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14-03-2018, 10:56 PM
11

Re: Vpn

At risk of sounding a fan of conspiracy theorists ... or Big Brother ... I don't buy that anything is secure or private online anymore.
If anything .. the fact of a VPN existence is like putting out honey to attract the bees.
Presumably, if they are that good they are favoured by terrorists or criminal types. The government probably want people to believe VPN's are immune. Indeed, bank on it.
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14-03-2018, 10:59 PM
12

Re: Vpn

But seeing as how VPN servers can be changed at will, any interested party would have a difficult job tracking users down.
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14-03-2018, 11:08 PM
13

Re: Vpn

But then that's a Catch 22 isn't it?

Either the government has/or could get access to data stored on a server , or backed up from a server ( which I believe is more like it) ....
or ...
it's impossible to access and it encourages criminal or terrorist activity to flourish without any monitoring.

They can still be hacked can't they.. hackers like to use them to hack anonymously.
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17-03-2018, 03:03 PM
14

Re: Vpn

Originally Posted by Judd ->
Most if not all paid VPNs do not keep logs of your internet activity and will not under any circumstances give those logs to the authorities if they did actually exist, it would be economic suicide.
Forgive me Judd, you know I respect you, but that statement just isn't right. What they say in the "blurb" and what they actually do is different. No VPN provider is exempt from the law. Feds can walk in any time and demand the appropriate data. I will go dig up some references for this which I've read before.

VPNs exist for a couple of reasons. One is to allow corporate companies to transact and exchange data securely, The other is to fool and dupe all the nefarious internet users and funnel all their activites through a small selection of servers so they can be more easily monitored.
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17-03-2018, 03:53 PM
15

Re: Vpn

On a slight side issue, here's an article highlighting that these VPNs are far from safe. In this case the well known "TOR" site/portal was known to have a vulnerability with Flash and the FBI used that vulnerability to spy on many users in order to crack a child porn ring.

You can look at this in many ways, but the bottom line is that a reasonable and cynical view of the world suggests that no government or home security force is going to allow people to surf the internet totally anonymously. Everything we do is obviously monitored and recorded imo. These authorities know that VPN companies need to be able to make public assurances about no logging/monitoring to sell their services so its clear (at least to me) that there must be some bargains struck somewhere with all this. It will come down to legal terminology and definition of wording.

The term "no logging" sounds great. But what if the Feds walked into the offices of your VPN provider and demanded access to your account and its encryption so that they could then monitor you. The VPN provider couldn't refuse imo. Again I will try to find examples of where this has happened.
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17-03-2018, 03:57 PM
16

Re: Vpn

Originally Posted by Morticia ->
it's impossible to access and it encourages criminal or terrorist activity to flourish without any monitoring.
Yep

Obvious really. In the USA there are anti terrorism laws which mean the government can legally snoop on all your internet usage and data. So how likely is it a company can say, "we want to allow US data to pass through unmonitored" and get away with it? No chance at all.

Similarly in the UK we have the "Snoopers Charter" laws and data protection laws. Any data that resides in the UK is subject to those laws, end of. That some VPN providers base themselves off shore, like for example NordVPN is in Panama, is surely of no consequence. There must somewhere be servers in the UK handling your data and those servers are subject to UK law.
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17-03-2018, 04:18 PM
17

Re: Vpn

I'll make one further point here. Do you think that your BT telephone line is a secure thing? Do you think it possible that people could somewhere along the many miles of BT cabling, hook in using some purpose built equipment and listen to everyone's telephone calls?

Obviously the answer is that they can. Phone lines have been tapped for many years now.

With VPNs the company apologists would say "Ah but the data is encrypted". It's obvious to me that the governments and home security/anti terrorism bodies WILL most certainly have their own equipment "Plugged in" to the key internet junctions. In fact I have no doubts whatsoever that they OWN all of the primary internet junctions through which all data flows. I'm talking about the physical boxes, the black boxes that route data around.

So the only question to be asked really is whether or not those authorities are able to force VPN companies to hand over their encryption keys.

I would guess that they do but on the basis that they are not allowed to publicly profess that they have the keys and equally therefore are not able to use data gained through spying in a court of law.

My previous post about the FBI using a Flash vulnerability hints at this problem.

Regardless it makes perfect sense to me that the governments and agencies would tolerate the existance of VPN companies ONLY on the basis that they were given the encryption keys and promised never to reveal that fact.

That creates the perfect snooping environment for them. Criminals flock to the VPN providers believing they are anonymous and the agencies simply spy on them without all the other normal internet users clogging things up.

Another example of a similar thing. Satellites orbitting Earth that are constantly taking pictures 24x7. This allows the agencies to replay any moment any time resulting in YOU having no privacy. Suppose I wanted to know what you did last week. I could bring up the photos of your house, and minute by minute watch you get in the car, see where you go to, watch you walk from the car, see who you are with, and so on.

This tech allows them to support crime solving hugely. When a crime occurs, say a bank robbery, they can bring up the photos of the bank, see the getaway car (for example) and then study BACKWARDS from that point all the photos to see where the car came from and where the driver came from before he got to the car and so on.

That's why when on the news you hear of a plane crashing and disappearing, you know there's a cover up. They can work through the photos of every plane from when it left the airport to when it crashed (barring cloud obscuring them).

Nevertheless they aren't going to publicise this ability as it creates public tension. So they would pass any information carefully between agencies imo.

There is no privacy. Never will be
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17-03-2018, 08:59 PM
18

Re: Vpn

Originally Posted by Realist ->
Forgive me Judd, you know I respect you, but that statement just isn't right. What they say in the "blurb" and what they actually do is different. No VPN provider is exempt from the law. Feds can walk in any time and demand the appropriate data. I will go dig up some references for this which I've read before.

VPNs exist for a couple of reasons. One is to allow corporate companies to transact and exchange data securely, The other is to fool and dupe all the nefarious internet users and funnel all their activites through a small selection of servers so they can be more easily monitored.
OK my main point on using a VPN for the "normal" person was not about computer experts who can hide their steps like...LINK

Took them 2 years too find this barstool doubt if he used a normal VPN.

Quote from link..........Will Kerr of the National Crime Agency said Monday such crimes require "unprecedented" levels of resources to stop. The agency worked with U.S. Homeland Security, the Australian Federal Police and Europol to crack the case

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/britain...mail-dark-web/
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18-03-2018, 11:54 AM
19

Re: Vpn

Avast is always offering me a super duper VPN if i pay for it's virus protection
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18-03-2018, 12:14 PM
20

Re: Vpn

Hi

My Internet Browsing is so boring I cannot see anyone being interested.
 
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