this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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is surfshark's 'nexus' thing any good? do other vpn providers have a similar thing that gives you new ip for every link/webpage you click?

at the end of this video guy talks about it https://www.nsfwyoutube.com/watch?v=uSGVk2KVokQ

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Changing the IP constantly is not going to prevent tracking on modern websites. They all use other methods to identify you like browser fingerprint and other ways to fingerprint you.

I don't know why VPN providers promote themselves as like they are going to make your connection more private, everything is already encrypted (except DNS). You are just shifting the trust from your ISP to the people that run the VPN.

If you are in a country with a high rate of censorship or you just want to circumvent geo blocking, using a VPN is worth, otherwise, a VPN is just a way to change your IP address which, is not going to prevent any tracking.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I don’t know why VPN providers promote themselves as like they are going to make your connection more private, everything is already encrypted (except DNS).

It's true that most popular web sites have moved to HTTPS, but even if all of them had, not all network traffic is web traffic. Also, even if someone uses the network only for web browsing, DNS is not the only privacy-relevant data that gets exchanged outside the HTTPS connection.

You are just shifting the trust from your ISP to the people that run the VPN.

Some people have reason to distrust their ISP more than their VPN provider, so this is a valid use case.

VPN isn't really comparable to HTTPS. The former protects all traffic, and with a relatively small attack surface, but only up to the VPN edge. The latter protects all the way to the network peer (the web server), but only web traffic, and with a massive attack surface: scores of certificate authorities in countries all over the world, any of which could be compromised to nullify the protection. They address different problems.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

You're right. Thanks for clarifying my reply

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

That's not exactly true. It really depends on what you're trying to protect yourself from.

If you're running an ARR stack, The Pirate hunters out there are going to end up empty-handed at a half decent VPN in a foreign country. But if you're doing something that will draw the ire of the FBI, CIA or secret service, it's a little more than a speed bump.

Many local ISPs basically hand the keys directly to law enforcement without so much as a warrant. Most of the VPN providers will at least put up a minor fight to stay in business.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

This is a standard feature on any IPv6 enabled network if you enable IPv6 Privacy Extensions

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

https://safing.io/spn/

Here's an open source company that provides you a different circuit for each socket. So a new IP for every link....

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Great product for free. SPN is there service that does what OP wants but won't replace VPN for all your devices since it is desktop focused right now.

App for Android is possibly tho.

spn is what VPN should be IMHO

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Free? No. SPN is an add on service that cost 9.99€/mo or 99€/yr. You can host a community node but seems you can't use it directly. They say they are going to reward who host a node but it is unclear what the actual reward is.

https://wiki.safing.io/en/SPN/Nodes/Hosting

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

I know a few services that would ban a user doing that, thinking that the client is compromised.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I know it's a bit offtopic but can someone implement such a feature in custom YouTube clients? The "Sign in to confirm that you're not a bot." error is tied to the IP so changing it all the time should make the clents work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I doubt it would help. My employer uses Akamai as a CDN & security provider for our websites. Their bot analysis tools regularly flag distributed bot activity that can come from a handful or a few thousand IPs. They do a range of browser fingerprinting, TLS fingerprinting, etc. to uniquely identify traffic across ranges of IP’s. I’m sure Google/Youtube has the ability to do this as well.

Any given client would need to regularly randomize the order of headers in requests, randomly include/exclude optional headers, and also randomize TLS negotiation to try to circumvent all the fingerprinting these big corporations perform.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago

The problem with that approach is very high risk of false positives. Google may use it but now they use IP blocks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Thats not a useful feature so advertising it is pretty sus, i wouldnt trust vpn ads from youtube

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This could be useful, but the thing is, your IP address is rarely what is used to identify you on the internet, even in private browsing mode. Your particular combination of hardware and your behavior (how you interact with it) speak much more than an IP that can be used by more than 1 person.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

That's why I use several different browsers with several profiles with containers and use tor with isolated destinations with a rotating selection of DNS over https and anonymizing dnscrypt on virtual machines.

It keeps the porn recommendations fresh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Surfshark?

Yeah lets surf into the shark shall we?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceUuNLhM2kk