a truncated guide to vpns
published on
<== megmer ebubbles ==>
recently i was watching drew gooden’s youtube video “cars are getting dumber” where he makes great points and you should definitely watch it after finishing this ebubble and also read this article by mozilla and also watch the entirety of the channel not just bikes but that’s not what this ebubble is about. when i was watching that video i saw a sponsorship from him for the browser opera. now previously i knew opera as being the web browser that used it’s own browser engine but ever since 2013 they switched to chromium and now there’s only about 2.5 viable browser engines! (soon to be 1.5 if google gets their way) and there’s pretty much no reason ever to use opera except for the amazing features that they tout on their website, including an ai chat bot (wow!) a built an ad blocker (truly??) and a free vpn (theyre just gonna give it away like that?!?!). it took me about ten seconds to figure out if this vpn is safe, simply by conducting a internet search for “is opera open source”. nevertheless i read an article by them that looks like they fed an ai model hundreds of youtube vpn ad reads and told it to make an article filled mostly with fluff (but not even good fluff like this ebubble) about how great vpns are and why you should get one, specifically opera’s. the opening paragraph has this awe inspiring quote:
“If you lived in a house made entirely of glass, anyone who wanted would be able to watch everything you do. Not a pleasant thought, right? Unfortunately, that’s exactly the situation many people put themselves into by using the internet without a secure and trusted VPN connection. So, exactly what is a VPN?”
despite being genuinely hard to read and containing the word secure about once per paragraph, in the end the reader is not actually made aware of what a vpn is. now i could make fun of dumb tech stuff like this all day, and i might in a future ebubble, but this one is about vpns; what they are, what they aren’t, and which ones you should use.
i asked my friend summer (non techie) what a vpn does and she made it clear that the average viewer of youtube sponsorships only is given a faint idea what a vpn is or does. she said that vpns can:
- let you access websites without tracking
- block viruses
- let you access illegal websites
which are all about half true. vpns obscure one identifier (the ip address), but they mostly do nothing else to prevernt tracking. if you use a closed source operating system, its like putting a bandaid on an amputee’s leg. also, some vpns do have antivirus software built in, but that is completely unrelated to the purpose of a vpn and im gonna save what i was gonna say about antiviruses for a future ebubble. the third claim is also false, you can already access those websites, but if you use other privacy methods along with a vpn, you can access those websites with peace of mind that nobody knows (see also: tor).
don’t get me wrong, im not judging summer for her lack of knowledge about something that doesn’t matter to her and that she knows about through youtube ads. im not judging anyone for that matter! it shouldn’t be up to every single end user to know all this weird computer stuff. it should, however, be up to internet autistics like me to know all this stuff and relay it to pathetic unremarkables like you.
so what is a vpn? in 1995 blah blah blah nobody cares. if you want to know the history of vpns just look it up. what matters is that modern ‘commercial vpns’ (im just gonna call them vpns) are a more fancy version of proxies. if you are connected to a vpn and you point your web browser to megmer.net, instead of requesting the service from your ip address (which is unique to your house or neighborhood), your device requests the vpn service to request the contents of megmer.net from a vpn server that uses a shared ip address and send it back to you. this has several positive effects, such as:
- hiding your ip from the websites you visit*
- hiding your browsing data from your isp†
- allowing you to bypass website blocks‡
- allowing you to bypass rate limits by changing your ip
- allowing you to spoof your location¶ to access content from outside your country.§
*your identity can still be traced in a number of ways, plus an ip address is often shared anyway so it doesnt give off your identity as much as you might think it does.
†if you use https and other standard forms of encryption that are on by default, your isp already knows nothing, other than the domain names you are connecting to and the amount of upload/download. connecting to a vpn masks the first of these.
‡your country or organization can still block the domains you connect to to access the vpn (but there are ways to sneak around this)
¶your location can be accessed through other means, and an ip address gives a very approximate location in the first place
§many websites, such as streaming services, ban the use of vpns, either due to someone else using that ip to get themself banned from the site, or from the website having a large list of vpn ips. this makes it a little harder to access content from outside your contry like the ads promise.
along with those benefits, vpns carry several downsides, such as:
- slowing down your internet speed
- not allowing you to access local network ports in some cases
- blocking access to many websites,
- requiring you to place trust in your vpn provider
- adding a layer of complexity to your “stack”.
in my opinion, the reasons to use a vpn are:
- you really care about your privacy and are already taking steps to protect it (if you run windows, macos, ios, chromeos, or most versions of android then this one does not apply to you)
- you are a pirate (or you do other illegal things online)
- you want to bypass censorship, website blocks, and rate limits
- you are a 1337 hacker and you want to get directly into the government mainframe without the CyberCops busting down your Hypertext Door and gunning down your Metaverse Dog.
if any of those apply to you, you might already be reaching for your credit card and looking for nord vpn discount codes, but wait! don’t get just any vpn. most vpns are closed source and contain trackers, going completely against the point of having a vpn in the first place. check out this article to find out about the shady company behind some of the most popular ones. you can’t fully trust anysoftware that doesn’t run on your machine, so every vpn could just be a honeypot, but there are a few ones you can (probably) trust.
so what vpns should you trust? well its a good thing you said that at your screen just now because i have three recommendations. however before i start, a better list than mine would the this one by privacy guides, because it is based on a set of strict criteria instead of what some guy on the internet thinks.
best vpn in general: mullvad vpn
mullvad vpn has a great pricing structure, at 5.41 usd a month, no matter how many months you buy. this is far better in contrast to pretty much all other vpns, which offer lower prices the more you buy, pushing customers into agreeing to longer plans. mullvad also doesnt require an email and password to sign up, instead giving you a random number that you are supposed to save (pretty much every other internet company take notes!). they are constantly developing new stuff for their vpn, making it better and better every year. it is very clear they care more about privacy than profit.
best vpn for cheapskates who like to steal from a nonprofit: riseup vpn
riseup vpn is a free vpn intended to be used only by people that really need a vpn and for some reason cannot pay for one. if you can, consider donating to them, especially if you use it. it has also not been through any security audit, so you need to really trust that riseup.net does not keep logs and has your best interests in mind. it is very barebones and doesnt have much to talk about, but it is free (zero dollars) and also it is free and open source so i guess its cool. this is the worst of the three.
best vpn for pirates: proton vpn
proton vpn is a little more profit centered than mullvad, but for the most part they are the same. they both accept cash mail payments, they both can be used with any wireguard or openvpn client, they both are foss, and they both have undergone security audits. however, mullvad wins because it has more fun little features, better linux support, it doesnt require email, and it charges a flat rate of 5 euros a month instead of only getting that rate if you pay yearly. mullvad was THE PERFECT vpn, until they disabled port forwarding. if you dont know what port forwarding is, you probably dont need it, but if you torrent or use soulseek, you will probably want it. proton vpn is the one i use, but if mullvad ever readded support for port forwarding, i would instantly switch.
afternote
so far both of my ebubbles have been about vpns. they have also both been about computers. i will obviously talk alot about computers here but this is probably not indicative of what will be here in the future! expect a lot of shorter posts about literally whatever i feel like, maybe even some videos, some instagram-like galleries, idk! its a website so i can put literally anything here and all you get to do is watch :]. part of this article was written with speech to text, and part was written with a keyboard. i might use speech to text more because i am a very slow typer but a very fast talker. i also used markdown and the text editor ghostwriter and now i feel dumb for not having used it before.