So I’m pretty recent to the high seas but I’ve seen a few posts now about “stop relying on your VPN” and “people that think VPNs will protect them are naive” and so on.
So since I believe knowledge is our greatest weapon/tool/super-power, can we get some answers regarding what exactly the doomsayers are getting at? ELI5 why VPNs wouldn’t protect your anonymity.
Is it about logging? The country your end-point is in? Something more technical?
Ultimately I’d like to be fully armed in order to keep making the best choices for my fledgling ship as it navigates the vast, stormy seas.
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Almost every time “regular” people get in trouble for piracy, the reason is that they seeded something, a copyright law firm (or their contractor) noticed it, noted their IP address and then either went and got the real life address from the ISP so that they could send you “the bill” or they made the ISP send you something, depending on where you live really.
That means, as long as that that IP address that shows up on that law firms screen isn´t actually “your own”, isn´t immediately traceable to you simply by calling up your ISP, you´re already one step ahead in the game.
That law firm might still try to contact the owner of that IP though, either to send them “a bill” or to get them to rat on you. And that´s why it is important that your VPN provider operates in a way that allows them to simply ignore that. Either by operating out of a country that doesn´t mandate them to “help finding you” or by simply not keeping any logs of what actual IP was connected to what VPN IP at what time.
So if you have a VPN provider that maybe operates out or through a country where piracy is legal or has proven through audits that they couldn´t rat even if they wanted, you´re highly unlikely to get into any trouble.
There’s often a lot of bad information about VPNs which is never backed up with any actaul evidence.
Sure, you have to make sure its working properly and bound to your torrent client, but if it is, then that’s enough to protect you from copyright claims.
There is no evidence of any commerical VPN provider ever responding to a copyright notice. People mistakenly think this, when all that’s really happened is they were not connected properly and their ISP got the notice direct. There is no situation where the copyright troll contacts the VPN provider, find the real user, then somehow makes the ISP send a notice to them. Doesn’t even make sense.
There is no evidence of any commerical VPN provider ever responding to a copyright notice.
Because doing so would put them out of business faster than you can say “fuck Spez”.
Exactly - snd yet people still claim their ‘VPN ratted them out’ - it didn’t - it might hve failed, or the user never turned it on, but the VPN provider didn’t get a copyright notice from Disney and forward it an ISP.
Spot on. All you need to do is change adaptor in your torrent client so that it is only allowed to work with the virtual network adaptor set up by your VPN software. That way even when your connection falters, it’s never allowed to send a single packet via your raw network adaptor.
Here you go, this is the truth.
Interesting, that’s exactly what I did. I am renting a VPS and am running my own OpenVPN server on that, and then my OpenVPN client connects to that VPN, and the OpenVPN server forwards traffic for specific ports to my OpenVPN client using iptables prerouting DNAT rules.
I work in aviation so my use of a VPN is limited to the public wifi at the airport and torrenting.
Using a VPN and HOW you use it all depends on your operational security (OPSEC).
If you’re a pirate consumer, then basically you need to keep your ISP from knowing what you’re doing, to prevent copyright strikes or shit-letters from Disney etm. A good VPN is fine.
If you’re a torrent creator, you need to raise your security a bit, depending on the “hotness” of the content. Rare anime torrent? Eh who cares. But you’re hosting HDCams from a movie released yesterday, or games that will be released officially in a week? You need to use a VPN in a country that does not have good relations to your country of origin. Yes, that means if you’re in the USA, get a Russian or Chinese VPN.
If you’re leaking state secrets, Snowden talked about what he did. He cracked wifi within a 2h drive distance, used a 12dBi yagi antenna, with a burner laptop loaded with Tails (Tor linux distro), and only used 1 cracked wifi per use. Never went back to the same place. Then again, he didn’t exactly fare well eventually.
In addition to this, boost your anonymity by buying second hand equipment off local marketplace apps. And make a mobile jumpbox that you can plug into random USB ports and leave there, connected to public wifi.
Tbh, I’m hesitant to ever suggest a Chinese VPN. That’s a great way to paint yourself with a target. 90% of good tradecraft is never giving anyone a reason to look at you.
VPNs protect your IP address, which is useful, but it ends there. Your IP is known to your VPN provider and can even still be found by those tech-savvy enough if you don’t take the right precautions. Basically, VPNs are useful, but don’t expect them to be the ultimate privacy multi-tool. It’s more like one of many different tools to protect yourself online
@PurrJPro @jordank1977 The thing is, VPNs create enough friction for authorities to stop them from tracking you down for downloading a movie.
Also, in some countries it’s not even authorities catching you torrent stuff, it’s asshole lawyers who basically bounty hunt for media companies. It’s only viable for them to screw over hundreds of people at once, they’re unlikely to try and argue with a VPN provider.
VPNs create enough friction for authorities to stop them
Its not ‘authorities’ you are hiding from when pirating, its just copyright trolls. All they do is scrape IP addresses from torrenst and automatically send a notice to the relevant ISP. If that IP belongs to a VPN provider, the compaint will never reach you.
The thing with VPN’s is that you’re only shifting the trust from your ISP to your VPN provider. That provider can still see pretty much everything you’re doing and your real IP, if they wanted to. To add to this, plenty of VPN companies have been found logging when they said they didn’t. I would say either set up traffic for I2P, or simply go with an actually no logs VPN company like Mullvad, who’s been battle tested and doesn’t log, and you’ll be fine.
People also say that because it’s important to understand what a VPN is and does as well. It wasn’t originally meant to be any sort of anonymity tool, the technology exists to make it seem as if your traffic is coming from somewhere else - which allows for things like remote work on a local network.
How would I setup traffic for i2p?
I would say either set up traffic for I2PAny ideas on how to do this? I’ve tried using i2p–in Firefox–and can’t seem to make it work. Sites that are supposedly up won’t load. I’ve followed all the tutorials that I’ve found, and it doesn’t seem to be doing what’s expected. And no, I can’t give any details at this second, because I’m away from my home computer, and it’s been a few months since I tried.
@HelixDab @jordank1977 @CausticFlames you should look into lokinet. i initially made it for the sole purpose of torrenting linux isos and linux iso accessories. it can do internal bitorrent just fine if your client follows the bittorrent spec religiously.
There’s an i2p extension in Firefox add ons
I’ve got the extension up and running, but that doesn’t seem to do the trick. I reset my proxy settings every time I try to connect (I can’t connect to the internet normally if I use i2p proxy settings, and can’t connect to i2P if I don’t); i don’t recall off the top of my head if FoxyProxy worked correctly for me or not.
I will check out the thread on wizanons.de and see if that helps at all.
Because it’s all a scam. You aren’t any more private than before. You just shift from point A to point B who knows the most about you. Then there are advanced analytics. You have a encrypted connection but if they know you used a VPN-Y. to talk to server X and server X has a seed for the new flash movie they still got you. It’s just a bit more complicated to get beyond resonable doubt. So the protection is that you hope your enemy isn’t interested in a bit more work. In a way you put a marker on your traffic by using a VPN that there might be something interesting.
VPNs are one tool to help. They’re not the end-all-be-all. If the VPN provider is reliable, they can protect your IP address and keep your internet link more secure if using public network facilities (wifi or cellular) as the VPN tunnel is (should be) encrypted.
That said, if you are using software that fails to protect your user information by defect or by design, it can still leak data at the endpoint you are using, even though your connection is (hopefully) more secure.
