist with censorship circumvention in the 
case of network throttling or blocking by an ISP.

If you pay for a VPN with your credit card or another traceable form of 
payment your anonymity is gone; use cash or bitcoin. If you are 
expecting the VPN provider to protect you from legal complaints they 
will fail you--  no one will face jail or fines for you. Choose a VPN 
provider that does not keep logs.

One thing to keep in mind when using a VPN is DNS leaks. Search around 
and you'll find a lot of information on how to combat DNS leaks when 
using a VPN, and some best practices to follow.

-Brian

On 17-02-2015 00:14, joe fuentes wrote:
> Hello everybody
> 
> Back in my corporate days VPNs were indispensable for us road
> warriors. From our hotel rooms we used RSA Secure ID token cards to
> IPSec back to our corporate intranets and access our printers, top
> secret servers and a bunch of other stuff.
> 
> But in my day to day use I find VPNs just handy dandy in the contexts
> of torrents. This is what piqued my interest again in VPNs. At one
> point I was using VPNs to gain access to streaming services that
> blocked US users. Deezer, a music streaming service from France, was
> the impetus for me. However since then I've found a much easier way to
> get to overseas streaming services and region blocked websites. It's a
> simple Google Chrome extension called Hola Better Internet. It permits
> you to assume an IP address from a variety of countries so you don't
> get blocked. Whilst I don't know how secure it is, probably not, I use
> it to watch my favorite TVs on BBC iPlayer.
> 
> Going back to torrents, some of the apps I use, Popcorn Time [1],
> Flixtor [2], it's stated it's best if you use VPNs. In fact one of
> these, Time4Popcorn [3], has a free built in VPN. Another good
> alternative are seedboxes, Has anyone tried these? From wot I
> understand peerblock is no good.
> 
> Of more general interest to this group, we do have some service
> providers on our side. There's the case last year of a Swedish ISP [4]
> offering free VPN to battle the law. Yay!
> 
> In deference to our less advanced users subscribed to this mailing
> list, here's a brief tutorial on VPNs for you.
> 
> https://www.codemy.net/posts/how-a-vpn-works [5]
> 
> My 2¢ worth.
> 
> -Joe
> 
> oparty-chi at groups.sshchicago.org
>> Subject: Re: [Crypto-chi] VPNs and your anonymity
>> 
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Sorry for the short-ish email.
>> 
>> VPNs *aren't* anonymous. They are at best an encrypted connection
>> between you and servers someone else controls. They are great for a
>> couple of things: encrypting your connection from your ISP, hiding
>> your real IP and keeping your traffic from being sniffed from
> network
>> adversaries (say in a public wifi location).
>> 
>> There is a great article from a (I believe Comcast) customer who
> used
>> a VPN to encrypt their Netflix connection and immediately had better
>> upload / download throughput for their (legal) streaming. That's
>> because Comcast was sniffing their network traffic and throttling it
>> (IsComcast a malicious adversary in this case?).
>> 
>> However, VPNs are great for a lot of casual browsing, (for example
> web
>> tracking via Ad networks), cases where your traffic might blocked
>> (think region restrictions in playing BBC videos) as well as cases
>> where high anonymity is not needed (think Facebook, web
>> pages behind Cloudflare etc).
>> 
>> Freddy
>> 
>> 
>> On 02/15/2015 03:59 PM, Dan Massoglia wrote:
>> > I don't use a VPN. Love TorrentFreak though.
>> >
>> > On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 10:05 PM, joe fuentes
>> > <joseph.fuentes at live.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> hello everybody For those of us who like to defend our privacy
>> >> and use VPNs as one of our tools, here's a rundown from
>> >> TorrentFreak. An update looks like will come out this month
>> >> later.
>> >>
>> >> Let's take a poll. Do any of you use these? if so which one and
>> >> would you recommend it?
>> >>
>> >> -Joe
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
> https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2014-edition-140315/
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
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> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.popcorntime.io
> [2] http://www.flixtor.me
> [3] http://popcorn-time.se
> [4]
> http://www.zdnet.com/article/swedish-isp-begins-offering-free-vpn-to-battle-data-retention-law/
> [5] https://www.codemy.net/posts/how-a-vpn-works
> 
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