On 6/8/22 20:42, Michael wrote:
On Saturday, 6 August 2022 12:08:30 BST Dale wrote:
...
The more you try to escape the 14 eyes Big Brother, the closer you may fall
into the hands of various authoritarian regimes. LOL! Even VPNs like NordVPN
which operates within the jurisdiction of Panama (let's not forget it is
Langley's doorstep), it also has offices in the UK, Netherlands and Lithuania.
I wonder why . . .
Total privacy on the Internet is improbable. If your only concern is to
retain your privacy from your ISP with regards to your Internet connections,
then most/any VPN service will offer this benefit by obfuscating your IP
address. Your browsing patterns, browser User Agent, addons and umpteen other
OS and application fingerprints won't be obfuscated beyond the VPN server.
Therefore your identity can only be protected so much and no more.
Also, leakage is almost inevitable ... DNS, content distribution
networks, browser fingerprinting, timezones, paying online with a US
credit card, US delivery address and just simple mis-configuration
exposing you to risk etc. My impression as a long time openvpn user is
that TOR and the TOR browser might be the closest to secure for your
purposes? Also, keep in mind that things like online shopping will cost
you more overseas because if you are successful in hiding you are in the
US you will get the international surcharges, or in some cases ordering
IT stuff from the US you have to fill out export clearances (once even
for sparkfun hobby stuff!) :) ... then if you pay with a US card and/or
have a US delivery address they have got you anyway - in fact being in
Oz I gave it up as being no gain, too much pain to use a VPN try and get
cheaper US shopping. I found myself having to maintain two totally
independent systems with one in a locked down VPN with US settings with
all traffic actively blocked from the local network, and use US shipping
and packaging firms that offered facilities to buy on my behalf. That
is much harder than you think - trusting the end points is only one
small part of the problem you are trying to solve and from the Gov
monitoring point of view almost certainly a waste of time anyway as they
have massive resources. The best you can hope for with openvpn is SSL
point to point level security. Just use HTTPS, a good browser and be
part of the crowd - if you are trawling suspect/socially compromising
websites you do not want anyone to see you going to, no matter what you
do there will always be a risk and as a VPN user you are a more likely
target for a closer look anyway. I am sure the bigger online VPN
providers would be monitored closely - at least TOR is likely to help
more than a plain VPN.
BillK
