Hello there! Im looking for increased privacy when it comes to my network connections. So far I know of TOR as an almost absolute bastion of security, but how do I ensure the remaining network traffic is encrypted and private? I know of signal for communication, and I’m aware of VPN’s. However I’m not sure whether to trust most providers regarding government interference as their software often isn’t open source. Is there a federated VPN of sorts, similar to how lemmy and other fediverse apps work?
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I’ll just throw another tool to the mix: https://prism-break.org/en/
PrivacyGuides is VERY valuable and respected resource. OP, trust comment above 😃
It’s important to distinguish privacy, anonimity and security.
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If you want a VPN I would recommended Mullvad and pay with with Crypto
tor has it’s place. you can’t use tor as your only browser (unless your life depends on your anonymity). There’s mull (hardened firefox) for daily needs or mullvad browser on desktop.
what os are you on?
if you’re on android: I no longer use it, but blokada is simple enough to start with and learn about dns, ip &c. I thought trackerControl too was instructive but you won’t stop there either.
if you’re on a desktop, try piHole instead.
on Mac i’ve found Vallum to be the most efficient. With piHole it becomes redundant.
on windows the best solution was to install linux instead 😅
don’t use your ISPs DNS server, neither google.
read other threads on this community, then follow the links to read from sources instead.
good luck
TOR is the closest thing you will see to a “federated VPN”. You should always trust your VPN more than your ISP. There are open source VPNs like IVPN and Mullvad.
I know you guys are technical and smart. Can you explain to me how secure https is in terms of privacy. I heard that isps can track which domain you’re hitting but not the exact endpoint, is this true ? Where can I read more about this sort of thing?
No all of your packets will have a destination IP address. Meta data isn’t encrypted for an HTTPS.
Some more info and helpful blogs from mullvad https://mullvad.net/en/help/all-about-dns-servers-and-privacy/
You can use quad9 or mullvad DNS resolvers for free to prevent DNS leaks
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Lots of good responses in here already. Any VPN that is reliant on the use of others resources, federated or not, will require some level of trust.
You can “roll your own” and spin up a personal VPN that you host yourself that may remove some of the trust concerns, but if you aren’t building it from scratch or don’t audit any source code you use from others, whether foss or not, you are right back to the issue of trust.
Everything has a tradeoff, just like people have pointed out about Tor in this thread.
My advice is to try to balance your needs and concerns by doing research and ask around until you can narrow things down to specific products or services and then dig in anf ask pointed questions about them until you reach a level of comfort and trust that satisfies you.
