Q and S Vs VPN: Are they a good pair?
Q and S Vs VPN: Are they a good pair?
is it safe using OpenSSH and a VPN when you compare it to paid versions of those same services?
This is not a straight forward question. SSH in a way is a form of VPN just using different ports than say OPENVPN. How secure the are depends on what methods you use for key exchange and encryption. Last time I looked SSH supported most the same protocols used by OPENVPN. In some ways people say the open source version are more secure because you have huge numbers of people looking at the code both for good and bad reasons. In theory problems should be found quicker with more eyes looking at it. Fixes tend to also be faster because there is less bureaucracy to get changes made.
you have to figure out exactly what "secure" means for you. can someone read through your data while it travels? if so, will the company using the service keep a record of everything once they get it decrypted and then sell that info? most likely, there are two very different things going on here, but both relate to security in my view. when your internet traffic leaves the VPN server, the protection from encryption stops. instead of hiding where you came from, it just makes sure the data looks like it's coming from somewhere else. your ISP no longer sees what is happening, but the VPN company now knows all about your traffic flow. most expensive services say they never store logs, but they are lying. free services steal way more information and sell it to advertisers, so even though you don't pay them, they still make money off of it. paid services keep fewer records than free ones, but they still hold the info and profit from it whenever they can. you need to decide what you want or need first, then figure out how to get that result. there is no single magic button that just magically protects and secures your whole internet experience.
I think you mean SSL not SSH. SSH stands for SecureShell and helps you connect from your computer to computers that run like Linux or Windows using SFTP or SCP. SSL is just a way to talk securely over the internet, such as with HTTP traffic. It can make any two things connected more secure. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) creates a secret tunnel through layers of the network, almost like running thousands of miles of virtual ethernet cable between places where you normally wouldn't have direct access. Companies use this often to connect their big headquarters to remote offices and workers' home computers. Most VPN services run on OpenVPN, which is a free program that lets you make these tunnels over an SSL connection. SSL is very common and doesn't worry about how the traffic gets there or where it goes; because of that, it's great for making secure connections. I know this personally because I set up my own home VPN server that connects all my laptops whenever I travel to work. This idea is wrong. There are many legal cases where those companies were shown not to keep logs when asked by police and couldn't possibly have them. Also, some foreign governments raided these places and took their computers to try to get the logs, but they found nothing there anyway. Here is how it actually works: OpenVPN lets you pick a place to write down your logs for each server instance, so just set it to /dev/null or a temporary spot like /tmp/log, then overwrite that file every 10 to 30 kilobytes. This leaves enough evidence that the system is working without keeping too much data in memory and makes sure nothing old stays on disk. You can even design these servers to have no storage at all by using netboot to start them up and grab their settings from a cloud location.
I think that question is not clear enough. But I will explain this better by reading these lines below. SSH uses the application layer of a network, but VPN uses the transport layer. A VPN deals with the whole network itself, so it can use resources from a public network while acting like its own private network. Between SSH and VPN, VPN is the best choice for privacy and security. Thanks
The question is way too big to answer right now. Both have really good protection. What a third-party host has to do? Many of those free ones are just tricking people. vpns and ssh work for different things. A paid third-party vpn takes all your internet traffic, sends it through them, then out to the real internet. That only hides you from everyone between you and them.
VPN's are better at sending your traffic into a private network or moving it between two private networks. You can do this using an SSH tunnel, but that takes much more work than just pressing buttons. SSH is good for simple jobs like that. A VPN lets you set up security in a simpler way. But the hard parts of setting one up could leave open holes for hackers to use. Sometimes companies mix both SSH and VPN together based on what they actually need from their IT team.