I have seen the following argument (summarized here as I understand it):

Despite the promises that VPN providers make, it is known that they will often monitor your traffic, collect logs, might share your information, and will collaborate with law enforcement. Renting a VPS and running an OpenVPN server on it and using that as your VPN, is better - because you have full control over the logs. Let’s assume we trust the VPS provider to adhere to their TOS and privacy policy.

To talk about a concrete typical usecase, I am thinking about how this applies to downloading illegal torrents. In my current view, the only scenario in which the self-hosted option makes sense is if you pay for hosting using crypto and reveal no personal information during the process. Otherwise using a VPS would be virtually the same as downloading it through your ISP - and in some cases even worse - because the VPS provider might be more easily pushed to throwing you under the bus if abuse is reported since this might be a TOS violation. On the other hand, a VPN provider has a much larger motivation to protect users against this because the way that users perceive these protections is fundamental to their business model.

So, is there a reason to self-host a VPN instead of using a VPN provider? If so, should the VPS be acquired anonymously, or are there ways to protect yourself while using a provider that you gave your personal information to?

  • SalamanderOPA
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    2 years ago

    Thank you. VoIP is something that I have vaguely heard about but have never looked into - maybe I should, it sounds interesting.

    From this thread I have gotten a few ideas. It would make sense to host a VPN from my raspberry pi at home. The network at my university is monitored in a personalized manner, for example, so I could route most of my connections through my raspberry pi to avoid snooping. The university network is good for accessing papers though, so I need to learn how to specify that the browser should access academic papers through the uni network directly and everything else via VPN.

    • Cold Hotman@nrsk.no
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      2 years ago

      VoIP is something that I have vaguely heard about but have never looked into

      Voice over IP. If you ever had a voice call on your phone that wasn’t through your mobile phone number, like Messenger, Telegram, Jitsi, Discord, TeamSpeak, Mumble etc.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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        2 years ago

        Yeah, funnily enough through lots of mobile phone network operators block SIP VoIP calls while allowing WhatsApp etc through.

      • SalamanderOPA
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        2 years ago

        Ah, thank you. I thought that it meant a way to simulate having a phone in the sense that one is able to have a “phone number” associated with a voice call program.