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  • 5 Posts
  • 199 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Where in the world did you get that idea?

    VPNs serve three functions:

    • add a layer of encryption so your local network operator and ISP can’t inspect your traffic, its contents and its true destination. (this is what OP is looking for)

    • make it appear to the service you are connecting to, that you are connecting from a different location than where you actually are. (for example make Netflix think you’re in a different region to show you different content)

    • provide secure access to private services that are not exposed directly to the Internet. IE securely connecting devices on seprate LAN networks together over the Internet via an encrypted tunnel. This is a VPNs true purpose and how they are primarily used in Professional/Comercial settings. (pretty much every corporation you’ve ever interacted with runs a VPN that connects its stores/warehouses/offices together)




  • I really don’t like the idea of every device automatically having a publicly reachable IP.

    There’s certainly situations where that would be nice; but I’m quite fond of most equipment and services being behind a router and it’s firewall, requiring explicit configuration to be exposed to the open net.

    Nobody outside my home network ever needs access to my toaster… (btw, why tf is my toaster wifi enabled…?)











  • Much of the data on your phone, including critical information that’s required to run the operating system and make the device function, is fully encrypted when the device is off/rebooted.

    While in this locked down state, nothing can run. You don’t receive notifications, applications can’t run in the background, even just accessing the device yourself is slow as you have to wait for the whole system to decrypt and start up.

    When you unlock the device for the first time; much of that data is decrypted so that it can be used, and the keys required to unlock the rest of the data get stored in memory where they can be quickly accessed and used. This also makes the device more vulnerable to attacks.

    There’s always a trade off between convenience and security. The more secure a system, the less convenient it is to use.