this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
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Privacy

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Bit of an uphill fight with captchas everywhere. Do people here conduct all online activity over VPN whenever possible? Only for the sensitive stuff? Or perhaps the inverse because the bank already knows you? Maybe when travelling or getting around region blocking? Something else?

The one provided by my work aside, I realized that I don't have any consistent rules around using VPN. Except sometimes, you know, when downloading ISO's for my favorite distos.

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[–] artyom@piefed.social 66 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Pretty much always. If someone blocks my VPN, I just don't go there or don't use that. Sucks but it is what it is. I'm just not willing to enter your site bareback.

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[–] oeuf@slrpnk.net 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Mine is on pretty much all the time. Capchas are indeed annoying, but I'm choosing to see that as something which helps me to be more intentional about my use of the internet.

My bank and government portal don't seem to care about it, even if my traffic is coming from a random country on the other side of the world because I've forgotten to route through one of my VPN's domestic servers. Online freelancing platforms, on the other hand, have instantly banned my accounts, and I've had problems with corporate social media (which I try and use for my business).

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[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 month ago
[–] ohshit604@lemmy.halstead.host 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Phone > WireGuard Tunnel to my House = Reap the benefits of my PiHole and other hosted services > WireGuard Tunnel to ProtonVPN endpoint = Reap the benefits of appearing outside my country

Essentially created my own multi-hop VPN, which I use 24/7 outside of my home-network.

[–] LlilL@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

May I ask how you have that setup? I’ve been trying to do exactly that using my Ubiquiti gear in the middle, but I don’t think I Ubiquiti’s UnifFi is capable.

[–] ohshit604@lemmy.halstead.host 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Picked myself up an Asus WRT router (AX86U) flashed it with Merlin firmware - the custom firmware includes a feature called “VPN Director” which lets me connect up to 5 different WireGuard clients and route my devices through whichever one I choose, given that the Asus WRT router is also capable of hosting its own WireGuard server I created a VPN director rule that routes that server through one of these clients.

The VPN director has a priority ruleset, so if for example WireGuard client 5 dies it will either kill all outbound connections and wait until it’s back online or fallback to WireGuard client 4, WireGuard client 1 being the highest priority right before WAN.

I like this setup because it’s my router doing the routing, not a secondary server hosting WireGuard like Tailscale.

Edit; It also works with oVPN if you prefer that protocol over WireGuard.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Must look into Merlin, I want to stay away from closed source or US companies so Unifi was out.

Could you have a residential static VPN as one of the wireguard profiles and have it be somewhat local to you so you could use banking apps etc on specific devices? Trying to get this to pass the wife test but if streaming or banking is affected I will have to roll back to no vpn.

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Permanently on. Anything I can't access without it I generally find an alternate with very few exceptions. I have a quarantine virtual machine I use for the couple of websites that are worth making an exception for.

[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I use a VPN 99% of the time, i turn it off when i need to access archive.org, or watch something on the public braordcasters streaming platform

yeah sure the captchas are annoying but it's not like websites load within 10 seconds anymore

I only wish protonVPN was a good as the one i used previously, but i cancelled it cause it had ties to israel

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

You might want to check into split tunneling.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 month ago (3 children)
[–] somegeek@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

going around government censorship, being safer from being tracked

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[–] Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

I have a VPN configured at the router. I use a PI-hole with a lot of restrictions and lists to run my own DNS and downstream DNS is Adgaurd. Several machines I let bypass the VPN umbrella and they have local clients they can switch on at will. I'd like to make a Linux firewall too but not with prices where they are now. These days you have to distrust everything.

[–] wuphysics87@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 month ago

Most of the time, but I would emphasize always in airports or public wifi

[–] Alpinefolk@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 month ago

Always. The captcha drive me crazy though.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 month ago
[–] RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago

100% of the time I'm behind a vpn.

[–] hexagon527@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

always except for banking, government stuff, job searching. that's when it looks more sus.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I am more inclined to use a VPN if I want government ibfornation. And that is really disappointing.

Fortunately I rarely have to interact with a government website for anything.

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 month ago

98% of the time. I hate having to turn it off to look at my local grocery store's website but I have done it before.

[–] Ravenheart@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 month ago

Basically all the time.

[–] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 month ago

All the time basically

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 4 weeks ago

UK porn ban, always-on VPN

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 6 points 1 month ago

absolutely at all time. I can't say that I see many captchas. I think the last one was for some site I used a couple weeks back that used google recaptcha. it's pretty rare for me to see one.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago (9 children)
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[–] communism@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 weeks ago

On at all times at the router level. Because it'd be annoying to selectively disable it. My VPN isn't really an anonymity feature anyway; I have a dedicated browser profile for things like banking where I intend the fingerprint to be associated with my government identity.

[–] somegeek@programming.dev 5 points 1 month ago

Constantly.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Mostly just for torrents, one machine on my local network is always using a VPN to connect to the external internet. I would use it for more things like private web browsing, but without substantial additional setup I think my web browsing is guaranteed to be fingerprinted regardless of whether I conceal my IP so until I bother to set that up it doesn't seem like there is much point.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (20 children)

Do not try to do anti-fingerprinting yourself. Cobbling together your own configuration will only make you stand out more. Use a pre-configured browser from a reputable company. This way you blend in with everybody else using the same browser. And don't install extensions either unless you really know what you're doing. Extensions usually change your fingerprint.

Use Tor Browser for browsing over Tor, Mullvad Browser for everything else. Librewolf is fine for when you don't care about hiding your fingerprint, like when you are logging into email and bank accounts.

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[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago

Almost always. I turn off for certain websites that are blocked otherwise, but I hate to leave it off.

[–] mildseason@sopuli.xyz 4 points 4 weeks ago

All the time, baby!

Unless it's absolutely necessary, vpn and kill switch stay on.

[–] random_character_a@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

In a way always.

Whole family is connected to home network and home network has filters and blockers in the outgoing router.

Additionally home security system doesn't have to keep connections open outside or have ports forwarded.

Outgoing router however does not have VPN set, so home network IP is visible. This is to keep everything operational and CAPTHCA from annoying users.

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[–] Newhere@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 weeks ago

Alll the time with kill switch ON.

[–] Nighed@feddit.uk 4 points 1 month ago

My phone almost always has a Vpn on to my home network (gets me pi-hole goodness)

Other than that, very occasionally use the Firefox built in one + the one for my "Linux iso" torrenting container, that's not on most of the time though.

[–] Brutticus@midwest.social 3 points 1 month ago

maybe like 75 percent of the time. the Invidious APIs for Freetube.

My job requires secure outlook and access to our database. I do occasionally have to interface with banking sites.

[–] Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 month ago

I leave mine on almost all the time. If a website takes a little longer to load "Oh no" its a half second instead of milliseconds. it really doesn't change my life much.

[–] alexquiniou@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 weeks ago

Always. Wireguard is easy to setup and work like a charm.

Truenas + wireguard for pc, server and phone. Always everywhere.

[–] SolarPunker@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Never, I'm in EU and I don't travel that much, pirating since 2000s

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My VPN is on about 95% of the time, except when I need to pay a local utility bill (or check my bank account) where they need to know my location.

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[–] realbadat@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

General activity goes out the VPN always. My self hosted setup, lab stuff, and work stuff gets different connections out (logically, not physically).

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago

100% of the time.

My VPN turns on automatically when I leave my home lan. I don't use split-tunneling, so all my traffic goes back to home before going to internet.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I never have. Don't know how to do it (I know it's not hard). The only use I occasionally have is blocked media, but I just don't watch whatever it is. It's not that important to me.

What's important to me is blocking ads, which I do as much as possible. The way I see it, the main point of them tracking me is to serve me ads, so I break the chain at the ads.

If I want privacy, I use Tor. Everything else seems like spitting into the wind.

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