Angry Jesus writes:
"The TorrentFreak news site just released their latest annual survey of VPN providers' privacy policies. The results are very encouraging: it seems that the idea that online privacy is important is becoming more widespread and the price is quite affordable, just a few dollars a month.
For nearly a year I've been using one of the VPN services on their list. Not so much for the anonymous bit-torrent capability, but rather to frustrate Big Data's attempts to track me. I typically use domestic USA end-points and switch between 10-20 of them during the course of the day. That is coupled with various privacy extensions to Firefox (blocking cookies, JavaScript, Flash, ads, cross-site includes, and randomizing my user-agent). So far, I've been quite happy with how it has worked out. Even if I can't protect myself from the NSA, I can protect myself from just about everyone else."
(Score: 1, Redundant) by GungnirSniper on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:09PM
TorrentFreak is sponsored by Private Internet Access and BTGuard, as listed on the right side banners.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:15PM
There are a total of 27 providers on the list, "several" of which are TorrentFreak sponsors.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Fluffeh on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:17PM
They did also publish a dirty list the other day (can't find the link from where I am at the moment though) but they do seem to get cranky when VPNs hand out information that they claim not to hand out. The last set of reviews similar to this that I saw also actually had each site sponsor listed clearly as such. They seem to be quite transparent about this sort of thing.
I personally don't see this as some sort of breach of trust on their part. They don't hide it and I think they give fair reviews to the various services.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Monday March 17 2014, @04:26AM
This was the link I couldn't get to before [torrentfreak.com].
(Score: 4, Informative) by mrbluze on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:22PM
A VPN is useful for a lot of things, but if it's privacy you want, then it is safer to assume you won't get it with a VPN. Your IP address is only the very beginning of where your privacy is breached. Using a tunnelled connection however means you can have just one enabled port on your router, which can take a few headaches away.. Provided your router isn't rooted already.
Do it yourself, 'cause no one else will do it yourself.
(Score: 1) by bugamn on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:05PM
This. Is there a solution for the problem of e-mail metadata, for example?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:13PM
You can always connect to an online email client only via a TOR connection I suppose - though of course, the powers that be will see TOR on your PC and BAM! You're a terrorist clearly. The other side is of course, if you forget to use TOR so much as once, and your IP is in the logs of said email provider - so no point in hiding after that.
I generally find meltmail to be a great way to hide my real email address - though I mainly use it for spam avoidance. You just go there, pop in your email address, say how long you want forwarding for (3,6,12 hours from memory) and they give you an alias generated one - and they at least claim - that the generated one will a) be completely destroyed after the period and b) that they don't keep logs of what happens in the meantime.
While I can't guarantee that they do either, I can certainly vouch that it doesn't generate spam to your mailbox. I use it all the time when making purchases online where I don't want an endless torrent of spam coming my way. For that at least I can say with surety that it works perfectly. That's not to say it wouldn't get caught up in some MDGB (meta-data-gathering-bullshit) but it's something at least.
(Score: 2, Funny) by gishzida on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:10PM
If they want you they will get you...
NSA-ware... The malware your government wants you to have!
Remember: NSA-ware... You can't leave home without it!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday March 17 2014, @05:45AM
And there are blue skies today and every day!
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @07:37AM
NSA-ware: It has the electrolytes spooks crave!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by solozerk on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:07PM
Personally, I've been using iVPN for a while now - mostly because they're members of the EFF.
They may cost a little more (at least the last time I looked), but their support has been pretty awesome when I needed it and the EFF thing made me trust them (and you got to trust at least one org/some people eventually if you want regularly available anonymity; at least if you don't want to lose countless hours rooting random boxes in random countries - not even considering the legal aspects - to create your own anonymization network).
Kind of the same reason I trusted lulzbot for our company 3D printer, BTW: their Taz 3 may be a little rougher (mostly louder) than a Makerbot, but they are FSF-certified (and support the EFF) and you know that if they go out of business you can fix it/modify it yourself (it's not just a PR move - all the source code/hardware schematics & specs *are* available). Also, it is a great printer (and no, I'm not affiliated with either lulzbot or iVPN in any way).
In any case, my setup for reliable non-tracking/anonymity online: Firefox + a difficult-to-exploit OS (GNU/linux) + iVPN + Noscript firefox addon + Ghostery firefox addon + faking the user agent of the browser (so that your browser "fingerprint" is not unique - I pretend to be a Windows firefox user, for example).
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday March 17 2014, @12:46PM
I'll second the iVPN service, for much the same reasons. I find it rather interesting what kind of things are advertised in other countries.
Oh, and I love screwing with their stats.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by ls671 on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:19PM
"For nearly a year I've been using one of the VPN services on their list. Not so much for the anonymous bit-torrent capability, but rather to frustrate Big Data's attempts to track me. I typically use domestic USA end-points and switch between 10-20 of them during the course of the day."
Nice way to get on a watch list and get a budget assigned to you. Then, you are really going to get tracked ;-)
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ls671 on Sunday March 16 2014, @10:25PM
Hint: You would be much better off hiding in plain site but this technique is classified, sorry ;-)
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @03:05AM
"Nice way to get on a watch list and get a budget assigned to you. Then, you are really going to get tracked ;-)"
Why waste the time when you can bring in a partyvan?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Barbara Celarent on Monday March 17 2014, @04:44AM
If you don't own the machine, especially if you don't control the logging on the machine, it isn't private. It doesn't matter if you have an VPN if the server is logging the packets. Those logs can be confiscated. If it isn't yours, by definition it isn't private.
As a compromise you could rent a small vserver for 8 euro a month [hetzner.de] and put softether [softether.org] on it yourself. As a bonus you can connect all your pc's on the same virtual network. Then you have fine grained control over logging and even set up a transparent proxy, etc.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Monday March 17 2014, @05:11AM
I think you may have missed the point here. Your scheme is fundamentally flawed* in that you are the only person using it so all the outgoing traffic can be directly attributed to you via the billing information for the vserver. The advantage offered by VPN services is that once the traffic is traced back to the final node in the VPN network, it can only be attributed to "A.N.Other VPN User" and not directly to any specific user.
TOR uses exit nodes in the same way to decentralize the provision of this exact principle. Running a TOR exit node on your own connection, while inconvenient at times due to the traffic volumes and countermeasures some services/networks put in place against it, also gives you the same lost-in-the-crowd protection for your own locally-sourced traffic.
(*as opposed to potentially flawed)
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Monday March 17 2014, @06:15AM
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday March 17 2014, @05:03AM
Personally I've written a primitive search bot as a Firefox extension that does a multi-level walk all day long. I've limited it to a single connection and capped the traffic low enough it won't disturb any of my work.
I know it works because of all the random, and frankly, weird ads I'm getting.*
I suppose the next logical step is a distributed search engine. It will justify the excess network loads and address the privacy concerns all at once.
* The sheer amount of woman's handbags is disturbing... It's like half the Internet is financed through fake leather and jewelry. What happened to good old porn?
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday March 17 2014, @05:35AM
There are distributed search engines in existence, my brief research on the subject for another comment reply recently found one called Yacy that looks fairly promising. Naturally it's not as fully-featured as web-based centralized search engines but it can only get better with more support.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DNied on Monday March 17 2014, @05:58AM
Unfortunately, it's written in Java.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by WizardFusion on Monday March 17 2014, @06:14AM
I don't get this. You are doing all this work to hide your searching, yet you are sill allowing adverts to be shown?
I block everything. Adblocker, noscript, ghostery, etc.
I have not seen an advert in years.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @06:36AM
"I block everything"
Damn, now I know why I couldn't read your post!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday March 17 2014, @06:27AM
I run this to help skew things:
http://fatphil.org/tmp/confuse_google.pl.txt
Suggestions for improvement gratefully received.
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 3, Funny) by xyzzyyzzyx on Monday March 17 2014, @01:08PM
AGGHH! Perl! Run awayyyy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @01:20PM
I see a lot of comments here saying privacy is why many people use VPN, and other people pointing out you might not get much privacy with most VPNs, and other folks replying they use Firefox with various extensions. Why aren't more people recommending Tor Browser Bundle here? I use it regularly and other than a few sites that refuse service (Office Depot!), it works really great.