Why You Should Start Using a VPN

Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by robotmay on Thursday September 06, 2012 @06:37AM (#4483580)

I'm starting to consider this pretty seriously due to a flurry of incoming snooping laws in the UK. I normally do a bit of SSH tunneling out to a VPS if I need a proxy; is SSH my best option/most secure option? What do others recommend?

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by eckyptang on Thursday September 06, 2012 @07:13AM (#4483649)

Likewise. General options:

1. Don't do anything the state considers naughty. I suggest you kill yourslf now if you consider this viable.

2. Steal someone else's WiFi and deal with the moral consequences. You can do this by finding a "VendorA7E4B4" lookalike SSID (default configuration) and using the password calculator here: http://www.nickkusters.com/Services/SpeedTouch/Lookup - I only know of this as I had to lock my router down due to unauthorised access.

3. Use a VPN and risk being logged or falling foul of RIPA.

4. Use a dead drop http://deaddrops.com/ and risk being bagged at site.

5. Use SSH tunnels + proxy and risk misconfiguration + logging and RIPA.

6. Use paper or sneaker net and risk stop+search and RIPA.

Welcome to the machine.

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by ibotty on Thursday September 06, 2012 @08:00AM (#4483749)

7. use tor (and the tor browser bundle)

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by eckyptang on Thursday September 06, 2012 @08:16AM (#4483784)

I excluded that as not everything is HTTP.

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by ibotty on Thursday September 06, 2012 @09:17AM (#4484003)

right. (but it does solve the problem for http (depending on bandwidth needs).)

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by joethompson on Thursday September 06, 2012 @07:21AM (#4483673)

Best/most secure option for tunnelling traffic through to your VPS? SSH is definitely secure enough for that, provided you have a strong password or even better key-based authentication.

To make something like that more user friendly though you could just install VPN software like OpenVPN on your VPS. This also ensures things like DNS queries are sent over the VPN so they can't be intercepted on their way to the server.

Of course this assumes you trust your VPS provider, at least more than your ISP.

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by gizzlon on Thursday September 06, 2012 @07:26AM (#4483684)

as long as you're sure you tunnel all the traffic through, so nothing "leaks" out to your local network. If you just do port-forwarding, you'll miss DNS, for example.

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Re:Why You Should Start Using a VPN by ibotty on Thursday September 06, 2012 @07:11AM (#4483645)

ssh is certainly save. some find it not very comfortable though. (but if you know your way around ssh, you should be fine)

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