this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Most VPNs sell themselves on encrypting your traffic to an endpoint that either is in a different locale to get around region locks or to put it out of the grasp of the RIAA so they can’t send your ISP copyright notices.

While remote access to a local network is a good use case for a self-hosted VPN it’s totally unrelated to the use case for commercial VPNs

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

For the use case of encrypting your traffic while using a public WiFi, both commercial VPNs and self-hosted ones provide the same functionality.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think the point they're getting at Is that you can't use a self-hosted vpn to hide your piracy activity because the link is registered to yourself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but this thread is about security while using public Wi-Fi, which the original comment was saying doesn't require commercial VPNs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

And I highly doubt people are pirating while on public wi-fi, the bandwidth just isn't good enough, and even if it was, it would be a dick move to other public wi-fi users.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes that’s true. But also that’s the wink and nudge marketing claim that VPN marketers make while everyone knows the real reason you are using a VPN.

With HTTPS, DNS-over-HTTPS, and most endpoint firewalls dropping non-gateway traffic, the risk is a lot less than the VPN ad reads want you to believe

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

DNS-over-HTTPS sounds like it'll be the least used by general public since most people I know are still using default DNS settings which would point towards their ISP's. I'm not sure how many ISPs have moved towards DNS-over-HTTPS or if they are even activated by default.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Firefox has DoT enabled by default, maybe Chrome does the same. That would cover the use-case of most people on public wifi.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wait, it's set in the browser? I've always thought you set that at the OS level.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Both, the browsers (and any other application) can choose to ignore your DNS settings and use whatever other mechanisms they like.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Cool, didn't know that. I'll try and find the setting in the browser.