Re: strange problems with some gentoo sites as seen from Russia

On 5/18/26 3:54 PM, Dale wrote:

>> Your VPN is likely being used by people to aggressively crawl or attack
>> Gentoo sites. Pick a provider which doesn't allow abuse.
> 
> I read the same thing about every VPN out there.  Odd how they all seem
> to be bad.  LOL


That is because VPNs are *usually* companies trying to get you to pay
money for "privacy", which is unethical business practices.

VPNs let you "hide" your traffic from your ISP, by essentially having
two ISPs, and your first ISP only sees traffic to the second ISP. The
second ISP (really a VPN) sees all the traffic, and as an ISP that
specializes in controlling traffic from "people who feel they need to
hide", a VPN is a much bigger legal target.

Most VPNs are in it for money, not ethics, and have a far worse track
record for obeying subpoenas.

Most VPNs try to tell you the VPN tech is automatically "hiding your
data from your ISP" because they cater to customers who are easily fooled.

A VPN is useful for moving your zone of interception to a different
legal zone, so it's also good for:

- evading region-restricted sales (e.g. streaming movies only available
  in another country)

- bypassing your totalitarian government censors, if you aren't worried
  about getting caught "suspiciously using a VPN"



A self-hosted VPN is also useful for connecting to your work intranet,
since inside the work's own self-hosted VPN, you are in practice
"inside" the work intranet. Working-from-home might need this.

Funnily enough, no VPN companies advertise this intranet use case.


...


VPN companies are snake oil salesmen pretty much by default. Of course
they allow abuse, it's where they get their customers.

-- 
Eli Schwartz

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