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A comment on Padlocks, Phishing and Privacy; the Value Proposition of a VPN. Parent comment

Re:Padlocks, Phishing and Privacy; the Value Proposition of ... by everdrive on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:17PM (#24545152)
Something I seldom see listed here is simply the possibility of splitting the profile:

- My ISP knows all my normal internet traffic, and all the caveats that apply (HTTPS, SNI, IPs, etc)

- My VPN knows a much smaller subset of traffic used for a different purpose. Also, do this in a VM, or on a separate computer, or otherwise somehow containerize your cookies and browser and things. (no, I still don't think people are correlating between profiles using webgl in any large-scale way. If they were, I'd be getting fewer CAPTCHAs.)

Yes, the VPN could presumably violate their privacy statements and sell your information, but that still avoids the primary concern: an ad domain that lives on the two websites you'd like to visit (ie, the normal vs the private site) With a new IP, and a different host (VM, physical computer, etc) there's nothing to correlate. The website in question doesn't know it's you -- only the VPN does. And it doesn't seem likely they're going to sell your information in such a way that the website can figure out which cookie to correlate with which identity.

So, the primary tracking method of the internet should be defeated in this way.

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Re:Padlocks, Phishing and Privacy; the Value Proposition of ... by falcolas on Monday September 21, 2020 @02:22PM (#24546691)
IP tracking is pretty old-school, and unless you're perfectly scrupulous about your split profiles locally, there's probably a well known bridge between these profiles.

And if IP obfuscation is that important, you'll likely be using TOR, not a VPN (which have proven to be a nearly transparent shield).

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Re:Padlocks, Phishing and Privacy; the Value Proposition of ... by everdrive on Thursday September 24, 2020 @07:41PM (#24584969)
>there's probably a well known bridge between these profiles.

That's my plan -- that there is no bridge between the profiles. I'll admit, the likelihood that I'm doing this perfectly is definitely not 100%. But I'll bet it covers most cases.

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Re:Padlocks, Phishing and Privacy; the Value Proposition of ... by crtasm on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @06:54PM (#24560957)
Proven how exactly? I was reading this recently: https://torrentfreak.com/ovpn-wins-court-battle-after-pirate...
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