Technology & Social Media Which VPN are you using?

Thanks for the replies and good to see members here with a healthy distrust of the government and law enforcement. There's a few votes for PIA but Mike reckons it's capped at 16mbps so I'll try ExpressVPN and see how I go. Problem with using TOR browser is it's significantly slower with all the hops bouncing your communication around a network of relays so a higher speed with ExpressVPN sounds like the best option.

 

thats not going to save you.

 

Genuine question, what would you care even if the government did know what you are looking at? Only reason I could think of is you don't want them to know you're looking at how to build weapons of mass destruction or you're into some particularly sick ****.

 

Well, it's the same reason you close the curtains at night. After all if you have nothing to hide, maybe you should leave your curtains open for everyone to see what you are doing.
It's a matter of privacy.

 

It goes a bit deeper than that.
- Australia has no right to privacy in the constitution. Yes most judges work on the assumption and precedents, common law that it's implied. But we still don't have it in writing.

- Even more important Australia has achieved what most spy agencies can only dream of:
A total gov monopoly of all communication infrastructure aka NBN.

- With OS backdoors it makes no difference if your using a VPN

- This is one of the few areas where reporting illegal activity is illegal, considered treason or worse.

Think a lil harder. People are getting thrown in jail for criticising others on social media, where others have no problem making claims of "Kill all ____" and are actually praised.

States are considering making it illegal to say or post something/anything that causes someone else to be offended.
Or not using a preferred pronoun.

And of course anonymity is always the best forum for freely exchanging opinions ideas.

But these days if someone doesn't like your opinion, you could be chased down (doxxed), your employer or customers chased down and harassed.

News channels pay lots of money for stories, if they can organize child abductions I can't see them not paying someone off for some info.

 

Use your brains dude.

 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

I don't know if it's 'capped', but that was the highest speed I could achieve on any number of servers I tried. Quite possibly due to a high volume of users.

With the new metadata laws, they could easily build a profile about you. How do you know the person behind the computer screen reading the metadata isn't actually some crazy person?

I'm by no means a bad person, and what I do online is pretty much a read bthe news and this website, but I'll hold onto my privacy as long as possible.

That's why I don't have Facebook etc either.

 

I'm currently pulling 21Mbps on a 25Mbps connection with PIA enabled. Without it I get 22Mbps, so IMO PIA's overhead is acceptable.

 

From what?

I mean, that really is the essence of all this, I have never particularly valued my "privacy" as something that needs protection, I mean I don't feature on any government's radar and I never will.

I am pretty sure I am doing some **** on the net that a lot of people on here would not be doing (I'm a coder, of course I will be reading hacking news and such things). As if anyone actually really cares about what I am doing, I am not doing anything to threaten our nation or any nation for that matter, I am not doing anything that could cause an uproar with the masses, in fact I am not really doing anything that the government would even care about.

Of course everyone has been known to download something that may or may not have a copyright in place but the government doesn't care about that.

As for the IDSA and all the other little slap your wrists bodies, they are not legally allowed to pull the data from any private site as they would need to sign up to gain access and in doing so breach the rules of the site.

So "what" am I not going to be protected from?

Side note, I close my curtains at night to keep the house warm, in summer I don't bother. I really don't care who can see what I do (except getting ready for a shower, that **** is nasty ).

There are many assumptions that are not "Law" but are implied, it really doesn't matter as much as people make out.

As opposed to the Telstra monopoly we used to have? I don't remember that hurting me either.

This is very true.

?? People are put in jail for criticising someone on social media? I am pretty sure there will be a lot more than that to the story.

I don't know where you got this from but this will never happen, it's not possible to police and if it was society policed (ie submit a screenshot of the bad man who called you a bell end) then the department would become swamped within 1 hour of being formed, can you imagine how many "oh so hard done by angsty teenagers" would be submitting screenshots?

If your opinions and ideas are perfectly legal, why do you need anonymity?

I am pretty sure, if I said something on this forum that someone didn't like, or even if I was mean to someone (which I wouldn't be but anyway), a) I don't think they would call my employer and b) really? I mean really, just think about it, what do you think my employer would say if someone called up and said "Dan Donoghue was mean to me on the internet" or "Dan Donoghue said something I don't agree with on the internet"

I don't even know where that's going to be honest. Are you implying News channels organise for children to be abducted so they get a story??

Bottom line folks, if you are that worried about your identity, use the TOR network, if even that bothers you, unplug your devices and never use the internet again because the entire internet is just information, information flying back and forth but still just information. The government doesn't care if you visit kinky sites (so long as they are legal), they don't care if you download last night's episode of The Block and they really really really don't care if you called someone a mean name.

 

One reason to use a VPN is to get around the netflix regional lock downs - a semi legitimate use. Another may be to download torrents of movies etc with an attempt to hide from the copyright prosecutors.

 

May as well just download what you want to watch because the breach of copyright is the same be it exploiting the Netflix geo release system or downloading an illegal copy, to hide from prosecutors private trackers will do the job.

 

Another PIA from me.

Realised a couple of days ago my ISP starting blocking a whole bunch of torrent websites. A 2 minute google and DNS change fixed that problem .

 

FYI, That's Australia wide, not ISP specific. Many public trackers were blacklisted.

 

not just the government is looking, others are looking too.. i for one knows enough people in networking (IT) not your social media crap, good thing they work for governments, you have no idea what people with a little know how can see, just that its these people are good people and dont do any bad things with the knowledge they have. also i like VPN because i dont like business snooping at me and use my data to target market / ads me..

 

There is so much misinformation around - this is not correct - the meta data laws explicitly exclude web browsing history and content.

What a VPN will do prevent your internet service provider or wifi hotspot owner / fellow user from seeing your traffic. It will hide your original IP address but not other information about you. Makes sense for torrents.

However, unless you've taken other steps - plenty of other entities are tracking your web browsing and a VPN is not going to help at all. Have a look: Panopticlick

Pretty scary out there. Intelligence service capabilities are on an entirely different level of course and it is very handy that we all carry around a portable locator/recording device now days

 

My understanding is the connection between your computer and the VPN is secure, but the connection between the VPN and the rest of the web isn’t. Your activity on the web can be monitored and traced back to the VPN IP addresses but cannot be traced back to your own IP address.

So if a VPN provider is pressured to cooperate with law enforcement and they have any information to identify you as the suspect you are up **** creek which is why some VPN services go out of their way NOT to log any information that can identify their customer, i.e they can't be forced to hand over incriminating information which they don't have.

Sydprop if you're a LEO (law enforcement officer) can you advise if using a bootable OS like Tails from a USB stick and then using TOR browser would hide web activity? I'm not inciting or condoning illegal activity, just want to know what a LEO would recommend for those who value their privacy and anonymity?

Are you a talking about LEO's carrying around video cameras when on duty, because I thought they only did that in the US? You also have to carry a GPS?