So which VPN are we switching to?

[icewolf@masto.brightfur.net]

@gildilinie I didn't even think about facebook tracking and stuff!

We should probably start paying for a VPN again (we were on AirVPN for a while, switched from Mullvad because port forwarding, had no issues with AirVPN just didn't bother renewing).

[gildilinie@beige.party]

@IceWolf ya its really funny if you're coming from a VPN IP instead of residential, with adblocking and cookie hygiene google won't serve you AI overviews. you're not worth the compute

[icewolf@masto.brightfur.net]

@gildilinie wow huh! nice :V

also reddit straight-up blocks you if you use VPNs

when we used a VPN on Ikea's wifi to get around their ridiculous "you can't use anything that's not HTTPS, like say SSH" restrictions (another reason!), we couldn't load reddit pages at all

which kinda sucks for researching anything. reddit is hell but it's really hard to find actual people anywhere else from a web search these days...

[gildilinie@beige.party]

@IceWolf don't worry, the chatbot makers also realized this, so they started leaning on reddit to feed data to chatbots super hard, then the scammers realized this, and the new field if AEO (ai experience optimization) was born... reddit is now full of spam meant to manipulate chatbots

[icewolf@masto.brightfur.net]

@gildilinie yiiiikes

I wonder if we've run into that or not, Not sure how easy it is to tell.

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@gildilinie Very curious what people settle on here, I'd love to know what to recommend.

[gildilinie@beige.party]

i am currently trialing hide.me

[djfiander@code4lib.social]

@gildilinie thanks for tracking down all this info

[guillotine_jones@beige.party]

@gildilinie
Just want to express my thanks to you again for doing all this research on VPNs, Gildlinie!

[avatastic@avatastic.uk]

@gildilinie AirVPN's website looking like something out of the late 90s is hella sus to me.

[jiub@not.an.evilcyberhacker.net]

@catraxx@tech.lgbt @gildilinie@beige.party i'm on airvpn now because it's one of the few that offers port forwarding

servers are sometimes really slow but they have a decent number of them. their apps are kind of bad and they make it annoying to download multiple configs but it works ok overall

i haven't looked into their business practices much tho

[gildilinie@beige.party]

@avatastic someone vaguely remembered they tweeted transphobia but that's not enough for me bc it could be misremembering

[avatastic@avatastic.uk]

@gildilinie I'm also drawing a parallel between something TIL, that hackaday (which looks a little dated and janky) is owned by Siemens (although a recent acquisition as I understand it).

Still a professional service looking like it's running phpBB ... the flags ain't green over here.

[gildilinie@beige.party]

@Guillotine_Jones I do this kind of research on a lot of my purchases...

[catraxx@tech.lgbt]

@jiub @gildilinie Ohhh, i see! Thank you!

[queermatters@mstdn.social]

@gildilinie Unfortunately looks like hide.me shill for crypto and NFT too.

[glitterbean@wehavecookies.social]

@gildilinie I find this all disconcerting. I would trust Mullvad. I used to use there service and pay with cash and they always added the allotted time and then some.

[glitterbean@wehavecookies.social]

@gildilinie But, getting your own VPS and running your own wireguard or tailscale vpn may be more of what you are looking for.

[glitterbean@wehavecookies.social]

@gildilinie personally I use one on my router, one on my desktop and one in a vm plus tor if I am concerned about it.