…because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law…
…VPNs might protect you against garden-variety criminals, but the intentional commingling of origin/destination points by VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept (and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will)…
Certainly the NSA isn’t concerned about “incidental collection.” It’s never been too concerned about its consistent “incidental” collection of US persons’ communications and data in the past and this isn’t going to budge the needle, especially since it means the NSA would have to do more work to filter out domestic communications and the FBI would be less than thrilled with any efforts made to deny it access to communications it doesn’t have the legal right to obtain on its own.
Since the government won’t do this, it’s up to the general public, starting with everyone sharing the contents of this letter with others. VPNs can still offer considerable security benefits. But everyone needs to know that domestic surveillance is one of the possible side effects of utilizing this tech.
I use VPN because it actually speeds up my connection on cellular. My theory is the DNS servers that Verizon uses in my area are inefficient, to the point where I’ll get 1 Mbit down on Verizon, but 100 Mbit down connected to Proton VPN.
It has nothing to do with security, unless I’m in a coffee shop on WiFi.
Edit: here are my speeds on cellular, first without VPN, second while connected to a server in Los Angeles.
Bro fast isn’t measuring your internet speed, it’s measuring how fast you’re connected to Netflix. Phone carriers like Verizon generally throttle video streaming if you’re on a cheaper plan but everything else is uneffected. A VPN just bypasses the video streaming throttle because then Verizon can’t see what you’re connected to. Use a real speed test app.
Used Ookla. Got 40 Mbit down off VPN, 2.25 on VPN.
Will continue using this in future tests. I don’t watch Netflix on my phone. I usually am browsing Lemmy, YouTube, or listening to Apple Music. Fast.com has been my indicator of why my speed is so slow off of VPN when using these services on cellular. While it might not be an ideal speed test, its results track with my connections performance with these services.
That is to say, at times I’ll find myself not on VPN, find that my videos are chugging, turn VPN on, and problem solved. I usually only turn it off if I’m on home WiFi.
I’m a fan of testmy.net. Ookla never seemed to give me actual results while I was on spectrum. Several times I’d just get a printout of what my speeds were supposed to be, but then no download would come close, and 480p videos could barely buffer.
I’ve been using Wifiman lately. I find it pretty reliable and informative. I somewhat manage a wifi mesh network at my work so I use test apps frequently and have found it to be pretty good. I believe it is Ubiquity branded, who make a lot of wifi stuffs.
Tell me you don’t know how dns works without telling me.
As somebody who knows how DNS works, there are certainly cases where DNS servers causing a delayed response to requests will slow down the initial loading of sites. This would result in a layman thinking their wireless speed is “slow”
And how does this affect bandwidth, again?
Net Neutrality was repealed in the U.S. in 2017. ISPs including your mobile phone carrier are allowed to throttle your bandwidth based on the sites you visit. When you use a VPN an tunnel your DNS through it to servers not operated by your ISP, they don’t know which sites you’re visiting, so any automated throttling would not happen.
Hm yeah this one makes sense.
Guess I’m the asshole this time.
Can hardly blame you for failing to keep up with the breakneck pace in which the U.S. government has been assaulting our freedoms and privacy. Some new fresh hell every day an all.
Routing. Back in the day, Charter customers experienced horrible download speeds using Charter’s DNS servers.
Switching to Google’s would result in far more reliable network speeds.
Tell me you’re a dickhead without telling me you’re a dickhead.
How did that work? Are you saying that charters dns servers were sending traffic to completely different places?
Tried to google for this but found nothing so hard to understand the problem.
Why not just switch dns servers instead of getting a vpn?
Yeah fair. Got me there.
EDIT: other guy mentioned throttling, which is interesting. But changing dns servers doesn’t fix that.
Dunno about where Charter was routing. Just knew it was a common best practice for users in my town to manually set their DNS to Google.
Charter became Spectrum and since then this hasn’t been a need.
So far as cellular goes, I don’t think I can manage my IP settings on the phone as one would on Windows. I already use VPN if I travel or use public WiFi, and learned that, holy shit, my speeds are far better while connected than not. So I stay connected almost all the time. It’s counter intuitive, but I can’t argue with the results.
As a long time Charter/Spectrum customer (yay local monopolies) who’s toyed with my network a bit, I have heard about some of their network shenanigans, but they don’t seem to have hit my area. Guess I’m surprised it’d be defeated by something a simple as dns servers, and the MITM of it all if they’re redirecting traffic is terrifying, what with https and all.
Certainly you can change your dns server on nearly any phone.
I see where I can change DNS for WiFi in iOS settings, but cellular requires an app. It sounds like VPN without the security?
If Verizon is throttling, would that be circumvented by a VPN connection?