Interesting discussion. Much food for thought. I will study the VPN
site you suggested.
One thing you mentioned to Jonathan was that you disabled SSID in
your router. How does that affect your Wifi network. Can your devices
still see the network? I certainly would not mind hiding from the neighbors.
From E.T.'s Keyboard. . .
"God for you is where you sweep away all the
mysteries of the world, all the challenges to
our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off
and say God did it." --Carl Sagan
E-mail: [email protected]
On 4/9/2017 1:35 PM, Eric Oyen wrote:
not a problem. there are other reasons to use a VPN. However, 2 things I
do when using google:
1. I am not signed in
2. I always use a VPN when searching.
Also, of late, I have been having some trust issues with my current ISP.
It seems that they sent me a notice of copyright infringement about a
shared file. only problem, I was not sharing anything. So, I had to do a
full blown security audit of my machines and network. I did, eventually,
found where the issue was (the Lingsys router I have here had a security
vulnerability that couldn't be easily closed. As a result, one of my
neighbors was using it to share files. so, even though I had the thing
password protected, it was still using a number of items that made
breaking the password trivially easy with the right software. I finally
managed to get a handle on the situation by turning off the PIN the
device had, turning off SSID broadcast and engaging MAC filtering. I
still can't completely trust the device, so I use a VPN pretty much all
the time now.
I am looking to upgrade the hardware though. A kit from Routerboard that
I can install an image of OpenBSD on would make things a lot better
here. THere are optional add-ons like WiFi B/G/A/N, a bridged set of LAN
ports, an all weather housing, etc. Once that is done and installed, I
can install the VPN package for OpenBSD on there, set it up to handle
that and not worry too much. Then, if I want to be ultra secure, I would
continue to use a VPN tunnel from my machine, thus doubling the protection.
Now, as to why I would want to use a VPN for other than just security?
It's simple. there are some programs hosted on the web that might be
regionally restricted (like sports events). So, I would want to be able
to listen legally and not be caught up in a blackout zone. Thus, VPN
allows me to place my end point elsewhere (like NYC, Sanfransisco,
Detroit, Dallas, or even a foreign country). A VPN also gets around what
my ISP does when I am viewing something like Hulu or Netflix (they try
to lower the QoS for video streaming on content that directly competes
with their cable programming). With a VPN, they can't see the type of
traffic, so they can't change its priority. They have yet to start doing
so on encrypted tunnels. Besides, I am paying for a specific level of
service and I hate it when the ISP decides that my traffic needs to be
shaped. I don't have video here, so I expect full service. btw, I have
already filed a number of complaints over this issue with both the FCC
and the FTC. each time, my service gets maxed out for a few months and
then they start the games again.
Now, I am paying for 50 megabit/second service here and when the VPN is
active, I can still get 40 through. Thats not bad, all things
considered. Since I started using the VPN a year ago, the bandwidth
shaping games have pretty much stopped. However, lately, I have been
catching RST packets being sent from 2 hops upstream from me. That
causes the VPN to drop and I have to reconnect. looks like its time to
complain again.
anyway, thats a lot of how and why I use one.
Is it more secure? yes.
is it absolutely secure? not a chance! A very determined hacker will
still be able to break it, but its enormously more difficult. He'll just
simply move on to an easier target.
-eric
On Apr 9, 2017, at 9:55 AM, Jonathan Cohn wrote:
Eric,
I just want to correct one thing. The elimination of the ISP can't
collect traffic rule here in the US essentially does not change
anything. Congress can not actually shutdown entire rules without
Agency changes unless they are brand new rules. The privacy rules were
I believe supposed to go into effect in June, and don't forget even if
those rules had gone into effect Google would still be collecting and
selling your data. In fact, be wary of any free or very inexpensive
internet based service, software does not just get created out of thin
air, companies pay good money for developers, and disk space costs
something too.
In fact one reason, congress did not like the new FCC rules was that
they only provided a that no equivalent protections of privacy could
be leveraged by the FCC over search engines, since the FCC only
regulates the pipes and the FTC would regulate other internet services.
Please forgive any specific inaccuracies in this post, I am going off
of materials I read in tidbits.com <http://tidbits.com/> and
severalpodcasts that I listened to over a week ago.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
On Apr 9, 2017, at 12:31 PM, Eric Oyen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
well,
depending on whether you use a free or paid service will make a
difference in both service quality and setup. I use a paid service
myself. It's $7 a month and is fairly reliable. I have tried some
free services, but they are mostly hit and miss and are not always as
secure. the service I use is located here:
www.privateinternetaccess.com <http://www.privateinternetaccess.com/>
and they have both client software or you can setup manually.
Unfortunately, their cliente for the mac is not accessible, so I use
a manual setup in the preferences pane. It works reasonably well. I
have also done the manual setup in windows 7. This has allowed me to
be able to have dropbox and a few other services when I am behind a
firewall (like over at Voc rehab) THeir IT folks have gotten on my
case more than once, until I pointed out to them that their own
policy does not forbid the use of a vpn (it does, however, forbid the
use of sharing services that are unprotected on their networks). I
even had one of them try to break into my machine (at my request) and
they found it well nigh impossible. I had the firewall on that win 7
box setup so that only traffic on the VPN was allowed in or out and
everything else got dropped. That took a lot of heavy customization
on my part to make it work.
so, if you want to run a VPN, which these days is pretty much going
to be a must now that ISP's aren't required to keep your info
private, it is highly recommended.. btw, a lot of the free vpn
services are not all that bandwidth friendly. thats why I use the
service I do. they can support up to 20 Mbits/sec. for what I do,
thats a must have.
-eric
On Apr 9, 2017, at 9:17 AM, E.T. wrote:
The recent discussion about VPN got me interested but I was not
ready to look into it at the time.
I know the setup is done in Network prefs but where does one get
information on VPN servers etc.? Thanks.
From E.T.'s Keyboard. . .
"God for you is where you sweep away all the
mysteries of the world, all the challenges to
our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off
and say God did it." --Carl Sagan
E-mail: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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