VPN True Or Fake Secure Connection ?

[Matador]

The outfit who runs a VPN can see "all" your traffic. With the rise of encryption for email and now web surfing, they can't easily see inside your packets, but they know the servers you connect to.

Just to be clear: this is true of all systems that perform routing functions for IP networks.  Any computer routing in our backbone infrastructure can 'see' all traffic (with 'see' being defined as identifying source and destination addresses).

 

[Bo Deadly]

Just to be clear: this is true of all systems that perform routing functions for IP networks.  Any computer routing in our backbone infrastructure can 'see' all traffic (with 'see' being defined as identifying source and destination addresses).

It would also be particularly diabolical if the company you're paying specifically to mask your identity is doing precisely the opposite. But these days, with all the scamming and chiseling going on, I guess I wouldn't be shocked.

 

[cyrano]

Seems quite a few of the "trusted" commercial VPN providers were a bit sloppy:

https://twitter.com/hexdefined/status/1185864801261477891

Private keys leaked...

These keys have expired by now, but could still be used to decrypt recorded sessions from the past. And, of course, there's no reason to suppose the leak has stopped.

 

[cyrano]

Not related, but another one of my pet peeves came in...

Teamviewer has been exploited, allowing access to a huge range of devices, including some US voting machines:

https://twitter.com/cglyer/status/1182413194360508419

Pretty big, as APT41 is presumed to be Chinese...

https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2019/08/apt41-dual-espionage-and-cyber-crime-operation.html

 

[cyrano]

Israeli malware/adware outfit buys VPN provider:

https://telegra.ph/Private-Internet-Access-VPN-acquired-by-malware-business-founded-by-former-Israeli-spies-12-01

One of the founders was listed in the Panama papers...

 

[Tubetec]

Im kinda wondering how relevant all this is when  mobile phone apps ,which people agree to,  is the primary means of collecting our data. 

the concept of data aggregation though as mentioned brings a whole new meaning to targeted marketing . The likes of Sky television have been quietly harvesting customers data for years , now you can even authorise it to use the mic ,for voice commands ,but also to market to you more effectively , its like gold mining , no wonder they even give you a free TV when you sign up .

 

[WillyWonka]

Thanks for the discussion. It turns out I’m not the only one who doesn’t trust modern VPN services. They look secure because they are made to look secure, but I think there’s a way for the government to know how to decipher the information. I don’t think they do it for everyone since most people’s data is not attractive/relevant for them at all, but they sure can do it when they need it.
That’s why I try to be as careful online as possible and use various security services like VPNs or cool foreign proxies from (edited). I still think that some foreign services are less controlled by the CIA.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I see lots of new member requests every day. Our forum software keeps a data base of known malicious email addresses and IPs. I also double check new member IPs with website IP checker black list checker.

I will almost daily find a new member whose IP indicates clean using the forum data base , but indicates malicious activity using the blacklist checker. Pretty much zero of these mixed good/bad accounts turn out to be malicious actors. I suspect these people are dealing with shared IP addresses where other users cause the IP address to get flagged. I also cross check where they say they are from, with where their IP address is actually located

I don't recall seeing any spammers using VPN addresses that get flagged for malicious activity.

JR

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[pucho812]

There is no such thing as a purely 100% secure connection. About the only way to do that is not be connected.
While things like vpn’s can help secure things it’s never 100%. The big thing here is if they want to find you they will find you regardless of vpn or whatever you feel you are doing to be cyber safe.

 

[JohnRoberts]

update... I spam cleaned my first vpn account today... these must be getting cheap enough for spammers to use.

JR

 

[boji]

Cyrano mentioned NAT transversal... Aside: I've been playing with ZeroTier lately. Easy tunneling setup. It has a knack for bypassing firewalls using 'UDP hole punching', which I don't yet fully understand. At any rate, I'll be trying to nest a few instances on some VM's to see if traffic can be scripted to dynamically switch between routes.

 

[cyrano]

You can't even trust tor.

One of the VPN providers you might want to look into, is Proton.

https://protonvpn.com/
Haven't been able to find faults in their promises yet. They also offer a usable set of VPN servers for free, so you can test.

There are free VPNs out there you can trust. Usually not advertised, as they are funded by educational entities. The university of Tokyo comes to mind. Haven't used that one lately, but it used to be good. Keep in mind that these are slow* and might disappear any day because of the bandwidth cost.

* as in "impossible to use for streaming video".