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Law enforcement vs VPN providers? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello,

reading about the topic I personally wondered about how people can use VPNs like ProtonVPN for torrenting which isn't legal in some countries, without ProtonVPN and other providers getting in trouble.

Of course they don't log and don't have data about which user is accessing what so they can't hand out data. But why don't law enforcements force them to block specific traffic and thus hindering people from using it for pricacy?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

In most jurisdictions, with a lot of hand waving, it comes down to would a reasonable and prudent person see a non-criminal use of this service?

So for VPN providers with no logging, would a reasonable and prudent person see a utility in that service? Yes. If you have a health matter. If you're a whistleblower. If you're sensitive about people knowing what porn you like. If you want to look up medical information without getting an associated with your identity. There's a lot of non-criminal uses of the VPN

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The question wasn't why VPNs are allowed but why VPNs don't just have to block all torrent traffic by law. Your answer still applies tho: torrents aren't used exclusively for piracy. They're a good way for people to share files who don't have the resources to pay for a server, especially since torrents scale automatically

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They will just hide. Lots of trackers block port 6881 because ISPs blocked port 6881 and people couldn't torrent, because it was the default torrent port.

So they just changed to random ports. Random is the default now in lots of clients.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Is the port the only way to identify torrent traffic?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

no but they used it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And how is a vpn protecting you from any of that? You know tracking by ip is not the ultimate form of tracking the con providers sell you on. There is cookies, list top 1000 sites and which ones you visited had an 80+% reliability for tracking and listing more sites increased it. And this is just the stuff we have found out about. Believing a VPN protects your privacy is stupid in this day. Sure if your worried about isp I guess but most sites are already encrypted. I guess it also prevents it being in the tracker for a torrent so if that is an issue in your country yes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

A new browser, a new container in the browser, a new profile in the browser, can do quite a lot of good for you. If you use a privacy respecting browser like mullvad The fingerprint signature is become much harder to track. This is demonstrated by going to fingerprint.com when using a VPN and the mullvad browser.