Ask HN: Is it possible to make a VPN that cannot log traffic? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it possible to make a VPN that cannot log traffic?

1 pointarikr9 comments

i.e. the same way Signal has end to end encryption and they do verifications of their software

is it possible to set up VPN infrastructure such that you could have independent audits that prove you have no way of knowing what website a given user is on?

otherwise, theoretically, could a curious VPN employee just browse what all of the VPNs customers are doing at any time, what they're googling, who they're looking at on Facebook, etc?

I don't know enough about VPNs and network infrastructure to be able to word this question properly, to my uneducated self it feels like I'm basically asking, could you have a VPN with end to end encryption

View on HN

Nope. Mix networks like Tor attempt to disguise metadata, but USG essentially owns all the Tor exit nodes, and logs all traffic: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/06/25/can-you-trust-to... https://pando.com/2014/12/26/if-you-still-trust-tor-to-keep-... https://pando.com/2014/07/16/tor-spooks/

There is no way to browse the web securely. Don't do anything online that you think the Trump administration might not like.

Tor Attempts to disguise metadata? Tor anonymous servers first duty is to strip much of the metadata as do all actual anonymous proxy servers. Tor hidden services are additionally wrapped in a higher layer of end-end pgp key encryption.

USA Gov essentially owns all the Tor exit nodes? There are many thousands of Tor Exit nodes far from the reach of the USA Gov in terms of owning, powning, controlling, shills. Tor Exit nodes are at least 2 anonymous global proxy servers removed from the Guard entry anonymous server, the tail of the dog doesn't know what the head is doing. Only that Tor exit node was used to connect to a clearnet website.

If legions of Computer users installed and ran the popular search engine history spoofer in this popular FireFox browser plugin, that would serve to provide millions upon millions of bogus internet search engine searches for the Stasi thugs to dig through: - Free Firefox Plugin to Spoof your Internet Search Engine Uses to confuse Trumpoganda goons illegal spying history collection of your search engine use. FF 'Tools' -- Addons -- Plugin Search for the signed plugin of 'Track Me Not' in the search field. - TrackMeNot is a lightweight browser extension that helps protect web searchers from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e. covering one's tracks), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with Firefox and Chrome browsers and popular search engines (AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Bing) and requires no 3rd-party servers or services. You can optionally hammer DHS with its own trigger words if you wish by a optional check box. - Additional Useful Free Plugins to obfuscate your tracks - Free Firefox Plugin to Spoof your Computer IP to confuse the Trumpsters goons illegal spying http://ipfuck.paulds.fr/?p=plugin Use this USA Continuous IP Blocks to randomly seed 15.0.0.0 - 23.0.0.0 http://www.nirsoft.net/countryip/us.html - Free Firefox Plugin to Spoof your Browsers User Agent Type to confuse Trump State agents illegal spying https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/random-agent-... - Free Firefox Plugin Self-Destructing Cookies to throw-off illegal Trump White House Regimes Internet Spying https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destruct...

Of course, provided You or your business, family, trusted partner is directly setting up and managing that VPN's operations. Otherwise the VPN op's, IT techs could just as easily lie to any such inquiry while keeping with the terms of the backroom meeting the USA Gov DHS,FBI,CIA,NSA agents had earlier in the year with them granting them immunity from prosecution if they complied and threatening to shut that server down if they didn't comply and remain quiet about their data collection on all its users, clients, customers.

Unless you self host a server and/or set one up yourself, there is no way to ensure your vpn is un-monitored. But even then you're still vulnerable at the ISP level, man in the middles, or maintainers of the server.

Check this out for a visual guide of what is available or not with and without tor: https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https

It's not possible.

VPN encrypts traffic end-to-end in a tunnel from your PC to another computer (VPN provider/company) and from there onwards it goes out in its "raw" unencrypted form.

It is not end-to-end from you to the final destination. The other end is the VPN provider.

So the VPN provider is always able to see the original traffic.

You mistake VPN for anonymization tool. It's not, it's for joining two or more non-public networks together (in degenerate case a network consists of a single host only). What you want is implemented by Tor, though you still need encryption+authentication channel between yourself and destination server (i.e. SSL/TLS connection).

HTTPS doesn't hide metadata, of course. An exit node can still see what servers you're connecting to.

Of course it can, but it cannot tell who is making the connection (this is implemented by onion routing) or what was sent (this is implemented by TLS), and without the payload it cannot infer who is making the connection.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com