> Except for the increased blocking of commercial VPN's (address spaces, I assume) by services on the Web.
Tragedy of the commons.
At my workplace - an e-commerce platform - we're flagging or blocking customers who use commercial VPNs.
The reason for this is simple: almost none of our legitimate customers use VPNs, but the vast majority of fraudsters do. Fraud is a massive issue for any e-commerce business and no other anti-fraud measure is as effective as this one.
Re:Private Internet Access Goes Open Source
by josephholsten on Thursday March 15, 2018 @06:23PM
(#16596996)
I've said this elsewhere, but I'm trying to help, not spam!
Please make sure to report evidence of blocking to PIA support, they do have some solutions available. Worst case, it gives them evidence that it's time to rotate IPs.
Re:Private Internet Access Goes Open Source
by miranda_rights on Thursday March 15, 2018 @07:50PM
(#16597509)
Even for stuff like netflix/hulu? Asking out of curiosity - I leave PIA off for the most part because of the IP blocking, and only turn it on when I feel that I need it.
Re:Private Internet Access Goes Open Source
by pasbesoin on Friday March 16, 2018 @06:42PM
(#16604496)
I started leaving it on when Comcast and Verizon became aggressive about both connection monitoring and injection.
At home, Comcast is my only option. Verizon is the sole national provider (U.S.) with service in some areas I travel to.
I waded into PIA's client enough, months back, to observe that it was using OpenVPN. Along with its reputation, I decided I had enough trust for my use -- avoiding connection monitoring/cracking on public WiFi and keeping Comcast and Verizon from data mining me.
I do sort of wait, with all these services, with breath half-held for some other shoe to drop. Given the rubber hose and lead pipe legal and extra-legal methods available to various and manifold "three letter agencies".
I hope the open-sourcing of the client leads not only to increased trust, but also to some functional improvements. Such as being able to leave PIA switched on on my phone while tethering to it. Without having to root the phone and get into routing scenarios that apparently Android is not designed to support. So, I guess that's an Android problem. But maybe there's some way to address it at the client level.
Anyway. PIA keeps taking substantive steps (e.g. prior financial support for open source projects, now open-sourcing the client, etc.) that put it in a good light.
P.S. I don't mean blocking by Netflix and the like. I mean, archive.is, Google (prove you're not a bot...), commercial services I use, etc., etc.).