What do you use your VPN slot for? And why?

Maxoge

As we all know there is only one VPN slot (if you're only using owner profile) so what are you guys using it for? And why?

d3lta19

Maxoge I have mine automatically connect to my wireguard session back to my house as soon as I disconnect from my wifi SSID. That gives me a encrypted session back to my pfsense that does ad blocking via pfblocker.

strcat

Maxoge VPN service apps can support passing traffic through a proxy. You can use a filtering app along with a real VPN or tunnel a VPN through another as long as they support it. Most apps don't support it or have poor quality support for it but there are apps with this feature.

hemlockiv

Blokada, for DNS-based ad/tracker blocking. I'd like to open it up for a real VPN, but i I haven't found an equal non-vpn alternative for adblocking. (Would love suggestions on that, btw)

Otherwise, Proton VPN and Windscribe are both good-quality, reliable freemium VPN services. If I
Needed to connect to my home LAN from afar, probably Zerotier.

hemlockiv

Update: You can use personalDNSfilter to accomplish DNS-based domain blocking in a non-VPN https proxy, and then set your VPN to OpenVPN for pDNSf, a modified OpenVPN client that lets you connect to any OpenVPN server with credentials while using your private https proxy as a DNS filter, just like how Blokada would work. Through the OpenVPN app, you can connect to ProtonVPN for free; Windscribe unfortunately restricts OpenVPN credentialing to their premium users.

It's a bit more finicky to set up, but it works beautifully once you do.

hemlockiv

strcat I don't know of ANY apps that support chaining VPNs on Android (although I'd love to be proven wrong!) I'm also not aware of any "filtering app" that works system-wide, without root, without acting as a VPN.

Except, that is, the one in my previous comment ;)

BluishHumility

I have been using the DuckDuckGo app tracking protection for a while now, but over time I have gotten rid of pretty much all of the apps that it has been blocking tracking attempts from. It blocks a bit of activity when I use Spotify, and every once in a while it will block something from Bitwarden (I have looked into that one, it's a false positive), but at this point it mostly just sits there silently.

hemlockiv

(The challenge with hosting a local proxy for DNS filtering is that, without root, apps aren't allowed to open port 53, which is used for DNS. The personalDNSfilter circumvents this issue by modifying the VPN client to send DNS requests to localhost:5300, which it does control.

Max-Zorin

I use Adguard VPN for the VPN slot and then use the Adguard DNS in the VPN app plus the same Adguard VPN in the private DNS setting in GOS. Not sure if the latter is required or not.

Albatross

ProtonVPN -- it provides ad and malware blocking and private DNS, in addition to keeping my ISP/cell provider out and obscuring source IP info from the sites/apps used. Now, I realize IP isn't a primary tracking variable these days, apparently, but it sure doesn't hurt.

[deleted]

I thought this was pretty cool!

https://youtu.be/xIXG3cFT6O4

Albatross

[deleted]

I thought this was pretty cool!

https://youtu.be/xIXG3cFT6O4

The added control from NextDNS is cool, but isn't it considered bad practice to use a separate DoH provider because you're doubling the number of trusted entities? More ideal would be Proton bringing the granular control to ProtonVPN DNS

bereft_penguin

It's also worth noting this: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

TLDR: "Vanadium will be following the school of thought where hiding the IP address through Tor or a trusted VPN shared between many users is the essential baseline, with the browser partitioning state based on site and mitigating fingerprinting to avoid that being trivially bypassed."

[deleted]

Albatross I think you are right!