• cecilkorik@piefed.ca
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    3 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.org
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    3 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
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      3 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.

  • tomiant@piefed.social
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    3 days ago

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

  • skankhunt42@lemmy.ca
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    3 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.

  • Epzillon@lemmy.world
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    3 days 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.

  • kobra@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    When I used Proton or Mullvad I usually had to switch it on and off when needed because of so many issues with sites/games/etc. blocking me. However, the last deal I picked up was for NordVPN and that one I’ve been able to leave connected at all times without any issue.

    • tomiant@piefed.social
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      3 days ago

      Bro Mullvad has split tunneling for applications you can just do that. Mullvad is superior in every possible way to NordVPN. I mean most VPNs today do a solid job but Mullvad is peak for more reasons than you can shake a stick at.

      • kobra@lemmy.zip
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        3 days ago

        Split tunneling is not a fix if I need to be in another country to stream the content that I want.

        I’ve tried Mullvad multiple times and it’s my favorite for privacy but thats secondary to getting access to the content I want. That’s a personal decision, and I’m not saying it’s the right one for everyone.

  • njordomir@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I always had it on, and got banned from my favorite game server for possible alt-accounts. It’s a tight-knit community and the admin fixed it for me a few times until it got annoying. Now I start my game with a shell script that turns off the VPN via CLI before loading so I don’t get banned over and over. 90% of everything else goes through a VPN, not because it has to, but because I want my ISP to be blind by default, at least to the degree I can make that happen

  • darthsundhaft@piefed.social
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    3 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.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    3 days ago

    If you have a few things that work better without or don’t need the VPN, like some games, a good VPN will have a tunneling feature to let that one thing through while staying on for everything else.