VPN and security advices

[Anonymous 0]

Hello gentlemen,

My question, described below, inspired by this good thread:

Secure your cell phone

whereas I communicated with Yumbo, who gave me valuable advice to ask IMikey503 for his insights on cyber security theme.

Following that advice, I would like to know your insights onto how choose reliable, robust, cheap and secure VPN software.

For now I’m using free VPN (protonVPN with protonmail) as temporary remedy. (Of course nothing valuable neither is transferred via it nor stored in it).

Also I would add that in little more distant future I’ll take some more advanced encryption and security measures, which will be applied to all my devices.

Any of your advices onto how gain back and ensure oneself privacy in today’s world would be much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance. RD

[MoreSkyParticipant 4865]

Russian dweller, I use the paid version of protonVPN and Protonmail and have had no problems with it at all, and I believe the encryption level and security is fine.

Has several ways of configuring the connections to the servers including direct to a country server; to a country server via one of the secure countries (e.g. Switzerland and Iceland) and can also use the TOR network (with both options I think).

My max speed typically reduce by 10-15% when using the VPN which is entirely manageable as I very rarely use all available bandwidth anyway.

Also use the same on my phone.

"...reinvent your life because you must; it is your life and its history and the present belong only to you.” It is Your Life, Charles Bukowski.

[Silver FoxParticipant 2766]

Be aware that while VPNs are good for secure/private connections when dealing with the general public, VPN companies will surrender your data to law enforcement if they get a subpoena. There have been many, many cases where VPN companies claimed to not store logs, but in fact they did and it led to the arrest of customers who thought they were immune to law enforcement scrutiny.

Moral of the story: don’t think for an instant that VPNs are a good shield for any illegal activity. But for everything else, VPNs are a good idea.

"Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife." --Apostle Paul

[MoreSkyParticipant 4865]

Silver Fox wrote:

Be aware that while VPNs are good for secure/private connections when dealing with the general public, VPN companies will surrender your data to law enforcement if they get a subpoena. There have been many, many cases where VPN companies claimed to not store logs, but in fact they did and it led to the arrest of customers who thought they were immune to law enforcement scrutiny.

Moral of the story: don’t think for an instant that VPNs are a good shield for any illegal activity. But for everything else, VPNs are a good idea.

That’s the point of the protonVPN secure countries – they will tell any government agencies to f~~~ off. Similar to Swiss bank accounts.

"...reinvent your life because you must; it is your life and its history and the present belong only to you.” It is Your Life, Charles Bukowski.

[reg22Participant 116]

If you want real protection, you must study how internet works and its weaknessess…
the best option to avoid customer’s data disclosure is… don’t be a customer.
You can get ‘shared’ internet from someone (neighbours?), you can use open wifi, always take care to randomize your mac address to avoid any log.
VPN has no security, it’s like a transparent proxy. If you want a bit more security, you can use a temporary system like tails and use everything with TOR or I2P.

[Silver FoxParticipant 2766]

MoreSky wrote:

That’s the point of the protonVPN secure countries – they will tell any government agencies to f~~~ off. Similar to Swiss bank accounts.

I understand that, in theory, but I don’t trust it. Other VPNs have made similar claims and promises only to have been disgraced once someone gets arrested and it turns out that the company did keep logs.

Also, international Law Enforcement has a long arm and many ways of getting what they want. Even Swiss banks aren’t what they used to be.

There are even cases where law enforcement made a subpoena that forced a VPN company to start keeping logs until LE got what they wanted.

In short… some wisdom I learned a long time ago: Nobody is willing to go to jail for you. A VPN company will not risk getting shut down or face police charges simply to protect one of their customers. At the end of the day, their promises go up like smoke under pressure from LE.

Still, I’m not saying VPNs are useless, only that you can’t put all your trust in them. Be extremely careful about doxing yourself or leaving footprints behind to your other email accounts, social media pages, etc. Many, many people have been arrested because they accidentally forgot to log out of their VPN before checking Facebook (for example).

Also, use other privacy methods. Tor + VPN is NOT ENOUGH.

If you’re truly afraid of a “big player” tracking you down, then you’ll need a “burner” laptop, TAILS (or the like), disposable drives, encryption, and long-range wifi boosters to get internet at Starbucks when you are actually in the parking lot across the street.

"Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife." --Apostle Paul

[DarkRyuParticipant 2354]

Theoretically if I were to do something illegal online, I would go onto public WiFi while in my car in a parking lot. Then I would go through a combination of TOR and use a VPN that doesn’t store logs. I would also do all of this from a bootable Linux distro ON A CD so that once I turned the computer off, no logs of my activities could be found even if the computer was confiscated.

I’ve never done anything illegal as I’m from the US where the only stuff that’s illegal really should be illegal, but if I were to do something illegal, this is how I’d do it. People get caught because they don’t take the proper precautions. No one is invincible and even doing this there’s a chance you could be caught. It would just be a LOT of work to catch you and get enough evidence against you for a conviction, so unless you’re a terrorist or something, the government will likely go after easier targets (i.e. the idiots that didn’t take these precautions).

[KevinStylesParticipant 2580]

Ok here’s the thing, VPNs help but don’t shield you completely. What a VPN does, is it sends your network traffic out a different endpoint than your ISP and it encrypts it so your ISP can’t see the actual network traffic, just that all your traffic is going to a 3rd party (VPN provider).

Your VPN provider needs to be one that doesn’t log. Private Internet Access or IPVanish are two such ones. HideMyAss however is not they keep 3 months of logs tieing your inbound IP address to the external one they give you to which can trace all your traffic back to you.

So let’s assume you’re using a good VPN provider. You’re STILL not protected. Why? Because of accounts on websites. You still use facebook? You’re still f~~~ed even with a VPN. Do you use those services to log into websites with your twitter or facebook account? Well you just tied your accounts together you’re creating a web of tied together information that can be tracked. And if one of those threads go back to a store website like say amazon that has your real information, you’re 100% found out if someone is looking.

Also you heard of web cookies? Well those work no matter if you’re using a VPN or not using a VPN. It all happens on your system, your web browser still is sending these companies information irregardless of VPN .

How do you protect yourself?
1. VPN YES! but that’s not total protection
2. Use gmail to create bogus accounts you use to sign up / log into websites with, have multiples and use multiple free email sites as well so google doesn’t have all of it
2b. Better yet, host your own email on a server/device in your home, don’t give up control of your information to some ‘cloud’ company that uses ‘bots’ to analyse your email and sell your data to advertisers.
3. Dig through all your security settings in your browser, kill cookie tracking install plug-ins that always try and https instead of http (encrypted vs non) like httpseverywhere for example
4. Get yourself a good security suite, such as BitDefender. IT’s not just about protecting yourself from virus infections anymore, you want to protect your privacy as well
5. If you use cloud storage for stuff, rather than just write files to it directly which can be access by the company and law enforcement, get youself a good encryption disk program that makes a virtual hard drive file in which everything is written encrypted. IT’s a little less convenient but a whole lot more secure.
5b. Host your own files using an in-home network attached storage device and don’t give control of that stuff to a cloud company in the first place
6. NEVER link accounts by using an account on site A to log into site B. Never never never!
7. Get the f~~~ off Facebook and facebook subsidiaries like Instagram, Oculus etc.
8. Get a good Password management program such as LogMeOnce, both Lastpass and Dashlane have been compromised in the past so I don’t personally use them. LogMeOnce encrypts all data and has 2factor Authentication to boot.
9. Use 2 factor authentication to everything that lets you do it, this involves a standard password but then also a code that is sent to your cellphone, or a 2fa app like google authenticator that must be entered.
10. When browsing if you logged into something, log out of it before going elsewhere, and close/reopen your browser before continuing to browse. This will ensure the site you were logged into can’t associate data being tracked in your browser as you continue to use the internet to your specific account to you.

I thnk that’s a good start, thats’ what I can think of at the moment. But that’s just for PC stuff.

Your cellphone is a major Privacy violation you carry around with you
1. Turn off geo tracking
2. Don’t install s~~~ on your phone, all programs you install have a risk of become data miners the fewer things you have installed the better. The biggest offenders of this are social media apps by far but also free games and free apps. You are trading your personal data for not paying for the program, your data is the currency.
3. Any social program (texting, emailing etc) you use, see if there’s a secure/encrypted version of it an donly converse with people using those secured apps.
4. Uninstall anything and everything unnecesary
5. Don’t ‘cloud backup’ your data, figure out how to back that stuff up yourself on your own computer/flash drive. Cloud backups backup up such things as your wifi passwords and other application passwords to a cloud provider who can hand that data over to anyone who wants it.
6. Like your PC, use a VPN especially on public wifi connections. Private Internet Access has both PC and mobile clients as do many others.
7. Dig through your phones browser settings looking for privacy settings like disabling cookies clearing out history and things like that

[Anonymous 0]

Thank you very much, KevinStyles!
That’s a lot of info to get acknowledged with = ) I’m doing my best to ensure my security as much as possible. In future I’ll definitely improve overall level of data encryption and protection on my devices.

About PC security:

1. ProtonVPN and protonmail are being used for now as temporary remedy. I’ve planned to buy decent VPN (such as NortonVPN, NordVPN, etc.). Any advices on one particular VPN soft would be much appreciated.

2. Done, a lot of them. Periodically changing/erasing them when needed. Even at MGTOW.COM I’ve used blank e-mail, in order not to dox myself.
BTW, my major concern about data leakage also related to possibility of my paying requisites being tracked / sold / hacked by bank.
I would add that I want to buy ghost subscription. Any thoughts on how to do that securely? I would be very grateful for you guys, if you provide some info on that.

2b. Will do that in future with synology-alike hardware.

3. Cookies are done; I’ll have a look at https plug-ins.
I had some experience with them in past – some of the official sites, even such as Gazprombank, Sberbank are interfering with them, and that’s already telling something…

4. I used to have Dr.Web in past, though to no avail – it had been hijacked once. I’ll definitely get some more reliable soft- and hardware during this year.
For now I’m not storing any valuable info on PC or elsewhere and I’m not planning to do that in future. The whole need to get more security is partly explained by making life of FSB spies / hackers / or whatever malicious characters more difficult and less easy to get my devices breached.
Though it should be said that they won’t get any really valuable info either through digital devices or from any other data source.
= b

5. Not using cloud storages at all. So far I’m using encryption on physical storages. Is DiscCryptor a good one?

5b. I’ll do that part with virtual machines when I get some synergy soft- and hardware.

6. NEVER! Never did that in the past, not doing it now, won’t be doing that in the future, ever = )

7. Never had that ones in the first place. All of similar social spying accounts (even if existed) are deleted a long time ago.

8. Random for the win! Never used special soft for 2FA, ’cause it hadn’t been required. The most of important passwords are stored in memory and not recorded anywhere = ) Though it might be not reliable sometimes.
To be honest LogMeOnce reminded me about Truesona soft, presented by Frank Abagnale – my gut feeling hadn’t liked instantly. Along with Frank Abagnale…
I’m sorry, for me it’s just another collectivists’ control measure, very sticky one. Any thoughts on these ones?

9. I’ll have a look at them more thoroughly in order to get depiction of their pros and cons, least to say.

10. Always doing it.

About mobile devices security:

1. Always turned off.

2. None of it, only most required and basic soft. Although there is one offline navigator soft. Should it be deleted?

3. Not using them, except of standard texting soft. I’ll have a look at encrypted texting soft and get one of them in foreseeable future. Any advices onto one particular would be much appreciated. = )

4. Did it just ~ 2 weeks ago with total wipe of device. Doing it periodically.

5. Never did it for personal use. I did cloud store usage only once when it was required for work. That account and data had been already destroyed, and there weren’t any valuable data pieces in the first place.

6. Will get mobile VPN along with PC VPN soft version.

7. Always doing it when I have to use mobile browsing.

Guys, thank you all for your awesome advices, it really helps a lot! I really appreciate your help in this pretty difficult task to gain oneself security and never give it back ever again.
I hope that this thread helped our fellow MGTOW and lurkers around the world as well!

Thank you all once again = )

[KevinStylesParticipant 2580]

I use Private Internet Access, have been for five years now, they offer PC and Mobile clients as well as conform to OpenVPN standards so if you have a wifi router that does OpenVPN, you can encrypt all your network traffic right at the router. They have lots of locations to connect out of both domestic and international. The farther away from you though, the more impact it’ll have on your speed. When looking for a provider, if they have US locations they can be compelled to hand over logs so the key is to find one that doesn’t log. If you can find one that lets you get new IP addresses at the push of a button that’s even better. And you want a kill switch built in so that if you disconnect all internet activity stops, it doesn’t just bleed over to unsecured and keep working.

DiskCryptor reviews well, i haven’t used it myself but opinion seems to be favorable. I still use TrueCrypt which is a long since discontinued product but I trust it so that’s what I use.

Well here’s the thing with committing things to memory, law enforcement can compel you to reveal it. If you don’t care about that, then the mental vault is one of the best ways if you don’t have a lot of passwords to remember. Human memory is somewhat limited though you can’t remember a 20 character random PW of jibberish unless you’ve got an idyllic memory. I don’t so i rely on a PW manager. LogMeOnce is the one i choose because of a few reasons. 1. Everything stored is encrypted so even if compromised the data is scrambled. 2. You can opt to not use cloud storage and store the database local and 3. it uses 2factor authentication so if someone tries to break your initial password, the 2nd phase is a random code generatred in an encrypted authentication app tied to your device. It’s about as secure as secure can get.

But logmeonce isn’t the only option, password managers are plentiful. But i know the other two popular ones LastPass and Dashline don’t offer as many features ‘free’, and have both been compromised in the past. Not sure about others.

On the phone side not sure what an offline navigator would be useful for, doesn’t seem like a necessary thing but dig into what it does first before deleting it see if it’s something you need or not.

Check out Signal for an encrypted messaging app, works on android, apple and PC

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