[FRIAM] How I made my own VPN server in 15 minutes | TechCrunch

[glen ☣]

The upswing in VPN talk after the privacy regression is interesting.  I like the idea of a volatile swarm of VPNs.  But in the end, they'll all (eventually) be traceable back to the person/org that paid for them. [*]  Tor (and other peer networks) escape this to an extent by blindly spreading and diluting traffic.  Tor is a commons.  Everytime you use Tor, you're taking on some tiny share of the responsibility for any traffic that wanders across any Tor node.  Everyone that runs a relay node, especially an exit node, contributes to that commons.  The recent yammer about VPNs seems associated with our private-property-based capitalist mindset, to me.

You don't want others _gaming_ you by using your stuff without your permission and you want to feel like you're a self-made person, so you don't game others by using their stuff.  (At least most of us follow some "fair play" intuition like that, even if we don't recognize how much shared infrastructure we rely on.)

It's this intrinsic belief in private property, ownership, that the advertisers (and criminals and crime fighters) use to the best effect.  So, while VPNs are interesting, they don't do anything fundamentally different than what most people already do.  Now, a swarm of VPNs funded by an ESOP ... or by donations and "laundered" through the EFF or ACLU, _would_ do more.  But it would be the latter part, the socialist infrastructure that does the work, not the VPNs.  All dutiful non-neo+(con|liberal)s should be running relay nodes and using Tor -- and donating $ to the EFF -- as much as possible.  8^)

[*] Data Patterns Reveal Trump Tower/Spectrum Health Ran a “Stealth Data Machine” With Russia
https://teapainusa.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/data-patterns-suggest-trump-towerspectrum-health-ran-a-stealth-data-machine-with-russia/

On 04/09/2017 01:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It depends what you want to accomplish.  If you just want to keep well-positioned agents from intercepting your traffic for archival, https everywhere or an encrypted e-mail is a good start fine (Microsoft can provide the latter).   If you want to make it expensive for anyone to identify you, take a look at Tor.   It is also possible to couple a VPN to Tor, in case for some reason there is reason to think there are agents looking for use of Tor from your connection point.   Tor is slow compared to a VPN.
> ______________
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com>
> Sent: Sunday, April 9, 2017 1:10:40 PM
> To: Friam at redfish. com
> Subject: [FRIAM] How I made my own VPN server in 15 minutes | TechCrunch
> 
> What do you think, folks?  Worth the effort?
> 
> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/09/how-i-made-my-own-vpn-server-in-15-minutes/?ncid=tcdaily
> [https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/wtf-vpn.jpg?w=764&h=140&crop=1]<https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/09/how-i-made-my-own-vpn-server-in-15-minutes/?ncid=tcdaily>
> 
> How I made my own VPN server in 15 minutes<https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/09/how-i-made-my-own-vpn-server-in-15-minutes/?ncid=tcdaily>
> techcrunch.com


-- 
☣ glen