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 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days 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.