Comment by eduction
3 years ago
I port forward via ec2. Had to learn iptables (which apparently are now deprecated) and set up openvpn (these days I’d probably do wiregaurd). Works fine for my personal website, and paying in advance the cost is maybe $3/mo, didn’t realize it was remotely controversial.
This feels a bit like the Dropbox comment. Sure, open source tools exist that enable you to do things yourself. However there’s a large market for less-technical people (prosumers) who might pay for a lot of that complexity to be simplified.
And it breaks original purpose to use VPN: "privacy"
See I’ve never understood the privacy argument. Who are you trying to stay private from? If it’s your local ISP, sure that could probably work. But if it’s LEO’s and the VPN provider must comply with international laws, you’re really just changing the amount of paperwork someone has to do. If the American FBI wants to see access logs for a VPN provider in Switzerland, the VPN provider must respond and comply with a subpoena or court order.
I feel like people really need to think about who they’re trying to be private from before signing up for VPN’s.
4 replies →
eh except I'm not saying I don't get why people need VPNs, I totally get that and have used several. The Dropbox comment was saying Dropbox is redundant. I don't feel that way at all about VPNs and didn't say anything like that.
I'm just saying there are workarounds that mean we don't have to be beholden to the Mullvads of the world if they drop this feature. I think we're basically one good blog post away from a situation where most people who need port forwarding can set it up themselves via ec2. If they prefer VPNs, and can find some that do port forwarding, more power to them.