Hey all,

I’ve been using a commercial VPN for years on my mobile devices and home PCs. Recently I’ve started to use Tailscale and realized I can easily create a self-hosted VPN on a cheap VPS with unlimited traffic.

But I’m not really sure if that’s what I need. BTW, I’m not doing anything dangerous, no torrents, no illegal stuff, no journalism or whistleblowing, not even looking up abortion clinics. I just hate mass surveillance and I don’t want to be constantly profiled.

Commercial VPN allows to “hide in a crowd” by sharing IP with thousands of other clients. But there are a few issues:

  1. Often sites blacklist VPN IPs, so I can’t get in or pass captcha
  2. Performance is not very good
  3. I have to trust VPN to not keep the logs and not sell data. I used Mullvad and they are considered reliable, but you never know until it’s too late

With self-hosted VPN, I’m losing benefit of “hiding in crowd” as my VPN will be used only by me and maybe a couple of other people. My understanding is that my VPS outgoing traffic is from static server IP. So if I login to Facebook once, the address is associated with me. I’ll also have to trust VPS provider to not analyze my traffic and sell it. On other hand, I’m still protected from my ISP spying, from exposing my real IP address to web sites, from dangers of public WiFi networks. And I might get better performance for about the same price.

What’s your take on VPNs? Tell me if you are using self-hosted VPN and why.

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    I use self hosted VPN for many years now.

    You worry that facebook would associate that static ip with you but the problem is quiet the opposite.

    most website will recognize that your IP belong to a hosting company so they often suspect that you are a bot. Wikipedia wont let u edit articls, youtube wont let u comment on videos. Other than that its fine, just expect to pass more captcha.

    you could pay little extra and get dynamic IP from your provider. That effectivwly changes your IP. Deleting dynamic IP and recreating it gives u a new one. But I dont do that.

    I just hide in the crowed by letting others uss my VPN and rely on service providers often dismissing my IP as bot

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
      1·
      6 months ago

      Commercial VPNs are intended to hide your identity across the web and to hide your non-HTTPS web traffic from your ISP.

      You’re forgetting a demographic that is probably bigger than this - people who don’t care and just want to go to blocked sites.

    • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      Exactly. Even for mobile use besides accessing your home resources you can avoid your cellular provider monitoring/hijacking your traffic.

      Of course self hosting means you’re still sending that info from your home network over your ISP.

      So it’s a trade off there but depending on your ISP vs your cellular network makes sense.