Russ Harvey Consulting - Computer and Internet Services

VPNs

Virtual Private Networks

What Are VPNs? | Why Use a VPN? | Choosing a VPN | Recommended VPNs | VPN Privacy | VPN Reviews

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A person holding a credit card in front of a laptop with the screen displaying a “VPN” splash screen.

What is a VPN?

In everyday use, your ISP will have access to information about where you're surfing but not details about which pages you're viewing.

A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, hides your browsing habits from your ISP as well as your location (your real IP address).

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Why Use a VPN?

The need for a VPN depends upon what you use it for. Not everything VPNs advertise are either provided or necessary.

Three legitimate reasons to use a VPN are:

  1. to combat censorship;
  2. location spoofing; or
  3. to encrypt data.

Most browsers now encrypt data securely (if you're using HTTPS), but there can be circumstances where you'd like to increase that security.

In an era of increased surveillance, VPNs have become an essential tool to safeguard our online activity from prying eyes.
— OpenMedia

For most users this will mean securing your access over the Internet using a private VPN service so that your communications are encrypted such as while using public WiFi.

When you're away from your home or office (e.g., in a hotel or at a coffeeshop) you no longer have control over the security of the network connection.

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Choosing a VPN Service

Be careful in how you choose a VPN.

For consumers, often the recommendation is to use a VPN to better protect yourself from the prying eyes of your ISP.

 

But a word of warning: Not all VPNs are created equally and many of them — especially the free ones — will track you just as much as (or more than) your ISP.

 

In addition, I know that many VPNs assign you an IP address previously used in attacks by other attackers. You therefore inherit the reputation of the previous users of that IP address.

 

So be careful when using VPNs. They are not a panacea.
Susan Bradley

The trade-off of Internet speed for improved security is an individual choice.

While many VPNs claim to offer top security and blazing-fast speeds at a cheap price, the truth is that most brands are neither secure nor fast enough for most internet activities.
Safety Detectives

“Free” VPNs Not Recommended

There's no such thing as a free VPN.

Maintaining a worldwide VPN costs money…. There's hardware to maintain, communication links to keep up, the salaries for the tech staffers who make it all run, and more.

 

If you're considering a VPN, which one is right for you? That depends on which quality you value most: the tightest security, the fastest throughput speed, or the lowest monthly cost.
Brian Livingston

Free VPNs have to be obtaining revenue from somewhere. Your online activities are the easiest to market.

Free VPNs are either selling your browsing data in aggregated form to researchers and marketers, or giving you a paltry amount of data transfer every month.
PCWorld

VPNs Containing 911 S5 Back Doors

The FBI has taken down a botnet that was established by providing a “free” VPN service to users. This gave the folks running these services unlimited access to millions of computers that were used for illegal activities including:

  • Stealing $5.9 billion from unemployment insurance programs in the US. Hackers filed 560,000 bogus claims, using the IP addresses of PCs that were running the malware.
  • Filing 47,000 fraudulent applications to the US Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. This COVID-19 relief effort distributed payments of up to $2 million to more than 10 million small businesses. The total outlay exceeded $1 trillion. A sample of just 155 verified frauds cost the program $188 million, a US Government Accountability Office report says.
  • Placing 2,500 bogus orders totaling $5.5 million through ShopMyExchange, an ecommerce platform run by the US Army & Air Force Exchange Service. The hackers weren't quite as clever in this heist — fraud-detection systems reduced the attempted credit-card thefts to a loss of “only” $250,000.
  • US Department of Justice

Dealing with criminals in foreign countries is difficult, especially in China where this operation was sourced. There can be additional fallout including personal liability for the crimes perpetrated using your computer.

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While there is no such thing as a perfect VPN service, these options provide solutions I feel provide both privacy and security.

Mozilla VPN Recommended

Mozilla VPN is from folks that place a priority on privacy.

The Mozilla VPN runs on a global network of servers powered by Mullvad using the WireGuard® protocol. Mullvad puts your privacy first and does not keep logs of any kind.

Cloudflare WARP

The Cloudflare WARP client allows individuals and organizations to have a faster, more secure, and more private experience online.

The service has several modes, to better suit different connection needs.

To learn more about WARP and the several modes, refer to WARP modes.

Fastest DNS Resolver

Cloudflare WARP replaces the connection between your device and the Internet with a modern, optimized, protocol.

WARP is built on the same network that has made 1.1.1.1 the fastest DNS resolver on Earth.

Encrypting Traffic

The WARP application uses BoringTun to encrypt all the traffic from your device and send it directly to Cloudflare's edge, ensuring that no one in between is snooping on what you're doing.

 

If the site you are visiting is already a Cloudflare customer, the content is immediately sent down to your device.
Cloudflare Blog

“Not a VPN”

WARP has been described as freemium VPN service but there are some important differences from a VPN service:

WARP does not provide anonymity and is not designed to prevent servers you communicate with from identifying you.

 

WARP also does not allow you to pretend to be accessing the Internet from a different country than the one you are currently in.
Cloudflare

Known Issues

A service that relies on your location for security or other purposes may require you to disable WARP.

Applications or sites that rely on location information to enforce content licensing agreements (for example, certain games, video streaming, music streaming, or radio streaming) may not function properly.
Cloudflare FAQ

There can be problems with seeing recently refreshed website content, likely due to caching.

Obtaining The Warp Client

WARP client is available for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS and Windows.

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VPN Privacy

Even if your VPN doesn't track your activities, they don't prevent the sites you visit from tracking you.

Using a VPN is a safer way to browse on an unsecure network, such as a public Starbucks wi-fi; however, it does not stop trackers from gathering browsing information on you.
— Ghostery

Once collected, records of your online activity can then be sold or subject to a court order.

VPNs Not Truly Private

Are VPNs truly private? Unfortunately, no.

 

The VPN provider can still log your browsing data. You are essentially putting your trust in your VPN provider.

 

Will your provider hand over info when pressed? Will they log your browser data and sell it at a later date?
Mozilla

There is a low threshold for such warrants.

Privacy Extensions Enhance VPNs

You can enhance the privacy provided by your VPN by choosing a browser that protects your privacy then adding privacy extensions.

Ghostery prevents trackers in your browser and non-private search engines from passing personal data to companies profiling you.

 

VPNs hide your IP address, cloak your location, and can bypass geographical restrictions on websites and media platforms.
Ghostery

Ghostery is my personal choice but Privacy Badger provides decent “hands-off” protection.

VPN Reviews

Perhaps these review sites can help but be aware of potential conflicts of interest:

Conflicts of Interest

The trustworthiness of many reviews is skewed by conflicts of interest.

[T]he biggest VPN review sites are owned by a VPN conglomerate. You need to do some very serious investigation and testing on your own, if you want to be truly safe.
ZDNET

A good review doesn't guarantee a great experience for you. It can be hard to detect when your privacy is violated.

Beware: Many highly recommended “best VPNs” don't live up to their privacy claims.
Privacy.net

ExpressVPN Warning

Edward Snowden urged users to drop ExpressVPN (often highly rated).

The company has recently made some unfortunate choices including hiring Daniel Gericke:

Daniel Gericke, assisted the United Arab Emirates pull off a cyberspying campaign that targeted people across the globe.
PCMag

Kape Technologies, a company that produced adware in the past, has announced plans to acquire ExpressVPN. This company already owns Private Internet Access and other VPNs.

ExpressVPN's blog offers a different perspective as does ZDNET:

If you're currently using ExpressVPN for general-purpose safe computing (like checking your mail at the local coffee shop) and you like it, I wouldn't say you should give it up.

 

If you're relying on any of the Kape brands for a life and death situation, I'd say it's probably not worth the risk.
ZDNET

Mozilla VPN would make a much better choice given their historical stand on privacy protection.

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Updated: October 29, 2024