cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/35967051

Most people turn to a VPN for one reason: privacy. And with its verified badge, featured placement, and 100k+ installs, FreeVPN.One looked like a safe choice. But once it’s in your browser, it’s not working to keep you safe, it’s continuously watching you.

  • RedPandaRaider@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    Never use VPN add-ons for your browser. Unless you get them along with your paid VPN. You should run your entire network through the VPN, not just a browser.

    • pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 day ago

      I use my paid vpn extension (Nord) to select a Country for twitch.tv which isn’t served ads. However I would all my traffic go through that specific vpn as it causes trouble with other appe/pages. So being able to cnveniently switch my IP per domain is pretty nice sometimes.

      • RedPandaRaider@feddit.org
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        47 minutes ago

        It is a paid VPN luckily though. The issue is with “free” VPN browser add-ons.

        There’s also different adblocker rules and extensions for twitch ads.

        • pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 hours ago

          Well that is actually quite dynamic as sometimes advertisers suddenly choose to place an ad in somen fringe country like czech rep. or Georgia. Mostly those small eastern EU countries are not attractive enough for advertisers. For some reason I also never get ads with Luxembourg IP, even though they are one of the richest countries in the world. Probably too small of a traget audience.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Do you not run into issues doing this? I’m constantly having to split my VPN or disable my VPN for certain logins to work, such as banks, government sites and shit.

      • RedPandaRaider@feddit.org
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        1 day ago

        For some games and websites I have to turn it off yeah. Or at least switch the server to one that isn’t blocked.

        It’s a shame that websites are allowed to track and block VPNs.

      • Wildly_Utilize@infosec.pub
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        1 day ago

        Seperate browser for Clearnet /KYC

        For example “mullvad-exclude trivalent”

        I actually go further and have seperate VMs with different networks (VPN1, VPN2, whonix, i2p, or clearnet

        That way split tunneling feature Is not needed and I can have 2 mullvad clients on lockdownmode connected at once

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          What’s lockdown mode. I use PIA because it was cheap about 5 years ago and never had any issues so I havent shopped around. I don’t have a dedicated IP which I would have liked, they offer them but I haven’t convinced myself I need it yet. I figure if anyone else (not family) needs to access a site that points to my IP I’ll do it then.

          Maybe I haven’t been understanding/using caddy and such properly, but how do you really get multiple servers running without 80/443 not having overlap. Like right now I have 53 for my Pihole internally, 8096 Jellyfin, 3923 for a file server, can’t remember what my RustDesk server is on, but I wanted to set up a Piefed instance, and obviously I’m running into issues with ports overlapping because I must not be understanding how to forward / reverse proxy them properly.

          Do you set up caddy on your individual VM’s and use a separate IP for each. Can I just tie a URL from NOIP to a specific port outside of 80/443 somehow?

      • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        Most people don’t need to run everything though a VPN. That just slows everything down. You would normally only use them to access resources on a private LAN such as when working from home or accessing your self hosted services when away from home.

        • exu@feditown.com
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          1 day ago

          That’s a completely different VPN than what the rest the comments are talking about

    • artyom@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Unfortunately that means disabling my entire network VPN anytime I need to bypass a VPN block. And also makes switching between different servers significantly more complicated.