Bit of an uphill fight with captchas everywhere. Do people here conduct all online activity over VPN whenever possible? Only for the sensitive stuff? Or perhaps the inverse because the bank already knows you? Maybe when travelling or getting around region blocking? Something else?
The one provided by my work aside, I realized that I don’t have any consistent rules around using VPN. Except sometimes, you know, when downloading ISO’s for my favorite distos.
Allways use your vpn and just spit tunnel things that don’t work with them eg freetube. If you’re getting captchas lots you could look into getting a residential socks5 proxy, I use mullvad’s socks5 they wont be as good as a residential one though.
UK porn ban, always-on VPN
On at all times at the router level. Because it’d be annoying to selectively disable it. My VPN isn’t really an anonymity feature anyway; I have a dedicated browser profile for things like banking where I intend the fingerprint to be associated with my government identity.
All the time, baby!
Unless it’s absolutely necessary, vpn and kill switch stay on.
Always. Wireguard is easy to setup and work like a charm.
Truenas + wireguard for pc, server and phone. Always everywhere.
Alll the time with kill switch ON.
100% of the time.
My VPN turns on automatically when I leave my home lan. I don’t use split-tunneling, so all my traffic goes back to home before going to internet.
Always.
maybe like 75 percent of the time. the Invidious APIs for Freetube.
My job requires secure outlook and access to our database. I do occasionally have to interface with banking sites.
Always, unless by mistake it is off.
Always on although my Phone VPN recently has failed to start up automatically or has shut down randomly lately and I got to get that fixed.
My reasons are just privacy. I’m not using it to get around regional restrictions. Additionally, it helps when I want to use a public Wi-Fi, especially if it doesn’t have any passports on it.
I will not connect to public wifi without VPN.
Pretty much always. If someone blocks my VPN, I just don’t go there or don’t use that. Sucks but it is what it is. I’m just not willing to enter your site bareback.
I literally can’t comment on Lemmy if I’m using a VPN so what are you taking about? XD
I’m not using Lemmy.
Mine is on pretty much all the time. Capchas are indeed annoying, but I’m choosing to see that as something which helps me to be more intentional about my use of the internet.
My bank and government portal don’t seem to care about it, even if my traffic is coming from a random country on the other side of the world because I’ve forgotten to route through one of my VPN’s domestic servers. Online freelancing platforms, on the other hand, have instantly banned my accounts, and I’ve had problems with corporate social media (which I try and use for my business).
Whats this with vpns using capatchas?
My client device having the right encryption key is the authenticator for me.
Most sites can tell if you’re using a VPN. It depends on the site, but this can cause sites to treat your visit as suspicious and throw up their defenses. This includes use of CAPTCHA. Some sites (e.g. Reddit) don’t work at all if your traffic exits from a known VPN.

going around government censorship, being safer from being tracked
I get the idea but all of it depends on placing your trust in some company who’s entire business model is to sell you privacy.
If you live in an area with such heavy censorship then can you trust the business that is legally allowed to advertise and sell to you?
I personally think such company is way more likely to sell my data on the dark web then the government has resources to investigate what web domains i have visited.
They aren’t legally allowed to advertised and sell. Having them installed and selling them is a crime. (China, Iran, many other countries)
It is a valid use case. But thats not my usecase by far, which is what was asked.
My comment is slightly directed at people i know irl that are not very technological and believe that surfing the web is inherently not safe, but completely safe one you pay to connect to name_tm.
My apologies if it felt condescending for people who have good reason to tunnel outside there local jurisdiction.
Do you know of a guide for a setup like this?
I have a router with opnsense which has q plugin for wireguard making things quite easy for me.
A router is usually also always online and sits at the center of a network so it is the best place for it but there is nothing stopping someone from setting it up with commandline on a home device.
https://www.wireguard.com/quickstart/
There are many online video guides that cover different ways to do it (like docker)
In all casss you first setup a main server on the device that stays home and from it you generate a peer per device you want to connect. (A bunch of settings/codes) Sometimes a peer is a qr code that your device can scan (wireguard app for some devices) otherwise you have to manualy type.
Once set you can just leave it on. The only exception i found is some apps for local payments, presumably because they require both devices to report the same location to perform a transaction.
Permanently on. Anything I can’t access without it I generally find an alternate with very few exceptions. I have a quarantine virtual machine I use for the couple of websites that are worth making an exception for.









