[Novalug] OT VPN Services - Needed?

Chuck Frain linux@chuckfrain.net
Tue Aug 20 14:06:23 EDT 2013


Disclaimer: I consider all networks beyond my router hostile. For the
purposes of this discussion, my ISP is trusted compared to others.

Do you really need the VPN service? I would say yes if your travel
involves hotel stays. There's simply no way to trust the hotel network
as you don't know who is staying in the room next to your or the other
XX number of rooms in the place, the staff, or who may have left a
sniffer in a closet somewhere at some prior point in time. Not to
mention what the hotel as a corporate entity providing the access might
want to do with data is sees coming from/to you. 

Assuming you trust the VPN provider, you can bypass the local untrusted
network and conduct your internet browsing, mail, etc from their
network. 

My regular VPN use is a ssh tunnel with port forwarding to my home
network. I connect to a box with a squid proxy and filter all my
internet access through that. I use DynDNS for my dynamic IP address and
fwknop for cloaking my open ports at home.

I pay for a commercial VPN service for some places that I cannot ssh
from to my home. At $40 a year, its nice to have the backup to get out
from the hotel networks. 

On Mon, 19 Aug 2013, Roger W. Broseus wrote:

> I'm wondering if I really need the VPN service that I pay for. My thinking had 
> been to protect myself, particularly when traveling. However, I set my primary 
> DNS server to Google's public DNS and use https for accessing things like 
> banking. Email is accessed with Thunderbird using SSL/TLS. I don't travel to 
> places like China.

-- 
Chuck Frain 
GPG Key: B2420431
http://www.chuckfrain.net



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