I recently went to a website that I use to visit all the time. Years later I noticed that the website tells me / gives a warning that it doesn’t have https anymore.
Someone told me that I can use my VPN but it will only protect me / info / identify from
My device to the VPN servers, but will give me no protection from the host website back to the VPN.
But I have also heard other say that a VPN will protect me / my identity no matter what way the information is sent.
Which is correct?
If the website doesn’t use a https for protection will my VPN still protect me ?
VPN will protect you from anyone snooping between your endpoint and the VPN service. It will NOT protect you from anyone snooping between the VPN and the remote website.
Don’t enter any sensitive information on said website.
No. You are not protected and should not send sensitive data on that connection. VPN will encrypt from your machine to the VPN provider. This secures the connection from public Wifi, and while traversing your ISP. It would be clear text from the VPN provider to the site.
Someone told me that I can use my VPN but it will only protect me / info / identify from my device to the VPN servers, but will give me no protection from the host website back to the VPN.
Yes, that’s correct.
But I have also heard other say that a VPN will protect me / my identity no matter what way the information is sent.
HTTPS can prevent people from intercepting the data that is exchanged with a website, but it may still be possible to know what websites you visit, so, a lot of people choose to use a VPN anyway, especially if they use the wi-fi of a hotel, restaurant etc… where the network may have been tampered.
Eventually, your traffic will have to be forwarded from the VPN server to your ISP. And when your ISP forwards your traffic to that site, they can see what you are requesting. That is why it is better to use the tor network in this case. In this case, your traffic will still be public, but it will be randomly routed through the network, making it difficult to identify who you are.
But I have also heard other say that a VPN will protect me / my identity no matter what way the information is sent.
You need to understand what a Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider is.
Think of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). When you use a VPN provider your normal ISP just provide a “long cable” to another ISP, in this case the VPN provider.
Thinking of Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers as Internet Service Providers makes it so much easier to understand. Because both provide an Internet Service.
Yes I understand the not sending information bank accounts credit cards etc. because that information will not be protected. But will your IP address / personal information as far as my device things like that be protected?
Correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t the VPN prevent tracking / protect your identity?
Because wouldn’t the VPN basically be a firewall so to speak between your device and the VPN server. I know that if I sent information like a debit card or credit card or type something out like a love letter that that could be grabbed and seen because the HTTPS is non-existent.
But I should be protected from anybody that’s in the middle or at the website trying to find my ID or IP address because the VPN should be a firewall.
Regardless if a website has https or not your Internet traffic / searchs can still be seen. Https only helps hide / protect sent information ex) credit card, log in info, sent traffic. (Also I know that it verifies that a website is who they say they are, Also I know the HTTPS helps make sure any information is not being manipulated.)
A VPN will help hide / protect people from finding out who is requesting the info regardless if the website has https or not.
So using a VPN will protect you from people finding out where the info is being sent / who asked / IP address info because the information being requested and sent through the VPN server before It comes to your device. Therefore hiding / protecting the user identity.
So as long as you use a VPN and you do not put any information into a website like credit card, login information or filling out a form etc. you should be okay / any personal identification being grabbed because the VPN Will basically scramble / put your information through a VPN server tunnel and hide identity. But people will still be able to see the traffic and see the sites you visit and be able to monitor it they just will not be able to know who’s requesting information and where the information is being sent to because it’s going through a VPN / a different server that provides protection.
because that defeats some of the purpose of a vpn. some of us want to avoid ISP snooping and government level spying and large data correlation. in order to do this you need multiple people browsing and using the same ip.
just installing your own vpn on a vps will just change the unique ip which you expose - it won’t help prevent or stop correlation.
note that even with a VPN, browers still fingerprint and the various big players like google, meta, amazon will track you across sites.
to help thwart those you need additional things like running a tor browser, or brave browser or firefix with privacy tools browser which requests a new id on each opening (but this comes with additional frustration because of having to accept cookies, log back in etc).
I personally use kasm with the chrome extension. I can rightclick any link or site and just go to ‘open in kasm’ which spins up a docker instance of a chrome browser which you can interact with the site and then close it down. its a lot of effort though so i only do it for sketchy sites that i worry about if they have viruses.
since its a immutable docker container, if it did get infected its going to be destroyed anyway once i close it down.
Your IP address is a lot less interesting and important than you think. It’s the equivalent of your house number. Who cares as long as you don’t leave the door open or a key under the mat. If you are entering login information, credit card numbers, account info, etc, THAT is what HTTPS is protecting and it’s a helluva lot more important than your IP address.
The website won’t see your real IP, it will see the VPN IP, same as for https websites.
protected from anybody that’s in the middle
That’s the thing about unsecured (http) connections, because they’re unencrypted, anyone in the middle can theoretically intercept and modify the packets.
yes! However, the ISP that the destination web server belongs to can see your information. The current Internet has a hierarchical structure. Your request is passed to the ISP higher up in the pyramid structure, and then that ISP makes a request to the website on your behalf. So unencrypted HTTP communication is always visible to the ISP. Using the tor network, you can spoof your origin. So it is somewhat more secure.
That’s what I’m saying. When interacting with the site I’m not entering any information. No credit cards no identification like bank accounts none of that.
Basically just visiting a site that doesn’t have HTTPS but I’m using a VPN I should be okay then correct?
The VPN should prevent people from tracking/getting identification information correct?
No it sees the vpn. Nothing else.
Tor and a VPN achieve the same thing. Tor has just more layers making it more secure.
Both ISPs just see the vpn in this case. But the traffic between the vpn and the http server is unencrypted. So any information entered on the website can still be tracked by anyone that sits between the vpn and the http server.
Just browsing a http server is fine. I wouldn’t trust it with anything else.
the reason why i use a vpn for all my traffic is because i don’t believe in the massive privacy violations that are conducted by western governments, forcing ISPs to trawl all the people who use residential internet and tracking what they do
we’ve significant evidence at this point that it doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t prevent terrorist attacks, it doesn’t help do anything. we’ve even seen reports of known terrorists who committed acts, and it turned out they had all their data all along and never picked up on it, because its too much data to sift through and you cant discern intent, like that guy they were sure after tracking his data, that he was going to murder his wife because he’d done tons of searches for how to. it turned out that guy was a writer and it was part of the novel he was writing that he was researching for
i use a vpn as a method of civil disobedience for a law that i don’t agree with, and i encourage others to do the same
what using a vpn does do, is prevent that trawling of data because 200-300 or more peoples activity is combined into a single ip and its virtually impossible to reverse engineer it, assuming the VPN provider has done the normal levels of obfuscation
Tracking and identification are usually handled by the web server so the vpn will do nothing for you. All the traffic from the vpn server to the website will be in the clear
the reason why i use a vpn for all my traffic is because i don’t believe in the massive privacy violations that are conducted by western governments
No western government is interested in your traffic unless you are a real bad guy.
What you need to worry about is Big Tech, like Google, Facebook and Microsoft. If you use any of their products they will collect and store your data. It’s much easier for Big Tech to do that than it is for western governments.
You talk about “massive privacy violations” but you admit using a Chrome browser. You contradict yourself here.
I guess you also use Microsoft Windows, another contradiction.
Personally I use VPN to prevent Big Tech collecting my personal data. I don’t care if the NSA happens to know something.
The NSA is not the enemy - Big Tech is the real enemy.