• cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
    151·
    2 days ago

    I trust my ISP more than I trust a VPN. I only need a VPN when I need to appear like I’m in another country. That said, I’m very careful about who my ISP is, I have a choice in who my ISP is, and I pay more for that privilege, and I understand a lot of people don’t have that luxury.

  • Shellofbiomatter@lemmus.orgEnglish
    16·
    2 days ago

    Usually on a needed basis. Some pages are blocked where i am and those do get the exception for my regional locking hatred.

    • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      13·
      2 days ago

      I default to on, and turn it off if I need something that is blocking me and there’s no workaround.

      Although the traffic itself is protected, I find the signal of «I am doing something “secret” right now» to be best avoided both for passive metadata collection as well as active correlation attacks reasons; as well as to avoid leaks by clicking some link or just loading an image from some server that might be more “revealing” than I’d like. I’m not talking about anything super spicy, for example just by being a Lemmy user the image hosts you see more can depend on the comms/instances you use the most often - a pretty small segment.

  • Epzillon@lemmy.world
    3·
    1 day ago

    Mullvad on 24/7 except when some things break. My bank app wont allow logins with it for example so i switch it off temporarily for that.

  • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    Def always on, with a kill switch that disconnects from the network if the VPN isn’t active

  • skankhunt42@lemmy.ca
    7·
    2 days ago

    I have nonpublic services I host at home so I VPN home anytime I’m out.

    I have a docker container for my Linux ISOs with a VPN.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    My day job periodically kills the VPN. I reconnect when next time I notice it. It stays on for like 3 days at a time.

    But, since I need it for the day job, the answer to your question is “yes” as in both.

  • Az_1@piefed.zipEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Mine’s on 24/7, I feel like it’s better to use than not use it. I self host one on a vps over using s commercial one

    • TheDarkQuark@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 day ago

      What are the advantages of self hosting your VPN? Is it to just hide your sessions from your ISP? Also, does it not link the domain (and identity, which I’m assuming you have provided during registration) to your online activity? I thought the whole point of these commercial VPN sellers was that you could “blend in” the traffic, and add enough noise to make any sort of aggregations meaningless.

      If you, however, did register and pay for it anonymously, what service is it? The last time I searched for anonymous VPSs, all of them were outside my budget.

      • Az_1@piefed.zipEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I did it because it is cheaper, lets me learn a bit about self hosting and causes me to have less captchas and less websites blocking me, and its also more resistant to any potential VPN bans (my country’s already made social media have age verification, I’m sure they’ll come for vpns eventually). You’re right that I don’t have the benefit of blending in but there’s still a lot of other ways you can be fingerprinted so that really isn’t a huge benefit.

  • darthsundhaft@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I use it 24/7 even though I’ve heard I’m not supposed to. It makes it really obvious to my ISP that I’m using a VPN provider for literally all my traffic.

    I think for now I can get by because I’m shacked up with my parents and so the house is producing all kinds of Internet traffic. Mine will still be obviously going to an ISP but it’s at least not entirely just my ISP.

    I’m sure intel agencies would have their ways to figure things out though. VPN itself is not total anonymity.

  • rasterweb@fedia.io
    3·
    2 days ago

    I tend to do only when needed as it conflicts with some of the things I need to access locally on my network.