I don’t know how effective VPNs are over a public WiFi network, but I do know it stopped Spectrum from sending me “you are downloading copyrighted material, stop it” emails once I started using one. Fuck Spectrum, I don’t have them anymore, but that seems like a good enough reason to keep using one in certain circumstances.
They need to advertise a legitimate use for their service.
If they don’t have a threat from public wifi or other security concerns to remedy, then the only purpose for their service is to bypass region limits and block infringement notices. They would be considered complicit in such infringement.
That their service also hinders efforts to stop pirates needs to be an “unintended” and “unavoidable” side effect.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for their services, they just aren’t things that the vast majority of people actually need. For example:
access things in a LAN from a WAN - i.e. access a personal PC when you’re at a friend’s house, and your home LAN is behind CGNAT
get around local laws - e.g. my state requires ID checks for porn and social media, so getting a VPN one state over gets around that
prevent ISP from seeing the sites you visit - very valid privacy concern, especially since SNI exists to de-mask TLS packets
There are also some sketchier needs, such as:
get different content on your streaming platform
hide sharing of illegal content (i.e. piracy)
perform illegal transactions (e.g. going on Tor to buy drugs or whatever on the black market)
I think VPNs are trying to appeal to more than just the above needs, they’re trying to create needs to grow their marketshare. That isn’t something a reputable VPN should do, or at least that’s something that would make me hesitate to use a given VPN.
I use Proton when I’m on my university’s campus because they switched to using EDUroam for the campus wifi. I used to be a Sys Admin at a different university a while back, and from what I know, EDUroam allows the IT department to monitor basically all of the traffic over the network. I don’t know exactly how deep that stuff goes, but if I was doing anything personal or sensitive like banking or whatever, I’d flip on the VPN on my personal computer. I also don’t have any personal accounts logged in on the school issued laptop because they have it loaded with institutional spyware. Once I graduate, I’ll blank the drive and reinstall the OS to have a decent Lenovo laptop on hand as a spare.
Edit to add: I use Proton because it was the least shady service that I could get for a reasonable price as a student. It is also helpful for finding textbooks. :)
Edit: The region limits thing is nice though. It’s not why I got the VPN, but it’s nice to not have to pay to watch the Olympics and just watch it via the CBC or the BBC.
On public WiFi I just vpn into my home network. The issue with public WiFi is that it can be sniffed by anyone in range since there is generally no encryption.
Although pretty much everything we do is over tls these days, and DoH helps protect against even dns sniffing. There’s still at least some risk to working in the clear over a public WiFi network. At least in information gathering, what bank you use, etc.
But, there’s no real benefit in using a paid vpn over one you own unless you’re downloading illegal content, want to watch another Netflix region, or are in a country with heavy Internet monitoring/filtering.
But you can see the ip address, which will id the bank. They can derive other information by ip addresses or leaked data and there’s still things using unencrypted connections even today. I generally just connect to my home vpn so at least it’s inly my isp spying on me.
Possibly the domain is visible with a traffic monitoring tool. Everything else is between you and the bank via HTTPS. Having said that, whatever is not over https is visible to whoever sits on the same network as yourself.
I don’t know how effective VPNs are over a public WiFi network, but I do know it stopped Spectrum from sending me “you are downloading copyrighted material, stop it” emails once I started using one. Fuck Spectrum, I don’t have them anymore, but that seems like a good enough reason to keep using one in certain circumstances.
They need to advertise a legitimate use for their service.
If they don’t have a threat from public wifi or other security concerns to remedy, then the only purpose for their service is to bypass region limits and block infringement notices. They would be considered complicit in such infringement.
That their service also hinders efforts to stop pirates needs to be an “unintended” and “unavoidable” side effect.
There are plenty of legitimate uses for their services, they just aren’t things that the vast majority of people actually need. For example:
There are also some sketchier needs, such as:
I think VPNs are trying to appeal to more than just the above needs, they’re trying to create needs to grow their marketshare. That isn’t something a reputable VPN should do, or at least that’s something that would make me hesitate to use a given VPN.
I use Proton when I’m on my university’s campus because they switched to using EDUroam for the campus wifi. I used to be a Sys Admin at a different university a while back, and from what I know, EDUroam allows the IT department to monitor basically all of the traffic over the network. I don’t know exactly how deep that stuff goes, but if I was doing anything personal or sensitive like banking or whatever, I’d flip on the VPN on my personal computer. I also don’t have any personal accounts logged in on the school issued laptop because they have it loaded with institutional spyware. Once I graduate, I’ll blank the drive and reinstall the OS to have a decent Lenovo laptop on hand as a spare.
Edit to add: I use Proton because it was the least shady service that I could get for a reasonable price as a student. It is also helpful for finding textbooks. :)
I’m not defending Proton. I don’t even use them.
Edit: The region limits thing is nice though. It’s not why I got the VPN, but it’s nice to not have to pay to watch the Olympics and just watch it via the CBC or the BBC.
On public WiFi I just vpn into my home network. The issue with public WiFi is that it can be sniffed by anyone in range since there is generally no encryption.
Although pretty much everything we do is over tls these days, and DoH helps protect against even dns sniffing. There’s still at least some risk to working in the clear over a public WiFi network. At least in information gathering, what bank you use, etc.
But, there’s no real benefit in using a paid vpn over one you own unless you’re downloading illegal content, want to watch another Netflix region, or are in a country with heavy Internet monitoring/filtering.
With TLS and DoH, how is your bank and other information leaked?
He said “which bank”, which could be determined by the sniffing DNS requests, or seeing which IPs his computer is connecting to.
Not a breach of his personal information (assuming the bank that he’s using and the client he’s using after putting everything in TLS properly).
But with DoH you can’t sniff the DNS, that’s the whole point.
But you can see the ip address, which will id the bank. They can derive other information by ip addresses or leaked data and there’s still things using unencrypted connections even today. I generally just connect to my home vpn so at least it’s inly my isp spying on me.
Generally you can also read the SNI.
I think this is one of the things that ech is meant to solve. But ech/esni is still not widespread on smaller sites yet I think.
Possibly the domain is visible with a traffic monitoring tool. Everything else is between you and the bank via HTTPS. Having said that, whatever is not over https is visible to whoever sits on the same network as yourself.
Importantly, you probably don’t know what all is encrypted in every app you use on your phone, so it’s best practice to encrypt the transport.
I experienced the same with Cox Internet.