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I don’t use a vpn at all, because I don’t need it.
It offers me zero benefit, so why would I ever want one? Just like I don’t use cloud storage or a million other services.
I always had it on, and got banned from my favorite game server for possible alt-accounts. It’s a tight-knit community and the admin fixed it for me a few times until it got annoying. Now I start my game with a shell script that turns off the VPN via CLI before loading so I don’t get banned over and over. 90% of everything else goes through a VPN, not because it has to, but because I want my ISP to be blind by default, at least to the degree I can make that happen
I trust my ISP more than I trust a VPN. I only need a VPN when I need to appear like I’m in another country. That said, I’m very careful about who my ISP is, I have a choice in who my ISP is, and I pay more for that privilege, and I understand a lot of people don’t have that luxury.
i used to use it 24x7 before but now i just turn it on when i need it since it makes my internet significantly slower.
I have nonpublic services I host at home so I VPN home anytime I’m out.
I have a docker container for my Linux ISOs with a VPN.
if i paid for one i would have it on (if i pay for it i might as well use it + more privacy). but, since i just have proton free tier, i turn it on whenever “This content is not available in your region” shows up
(if i pay for it i might as well use it + more privacy)
I think you’d be paying for, but not using, your Internet bandwidth/speeds at that point
I have gigabit and can download through my VPN at 90+ megabytes per second
Edit: oh I glossed over “proton free tier”, yah a paid VPN is definitely going to be much better… I’d never use a free VPN unless it’s to get to my self-hosted stuff.
Def always on, with a kill switch that disconnects from the network if the VPN isn’t active
I use it 24/7 even though I’ve heard I’m not supposed to. It makes it really obvious to my ISP that I’m using a VPN provider for literally all my traffic.
I think for now I can get by because I’m shacked up with my parents and so the house is producing all kinds of Internet traffic. Mine will still be obviously going to an ISP but it’s at least not entirely just my ISP.
I’m sure intel agencies would have their ways to figure things out though. VPN itself is not total anonymity.
Mullvad. Always on. Wireguard to access home network remotely
I tend to do only when needed as it conflicts with some of the things I need to access locally on my network.
Honestly never used one.
Mine’s on 24/7, I feel like it’s better to use than not use it. I self host one on a vps over using s commercial one
What are the advantages of self hosting your VPN? Is it to just hide your sessions from your ISP? Also, does it not link the domain (and identity, which I’m assuming you have provided during registration) to your online activity? I thought the whole point of these commercial VPN sellers was that you could “blend in” the traffic, and add enough noise to make any sort of aggregations meaningless.
If you, however, did register and pay for it anonymously, what service is it? The last time I searched for anonymous VPSs, all of them were outside my budget.
I did it because it is cheaper, lets me learn a bit about self hosting and causes me to have less captchas and less websites blocking me, and its also more resistant to any potential VPN bans (my country’s already made social media have age verification, I’m sure they’ll come for vpns eventually). You’re right that I don’t have the benefit of blending in but there’s still a lot of other ways you can be fingerprinted so that really isn’t a huge benefit.
Depends on where I am and what I’m doing. When on work travel, I VPN home. When I’m home I VPN to work. Outside of that, I don’t really use VPNs.
If I really want to cover my tracks, I have other means and methods
Firefox is routed through the VPN 24/7, everything else as needed.
