On Thursday, February 27, 2014 11:00:02 John Mort wrote:
> So first I watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37nfG8m0Xz
> And experienced the requisite outrage at how ISPs mess with your connection
> and such.

Speaking of ISPs messing with your connection, I cannot /directly/ view the 
above link -- I get a YouTube page showing "This video does not exist" with a 
frown face.  However, after viewing the link /below/ on YouTube, I found the 
videos shown at the end, and the top-left video is ... the one at the /above/ 
link, I'm able to play it, and sure enough it's the same link.  Hmmmm!  :-/  
Very odd.

> Then I watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3LRfE-XiI
> And learned how a VPN can improve your connection at home and secure your
> connection in public wifi..
> 
> Now I'm considering this: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/
> 
> Up to now, I've always just run an SSH tunnel to my machine at home in
> order to be able to browse securely.  Lately though, that connection has
> been pretty crappy.

Supposedly there are 200 Gbps - 400 Gbps DDoS attacks going on with the 'net 
right now, and I think there are a number of odd things having to be done to 
try to mitigate them.  Bandwidth amplification via NTP is one of the root 
causes lately.  Whether this could be affecting your ISP and your particular 
connection... unknown.  I had some odd issues with my ISP lately where all 
connections were very slow, so I shut down NTP on the router and we called to 
discuss it, and soon after things were fast again.  They said we'd have to 
plan to reset our cable modem once a week (?!?) but didn't say why.

> I'm not sure if my machine, my router, or my ISP is to
> blame.  But between the increase in security, the potential increase in
> performance, and the fact that it would only cost $40/year to have someone
> else manage something like this for me even if I only use it when my home
> system is down for some reason, I'm tempted.
> 
> Here's my question, how do you evaluate the security of buying a VPN
> service from someone else?  My emotional reaction to using a service like
> this is that they could be snooping on all my traffic, but not using a VPN
> this risk certainly exists with my ISP snooping on all my traffic.

Regardless of VPN or not I'd be sending my mail via ESMTPSA -- that is, 
sending my mail via SMTP AUTH over TLS.  These days it's often the case that 
mail transfers can end up all being over TLS such that the transfers are all 
encrypted end-to-end.  Usually not true for mailing lists though.

> How do you determine who is less untrustworthy?  Does anyone here use
> a service like this?

I don't but I've been considering them; common recommendation but I didn't 
realize you could end up getting a bandwidth /speedup/ from using one.

  -- Chris

--
Chris Knadle
[email protected]
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