this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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Privacy

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[–] kitnaht 69 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

These fucking things always tip-toe around the issue anyone wants a VPN for: Piracy.

Are you pirating shit? Yes? Use a VPN.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Are you pirating shit? Yes? Use a VPN.

I pirate and seed shit from Mexico no issues without VPN... My only headache is CGNAT.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sadly the country has a lot of other shit to worry about, I don't expect that to change in the short or long time lol.

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[–] UnsavoryMollusk 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

CGNAT

I am so sorry. How do you usually circumvent that bs ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Depending on your ISP sometimes you can just call them, ask to opt out of cg-nat and they will do it for free.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For seeding? Out of luck as I don't have a VPS currently, I used one to open my ports with some hacky ways using Wireguard and IPtables stuff, if there is a better way I would like to know lol.

Now I just constantly seed in hopes that people with the ports opened can access my stuff.

For accessing my files, Zerotier and Tailscale have been a godsend.

I also happen to have IPv6 support and I can access some exposed services through it without too much hassle, Plex and Bitwarden are two big examples.

[–] UnsavoryMollusk 1 points 2 months ago

Just so you know Proton VPN has port forwarding if you can afford them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

and you don't live in a third world country 🙃

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Hooray for third world freedom. I've been raw-dogging torrent for years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are you pirating shit? No? Guess what, use a VPN!

[–] kitnaht 1 points 2 months ago

I mean, legit true though. A lot of ISPs are selling your data now too.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I like how the article boils down to, "Except for some isolated use cases, Tor is far superior to a VPN in both cost and safety," and a lot of the comments boil down to "YEAH VPNS ARE GREAT GET A VPN."

It is okay to read the article before writing a comment, guys. In some circles, it's even encouraged, because you might learn something.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Except many services are very aggressive to Tor exit nodes, namely Google and Cloudflare. Everytime I just met with CAPTCHA after CAPTCHAs, and eventually I gave up on the site.

Yeah, I should cut ties with Google but cutting YouTube on NewPipe is hard. I'm on Proton and watching YouTube is already hard.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You may want to give Freetube a try, which may avoid that issue (especially if combined witg libredirect).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Got the captcha endless wave yesterday using freetube on linux until I changed VPN nodes. I don't think it's proxying (not checked though)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The latest captchas and cloudflare-turnstile approve you because the google-cloud flare networks have already determined who you are as an individual and just wave you through.

Tor gets the checks because they don’t know who you are and are seeing you for the first time. Getting a captcha means your privacy strategy is working.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It is working so well that I get an infinite loop of it on the same page.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah the whole logic of "If I protect my privacy effectively, I won't be able to use Google services anymore! O woe" is a little bit strange to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know if your full of shit or this is legit. I really think this is legit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s a massive oversimplification. But with captcha systems everywhere, they’re able to see you visit a newspaper, visit the journal site, try to download a journal pdf, and captcha is able to easily conclude that you’re a human and have automatic approval.

Maybe if you’re going straight to a site for the first time today it would measure your single mouse click. And then from there tracking you across the Internet, assuming you’re online for maybe 6 hours like 99% of connected humans.

Tor blocks all the fingerprinting, and anonymizes the ip address. Captcha is only able to see a computer arrive at the website requesting access. Captcha’s only tool is to give challenges which the bots are able to beat. So they make you run the challenge multiple times, seeing how long it takes your or randomizing how many times you’re willing to do them.

Source: some tech YouTuber did a mini documentary about it. You could watch it yourself I assume.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

and anonymizes the ip address.

The hell it does, it's the exit node's IP address, nothing anonymous about that.... and that's the problem, they know it's a Tor exit node so they'll give you extra shit for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I've had the same experience with vpn's requiring a captcha for every second website I visit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't just use Tor, use VPN on top of it.

If you use tor frequently, you'd eventually get a bad "roll of dice" on the nodes and get 3 government run nodes. Its not a matter of "if" but "when", roll the dice enough times, and the holes in the "swiss cheese" eventually line up.

If you are using Tor, also use a VPN along with it. It might make the traffic a little slower, but its worth it in case you get 3 NSA nodes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Doesn't it mean there's only 1 node NSA has to attack - your VPN?

Kinda renders Tor over it pointless.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Consider posting the text of the article in the comment section if you feel so strongly about this.

[–] Absaroka 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you're looking for a VPN, check out Mullvad.

It's just €5 / $5.25 / £4.15 a month. They haven't changed that price since launching in 2009. So they've also been around a while. Does everything you need a VPN to do. And they're based in Sweden, which seems to have some good privacy rules. They also don't keep logs.

[–] UnsavoryMollusk 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No port forward though (I understand why but it is still annoying)

[–] MrPoopbutt 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What would be the benefit of port forwarding?

Is this something you could do on your router on your side, making it so it doesn't matter if they dont do it?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Torrenting, can reach more peers. Especially helpful for older, less popular torrents.

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[–] UnsavoryMollusk 5 points 2 months ago

Sadly doing it on the router would not be enough. Not a problem if you are browsing of course. But if you host, needs to listen on a specific port or whatever it gets annoying. And obviously piracy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I love the ultra paranoid path Proton offers. It reminds me.of GoldenEye.

You -> VPN Server 1 -> VPN Server 2 -> TOR -> endpoint.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

"Good luck, I'm behind 7 proxies!"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Tailscale is the best VPN that exists rn.

[–] SanndyTheManndy 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why did you not include DPI spoofing?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I guess it refers to things like GoodbyeDPI. A lot of people use it to watch Youtube after it got "slowed" rather than using a VPN.

Edit: also realized that meant obfuscation protocols like VLESS because VPN protocols are stupid easy to block.

[–] SanndyTheManndy 3 points 2 months ago

Getting around deep packet inspection.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Tor has plans for free/mo.

[–] kitnaht 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

And Tor sucks. You shouldn't use it for torrenting, it's frequently targeted by intelligence agencies for IP unmasking, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (10 children)

You shouldn’t use it for torrenting

True.

it’s frequently targeted by intelligence agencies for IP unmasking

I would take issue with "frequently," in the grand scheme of things, but yes. It is a sufficient level of protection that state intelligence agencies have to have specific methods, which sometimes work and sometimes don't, to try to specifically attack one specific actor on Tor if they care enough to do it. In contrast to a VPN, which any bumbling fuckhead in more or less any jurisdiction can generally defeat with a single subpeona, and even a fairly stupid intelligence agency can defeat without blinking.

Tor sucks

Your axioms don't add up to your theorem. There are cases where a VPN is better, torrenting being one of them, that part is true.

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[–] kitnaht 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Windscribe $2/mo. Also supports Wireguard. I don't even use their dumbass client, I just export a profile for Wireguard - which is quite a bit faster than OpenVPN

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