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Comment by nomilk

3 months ago

> even if I installed a VPN on my main machine, what about my phone? My laptop? My desktop? Every device would need the VPN running, and I’d have to remember to connect it before browsing. It’s messy.

Is there a way to install a VPN such that requests to/from certain domains (e.g. imgur.com) are routed via the VPN and the rest of your traffic is via non-VPN?

This would solve the problem of constantly having to dis/re connect VPN, and do it in an automatic fashion (i.e. without the manual steps of first recognising there's an unavailable asset on the page, opening VPN app, switching it on etc).

Such a configuration would also be very useful in other situations, e.g:

- using social media in countries that require age-verification

- using apps that geoblock (e.g. spotify blocks my subscription every few days because it detects a change in country, but what it's really detecting is simply whether or not my VPN happens to be on/off)

- accessing sites which are blocked (e.g. Thailand blocks common UK news sites which have said unflattering things about Thai royalty).

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nomilk

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tecleandor  3 months ago

That'd be "split tunnel/VPN" by domain name, and usually it's limited to HTTP/S requests (because the hostname comes with the petition header), but some vendors (like ZScaler) do tricks to apply it to different protocols.

For example, the equivalent in Tailscale would be an "App Connector":

https://tailscale.com/kb/1342/app-connectors-setup#add-a-cus...

  • nomilk  3 months ago

    This is all new to me, but seems odd (startup idea?) why there isn't a SaaS letting me accomplish this on iPhone in a few minutes. (a few youtube searches for 'how to split VPN' are hopelessly theoretical as opposed to practical)

    E.g. I'd definitely pay $10/month for an app that lets me input domains and which country to re-route traffic through.

    E.g. a handful of social media apps via US (my country has age verification), a handful of news sites via UK (some countries I travel to block them entirely), spotify via a single country (I don't care which one, so long as it's constant).

    I currently use ProtonVPN iPhone and macOS apps but AFAIK it routes all traffic through a single country which requires opening the app and manually changing it each time you want traffic routed via a different country.

    Extremely keen to hear any solutions people have used on their own devices.

    • bspammer  3 months ago

      This also seems like an easy way for VPN providers to differentiate themselves with their apps. The fact that it hasn’t happened makes me think that it’s impossible with unrooted iOS

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