this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Privacy

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I turned it off for 3 days and the difference was very noticeable.

No spending 2-3 minutes switching between servers to make a website work, no captchas before reading, no false "connection timed out" or "server blocked" notices.

Is everyone having the same experience, or am I doing something wrong?

*Oh but to add, any ads which slipped through unlock ended up being obviously better targeted, which I was repulsed by :)

*Edit: it looks like turning off Firefox's own DNS resolver managed to subside many of the captcha request, including for apps which are just browser overlays. Thanks @hansolo@lemmy.today :)

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[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Run your own VPN on a hosted VPS located at a major hub like NYC

You get the privacy and the blazing speeds and no need for any pinky-promise that logs are not being sold nor subpoenaed

Down side ofc is paying for the VPS

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Another downside is that your traffic is no longer being mingled with other users on the same IP.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Have it "scrap" websites randomly and if anyone questions it. Just say its for training AI.

[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

TBF, anybody using IPv6 is ... uniquely identifiable, at least at that layer

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

That’s kind of the point of a vpn though? Your traffic will exit the same node as lot of other traffic. Ipv6 or not

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 3 points 6 days ago
[–] bignose@programming.dev 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Another downside of self-hosted VPN is you only have those exit nodes you can afford to pay for.

Established commercial VPN services typically have their hundreds of exit nodes in dozens of countries, all included in what I pay, and allow very easy switching between those at will. I couldn't afford to run that many exit nodes nor keep on switching to new ones as the old ones get blocked.

[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yep. Selfhosted VPN is for privacy from surveillance capitalism and "dragnet" government searches (which corporate/paid VPNs are IMO not effective against)

My 1 node is still way more expensive than a VPN package and does not provide location switching nor plausible deniability via mixing with other traffic (the latter is what Tor and related mixnets are for)

IMO location switching is the sole benefit of paid VPNs.

Worth noting: neither selfhost nor corporate VPNs are effective defenses against targeted government surveillance. Arguably, nothing is.