Using VPN on your home network
-
Hello guys,
I am new to pf sense. Now i am curious about running my VPN on my Pf sense box rather then separate on my devices. On the Internet i read a lot about VPN by means of encrypting all your traffic. Its not 100 % anonymity but its a good help.
How do you people think about tunneling all your traffic truth a VPN at home and how useful do you think it is.
I know my question is general but i just wants some thoughts on it and what are your opinions, setup etc..
Greets,
HJ
-
Think it really depends on who you choose to give your browsing info too. A VPN provider that you may not even know who is behind them or your ISP. And let's not pretend that any entity with "legal" authority cannot get your info from a VPN provider any less than they can from your ISP.
I think VPN services are a good way for browsing info to be collected by those who do not have access to it through ISP's. Or just to be able to cut the ISP's out of the loop so they don't have to deal with them.
I like VPN's mostly for use when traveling. But for me I use my home pfSense OpenVPN instead of a third party service. Recently had some road warriors in China and they used my VPN to get around the Facebook and Youtube blockade. Worked great for that. There are VPN services that specialize in access from China, but they tend to get blocked due to flying within the radar detection envelope. insignificance of a personal home VPN probably stays below the radar.
Wandered a bit from the main theme of your question but those are my thoughts.
-
NOYB
Thanks for your reply.
I am not naive to think that VPN in the solution. It,s that i just don,t want my IP address being logs by websites.
So you are running your own VPN or via a VPN provider ? I have PIA (private Internet access) I use that service now on my devices. Planning to transfer it to the Pf sense box so i don,t have to setup every single device. So all the traffic on the router is routed trough the VPN.
I live in the Netherlands, its quite a relative safe country on Internet stuff. But you never know.
Gr…
-
"i just don,t want my IP address being logs by websites."
Why? does this matter… Your IP address does not give them your home location.. This isn't the movies.. At best it tells them what isp your with and region your from, city maybe.. Unless they contact your isp they can not get any more info from that IP..
So you have issue with www.pfsense for example knowing you came from some city in Netherlands?
-
"i just don,t want my IP address being logs by websites."
Why? does this matter… Your IP address does not give them your home location.. This isn't the movies.. At best it tells them what isp your with and region your from, city maybe.. Unless they contact your isp they can not get any more info from that IP..
So you have issue with www.pfsense for example knowing you came from some city in Netherlands?
Not entirely accurate. Some ISP's provide much greater IP location resolution to databases which can be used to get very very close to the address if not the exact address itself. Have seen this a few years ago on a "smart" phone were it was able to be located to a specific building just by it's WiFi IP address alone.
-
Well yeah there are databases with wifi networks locations https://wigle.net/ comes to mind.
And yeah smart phones all have GPSes – so they are always phoning home their actual location.. And most likely reporting what networks they are on as well for wifi.. They got in a lot of shit about it a few years ago.. All of them were doing it google, microsoft, apple - most likely they still are.
So do you have your wifi gps turned off, what about your car nav system and onstar/bluelink - that has your exact location for 911 reasons if your in an accident, etc.. Do you have that all turned off.. If not - big brother knows where your at all the time!!
Do you wear a mask when you go out - all the camera's doing facial recognition and tracking your movements.
-
Well yeah there are databases with wifi networks locations https://wigle.net/ comes to mind.
And yeah smart phones all have GPSes – so they are always phoning home their actual location.. And most likely reporting what networks they are on as well for wifi.. They got in a lot of shit about it a few years ago.. All of them were doing it google, microsoft, apple - most likely they still are.
So do you have your wifi gps turned off, what about your car nav system and onstar/bluelink - that has your exact location for 911 reasons if your in an accident, etc.. Do you have that all turned off.. If not - big brother knows where your at all the time!!
Do you wear a mask when you go out - all the camera's doing facial recognition and tracking your movements.
Those are different issue than with web site tracking.
Furthermore the philosophy of can't turn it all off so not point in turning any of it off may be valid but certainly still doing as much as possible to limit information is also valid and even beneficial.
