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.
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.
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.
It depends what are you doing. Torrenting child porn? A VPN won’t change anything because they’ll hopefully collaborate with law enforcement to track you down.
Torrenting a tv show? Usually the vpn company will ignore any requests from law enforcement as it’s not a real crime
as it’s not a real crime
Loving the nonchalantness.
Copyright infringement is not a crime [in the United States]. It’s grounds for a civil suit, but it looks really bad for Sony entertainment to try to bleed tens of thousands of dollars from a poor family trying to watch a movie they couldn’t afford to watch in theaters.
Possessing or viewing CSAM is so severe a crime, you need a lawyer to dispose of it. To not do so is to stay in possession of it, which is a felony. To destroy it is destruction of evidence, which is a felony. Your only recourse is to stuff it in an unmarked box, and ask your lawyer to anonymously hand it over to the local precinct. It is essentially social toxic waste.
ETA [rant] Note that a) Sony (and all the other major studios and publishers and record labels) gladly pirates IP that is not theirs, and also underpays the people that produce their content. And b) Sony freely engages in dark patterns and odious TOSes which is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to play Sony games in years. So it is actually more ethical to pirate Sony content (or again, that of any major studio, record label, publishing house or AAA game company) than it is to pay the company and support their ongoing abuse of workers, end consumers and the market.
Also there is one thing you can do to them that is worse than pirating their content, and that is not pirating their content. [/rant]
Edit: Specified that in the United States, copyright is not a crime. It can be a crime in other parts of the world (such as within the EU) and it can be treated as a crime in the US if a company is annoyed enough at you, and has done so to recover / stop the distribution of pre-release content. (A beta iPhone model comes to mind.)
I’m not against pirating, I’m all for it. But copyright infringement is a crime (it might not be the case for all countries though!) Companies might not necessarily act on it on an individual level, but they still can put pressure on ISPs to track this kind of traffic. Either way, it’s better to use a VPN than not using one just to be safe!
You’re right that I should have specified the US, and will edit my original comment.
It’s not a crime in the US that has state-served sentences like fines or imprisonment, rather is a civil infraction. Granted, the media trade organizations like the MPAA and RIAA would very much like to make copyright infringement felonious, but that could easily lead to overenforcement and filling our already impacted prisons even more.
I’ve heard the European watchdogs are more severe and will go after grandmothers who play radios too loudly regarding public performance regulations.
But we’re in an era in which states are passing laws to make persons illegal or strip them of their rights, so we can’t rely on the state (any state) to fairly assert how their populations should behave, and Disney has been an IP-maximalist shit since the mid 20th century.
So our respect of legality should only extend to what can and will be enforced. The Sheriff of Nottingham does not deserve our obedience. (Prince John neither)
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.
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.
