Can anyone help me find safe VPN security options for my computer?
Can anyone help me find safe VPN security options for my computer?
I am curious as to if the "security" provided by a VPN paid service only in terms of hiding the IP addresses you visit from your ISP is granted due to multiple people using the same server. For example, if I use VPN (Whatever) running out of a US server, and both my device and the server use the same ISP; I'd then imagine tracking the host connecting to ip:whatever and that server connecting to ip:whatever would make tracking fairly easy. However, I'd guess this ease is lost due to possibly thousands of people being connected to said server so traffic can't be as easily correlated. If this is true, and your goal in using a VPN is to hide the sites you visit from your ISP, is there any option other than using paid VPN services? If I wanted to set up my own VPN running out of a paid online computer hosting service, and the ISPs are the same or different and happen to communicate with each other, I feel it would then not be a viable option. I also am aware some of these services are not US based, but I don't feel there is a legitimate way of knowing whether the two ISPs would share data with each other if requested. I am also aware that HTTPS protocol includes encrypting the actual data in-between you and the site, I am again simply referring to removing an ISPs ability to see which IPs you are interacting with.
your ISP just knows about traffic coming in and out of their building. They don't try to follow the path back further than where you need to go. So with a VPN, whether it costs money or you set one up yourself, your ISP would only see traffic coming from the IP address of the VPN server and nothing else. A VPN is all encrypted, so they have no idea what the data actually is, just that it came from a specific spot on the internet. They don't even need to know why you are doing anything special. Now if you're breaking the law, then the VPN service can be reached by police and they will connect your traffic for sure. This happens every single day. Many VPNs say in their description that they have "no logs" which means they keep no history of what you browse and won't give it to the police. But that's not true at all, and there are many cases where even with little data, they can still tell who did what. None of that matters if your only goal is to stop your local ISP from seeing what websites you visit. Just remember that encryption hides what's inside but doesn't hide the address on the outside. That has to be the way because if you mailed a letter without an address, it could never get anywhere. The same goes for internet traffic; you need an address so routers know where to send it. I have my own VPN server on a cloud service like you did. It's easy and I am not keeping any logs. Trouble is, when I turn the VPN on to use it, the cloud service has to give me a public IP address. They keep records of who had what address at what time. So if police asked them who had some specific IP back on Saturday at 5 pm, they'd know it was you since that account had that IP assigned then. I don't understand what your worry is and/or what you are trying to hide from your ISP, but it's not hard to do. In the end, you just move where your browsing history goes from your ISP to the VPN provider. One more thing, you should change your DNS from your ISP one to a public one like 1.1.1.1 or another encrypted server. Your ISP uses those records too to know what you are doing, so swapping it away takes that data with them too.
It's not really about trying to hide info from my ISP because I don't care and don't need a VPN anyway. I'm just curious. I also know that an ISP usually won't try to track traffic, so at the surface level, they probably can't see anything but you sending encrypted data between yourself and the server. But I am interested in computer security and whether it is possible for them to actually do that. From my previous point, if they really wanted to, I wonder if there are any solutions besides using a widely used VPN company (assuming no logging). This would be if for some reason they decided to track what you interact with for 'x' reasons. In relation to your VPN service, assuming the cloud service didn't keep logs of who accessed the public IP assigned for you, I still wonder if both you and the service could share the same ISP and easily lead to your activity being tracked despite using a no-logging tool. I don't like any ISP companies personally and am trying to learn more while getting a CompTIA certification. A question that came up was regarding DNS; I currently use Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 service hoping it might be slightly faster and perhaps a bit more secure, but again, I have no concern with my ISP accessing what sites I visit since I don't need location masking from a VPN and the only benefit of using one is that utility. It seems to me that because NICs send information with packets always including the host IP and recipient IP, true security in this sense would only come from multiple users sharing the same server. This still poses possible risks as in the possibility of tracking through packet sizes or times things were accessed, but it seems like the only way to get close to avoiding ISP tracking is that option. All of this falls within the scope of leaving things out like using TAILS on a random computer just to gain as much anonymity as possible since that is too intensive for my question and not always practical.
If you are super paranoid or someone doing illegal things, a government agency might look for you using something like Tor networks with many layers of encryption. Generally speaking, an ISP (internet service provider) doesn't care what you're doing as long as they have a lawyer or some law enforcement officials involved. Some ISPs do monitor traffic just to find out about ads, but if you use a VPN, they won't see it anyway and won't try to figure out which traffic comes from the VPN matches the traffic going in. It's even less likely when there are more than one ISP involved. Now if you live somewhere like China or several places in the Middle East, then the government will probably want ISPs to keep track of your data. Even though some countries can only block access to a specific VPN provider that is located elsewhere, most VPN providers have moved their servers out of India when they changed their laws and now require tracking. But that was only for computers sitting inside Indian borders. Many VPN host computers are actually in places where it's much harder for governments to force them to comply with rules. It is very easy to stop people from getting access to data if the government doesn't log anything, because there is no way they can make ISPs log the stuff if they don't want to do so.
your internet service provider can see exactly where packets go, so they know which websites you visit. But using a VPN makes the real destination hidden. So yes, even though they can log the server IP as the place you used, they cannot see where the actual data goes. It is easy to hide this from your ISP because the true destination is encrypted by the VPN and only becomes visible after it reaches the VPN server to continue its journey. Your ISP has no way to follow traffic once it arrives at what it thinks is the final stop; that just isn't how things work here. That's why when someone starts studying habits, they have to guess backwards from the site visited all the way back to the user, which would eventually lead them straight to the VPN server. If those servers kept no records of who used what and when, they would run into a dead end and learn nothing new. But even timestamps can help figure out who was using it at what time, so even with a truly secret network, some info will leak out. There is no way around that truth. When you get a public IP from the cloud, only you are using it at any given moment; nobody else has access until you finish using it. The cloud service can easily track who and when because they don't share the address with others. One person gets it all by themselves. They may not keep detailed logs to save them trouble, but based on what I've seen, there are still tiny ways to guess who was active at what time. It's rarely mentioned much, yet here and there you find reports of people being tracked down even after taking precautions. Even something like TOR can get broken (you remember the Silk Road?) when lots of people and websites get shut down and folks end up in jail for bad reasons. Basically, some information needs to stay visible so traffic flows from point A to point B. This small detail is very useful if you really know what you're doing, but to most people, it's not hard to remain hidden. It just takes one smart person who knows how the system works to find you if they really want to. Certs are great for getting started and can help you get your first job. I recommend starting with Net+ since that is the foundation of networking and traffic flow. Once those basics are learned, then security certs like Security+ or others become useful. But each one depends on a strong understanding of how networking works in general; headers, routing, and those fundamentals are what we manipulate for both security and other purposes. Start by getting a clear grasp on the subject here and the rest of the Net+ topics. CCNA is also a good cert to look at since it involves local networks with routers and switches. I found it easy after practicing enough times and passed the test without studying extra stuff beyond what we did in class, though some people now use scripts which changes things a little but the core ideas stay the same. Did that one work?
I'm thinking in terms of say the ISP would clearly have access to <ip1> talking to <ip2> (The VPN server). I understand the communications between these two IPs, headers, final destination, etc are encrypted and unviewable. However, let's say <ip2> accesses the internet through the same ISP. They could see at lets say 10am <ip1> requested encrypted data from <ip2>, then immediately after, <ip2> accessed "whatever website". If I was the only IP accessing that server, tracking in my mind would be very easy as somewhere downstream in the process, the any ISP has to provide the information for the site being accessed to someone. This is why I assume the only level of prevention in this relies on many IPs speaking to <ip2> at a given time. So, my main thought was if there are methods that exist in which you could host your own vpn, while preventing this possible tracking. This would then however allow, assuming the ISP has access and ability to see the traffic on both ends, them to easily correlate <ip1> accessing <ip2>, then <ip2> accessing 'website'. As a side note, this started from my interest in how with the basically infinite combinations provided by IPv6, the ISP is given a list of headers and assigns one to you. While I completely understand the necessity of this as to have a truly distinct public address, I have always disliked the necessity of ISPs and the power which they hold, all though majorly unused. While this is of course the foundation of the Internet working as a whole, I wish there were relatively 'foolproof' solutions that didn't involve nuclear options like TAILS and expert OPSEC. Privacy I feel is majorly important and these I suppose necessary gaps in it I find bothersome, although pointless in relation to my specific question as there doesn't seem to be other options. I want to add that I understand this is a very basic level of tracking and relatively pointless in the grand scheme of tracking methods such as those used by ad companies, it's just something I was thinking about and don't really have anyone to BS with about topics like this lol. -had to make many edits, I don't know how this post got so messed up.
oh ok i see what you are saying now. i guess if both you and the vpn server were under the same isp provider, they could put 2 and 2 together to get the bigger picture if they wanted to. never really thought about it like that. it is an interesting thought experiment if nothing else. not sure how you'd go about preventing it from happening other than adding a second layer on top of the vpn. you know like you hear on tv "he's behind 7 proxies!!" lol i assume if you chose a server out of the country it is unlikely you'd run into this specific scenario since i don't believe isp's are international i use European servers from the cloud service for my vpn when i fire it up, though i could use many other places if i wanted to. my dad wanted a vpn so i got him a paid one and i piggy back off of it as well. so i use both worlds at times. never tried running the paid one to my private one as a second layer. would be easy to do but i don't really need it. could be fun though just to say i did it once.
Yeah, I didn't really think about how to do that at first; it was just an idea on my mind. Finally, depending on how tough the tests were and assuming all internet companies would agree to share information with each other, anything could probably be traced back eventually by following that trail. I wish there was a way to get a public IP address without relying entirely on one company managing some of it. You can't trust people to never use someone else's address, but a system might let you pick an IP and then check if it's already taken—that would be cool. This isn't possible with IPv4, and I feel like I won't see the full implementation of IPv6 coming up, but I think some system like that could work with IPv6. Right now, I'm mostly done finishing my CompTIA book by Mike Meyers so I can pass those 1001 and 1002 exams. My boss pays me well here, but it's far away from what I love, since I enjoy all things technical. I hope to become a Security Architect after many years of hard work and learning these different fields. Ideally, I could find a job in something that matches my interests once I start getting those certs.
That company figures out who installs and keeps the wires working, plus all kinds of other stuff.
Yeah, I like to imagine a world where IP addresses are given out by a public forum instead of an internet committee. Maybe something like Bitcoin's ledger rather than some big group controlling the stuff. With all those possible combinations from IPv6, it seems doable though really unlikely. There isn't even a reason for ISPs to keep that database up properly. Internet Service Providers could still just keep their wires running and make money without handing out addresses; that way they don't get any benefit from it. After all, these are computers and not physical locations like houses or offices. I think more user-friendly and privacy-focused methods would be great for everyone. If I think enough about this now, I guess a public list of every active IP address might cause some security worries too lol. It's just wishful thinking to create a system that limits ISP power without taking them out completely; someone still has to keep the connections going.