41

You have more trust in the VPN provider than your ISP? Also the IP address is very unimportant for tracking and profiling.

42

Actually, yeah.

You want to find out how to make your car harder to steal, you ask a car-thief.

You want to find out how to make your house harder to break into, you ask a burglar.

You want to find out how to protect your online privacy, you ask a pir8.

Some “2600”-type sites actually contacted every vpn provider they knew about to get their official statements as to whether/not they keep any records, where they’re based (ie, jurisdiction), and so on, and got interesting replies.

Some admitted they kept records but still “value your privacy” (hah!), whereas others simply don’t keep any records at all. Go’head and serve a subpƓna for Joe Schmo’s online records, and sure we’ll comply. We have nothing to give you, but hey, we’ll let you look to see for yourself.

There’s a huge difference between keeping records but “valuing your privacy” (ie, we may not collect and sell your info, but wave a judge-signed piece of paper at us and we’ll bend over give them everything they want), and simply not having anything to give.

And they get “rated” each year or so, so in case there are any “policy changes” at Cheep VPN or VPNs’R’Us, they’ll pass along the info.

43

So which is the highest rated?

44

The thing with VPNs in general I heard is they will keep out the casual observer but if the government is looking hard they will find it. Ask Snowden.

45

Unno, goggle it?

I haven’t looked since I latched onto the one I use.

PIA is good, NordVPN is good, buncha others have good ratings (no info collecting, good jurisdiction, no traffic bans/slowdowns, etc.).

NordVPN even had teevee commercials a while back. That surprised me.

46

If the spooks what to find out what you’re doing, they’ll tap your cable/fiber/whatever right on the pole.

And if you’re concerned about that, you got other bigger things to worry about


47

Yeah, my threat model doesn’t worry about nation-state actors.

48

Should cable guys have binoculars? :smiley:

49

If you’re talking about pir8ing movies or the like, it’s the cable companies you need to be concerned about, especially if they got their hooks in the content-market.

Back in the day of analog filters, the actual cable-guys used to be the go-to guys to buy the filters from, and install them up on the pole to get you “premium” channels. Like, what do they care? They get to pocket 50-100bux and be on their merry way, and you get to watch Skinemax.

Paying for teevee (especially with commercials, yet) is against my religion, so I never had cable-teevee of any sort. First and only “cable” I ever got was for innernet only.

But those who had their big Trinitrons and wanted to “watch cable” on teevee were all gaga for cable teevee and “premium” content. So yeah, you see Joey up on the pole doing maint work, slip him a Benjy or two, and you’d get instant “premium access” from thence on (at least until caught and the next guy would swap back the original canisters, probably to sell to someone on his next stop).

50

I don’t hear much about them enforcing this like a few years back when they were busting people right and left and publicizing it. I knew someone whose kid downloaded a movie and he got a letter from the cable company threatening huge penalties.

Being a cord cutter was one of smartest things I did. Being raised on over the air network broadcasting was like a bad habit to break. TV was on all day mostly for background noise. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

51

Yeh, I assumed either someone “cracked” my wifi password or the idiots were just talking out their asses, ’cause I got like 3 “notification” letters in a row, for stuff I never even heard of. One chick-flick, one stand-up comedy show (I can’t stand most SUC shows), and some kiddie-car2n. I was like “wtf??” and actually called the cableco wanting more info if not “proof” of what they were accusing me of.

Here’s the thing
 the letters themselves are phrased like, “Just shut up, admit guilt, and promise to not do it again, and that’s the end of it. Demand proof or ‘your rights’ or anything like that, and we’ll give the content-owner alllll your info and then they can sink their teeth into you.”. A-holes


So vpn all the way, change wifi passwords even by just a character or two every so often (pain in the ass as everything from laptops to phones to tablets all use that f’n password to connect to the outside world), and then that should at least theoretically keep the a-holes at bay.

I gotta look into something like a pi-hole to make sure ALL traffic going out to the interweb goes through a vpn and that nothing is left to chance, even if someone cracks my wifi password.

And wifi is almost always the weakest link by far. The 2 main standards are wifi that’s easy to crack, and wifi that’s even easier to crack. Unless you get into “enterprise” level 2fa crypto sporo abracadaver encryption which would make using it more of a pain than getting your innernet cut off ’til you complete a “why piracy is bad” propaganda seminar to be allowed back on, you’re kinda stuck with “encryption” that’s the equivalent of rot13ing your password.

They all suck


52

How does WiFi come into the picture? Someone in the neighborhood cracked your password you think?

53

Possible. I was thinking the new neighbor (tenant) next door.

Don’t need any smarts; any script kiddie could grab the sw (eg, reaver) to just scan away.

I cranked down my wifi’s output power to its lowest setting, so now I can’t even do zoom meetings on the phone from the front stoop or back patio anymore, but at least I haven’t seen any attempted “intrusions” anymore, either. Previously, I could still connect, albeit slowly, from 2 houses down either direction.

One time I had some grils ring the doorbell asking to “just for a few minutes, borrow” my wifi so they could look up an address where they were supposed to meet someone. Uhhhh, yeah, right. I told ’em I do wired only, so if they have an RJ45 connection I could hook ’em right up. “Arr-jay
 what?” Mission accomplished.

I couldda had some fun with that, though. “You
 the pretty one. Just you. Come in
 for
 a while. I’ll hook you right up
” :smiling_imp:

54

And then someone comes with a high gain antenna


55

Hey LB - I run a pihole, and it’s nice, but doesn’t throw your traffic on a VPN. For that, you’d want a router that can support the VPN itself (and of course, compatible VPN service). There’s lots of guides for that kind of thing.

I do recommend the pihole, too, if you’re up for it!

Hmm, come to think of it, you could run a router on the same box (pi or not) that the pihole is on, and send everything through the vpn from there.

56

I've finally made some progress with my VPN troubles.

I use Comodo Firewall on a Windows 10 PC.

Apparently, if you try to install VPN software with Comodo Firewall installed, the VPN software will NOT install properly.

Depending on which VPN software you use, you might get an error message, or you might not.

With Ivacy VPN, you do NOT get an error message.

So I uninstalled Comodo Firewall, and installed Ivacy VPN.

Now things are working properly.

All I have to do now is reinstall Comodo Firewall so that my computer is protected.

This is a great relief as I was kinda going crazy trying to figure out what was wrong.

By the way, this problem can occur with any third party firewall software, not just Comodo.

57

Hey that’s great now that your system is stable and functioning properly again.:) Must of been a hell of an afternoon for ya huh.:smiley: Looks like your setup is well protected now. :)

58

Things like that can be frustrating until you figure them out.

59

I figured out my VPN problem!

I won't bore you with the details, but now my VPN and Port Forwarding work on my computer like a champ, which was my original goal.

I also documented all the steps I need to take so that I can recreate the solution, in case I need to sign up for a different VPN.

It's not that difficult to do, but if you don't know how to do every step perfectly, you're out of luck.

It's a good thing I know how to Google pretty well.

...

By the way, the reason it took me so long is because I was getting tech support from Ivacy VPN, and it takes them about 8 hours to reply to an email.

They walked me through a bunch of steps, but ultimately I had to figure it out myself because I use Comodo Firewall instead of Windows Firewall.

60

Awww, go’head. We like boring.