Setting up a VPN

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

I read these are vastly popular in China, where the govt restricts what
Chinese can see on the web, but VPNs bypass this.

I subscribe to spotcrime.com which gives a list of crimes in many/most
areas of the US including where I live. I get a frequent email with a
list of reported crimes within 2, 5, whatever miles of my home. The
email does not give street numbers. I'm abroad now and the list that
came lists a crime in my block of my street, occurring the day after I
left!!! Fortunately for me it's listed as Other, which means IME
miscellaneous, usually little things, like a process could not be
served, or in one case, sudden death**. Big famous ones like burglary,
robbery, are listed with those terms. But I'd still like to see what
it is, and it's about time I learned about VPNs.


**which in this case was my next-door neighbor, who died of heart and
lung problems right in front of his son. Age 65 but had lung problems
from being a fireman. He was retired for disabiltiy and had to carry
an oxygen generator. OTOH, two days before he died, he looked fine.

I see there are limitations on VPNs. Can I switch back and forth easily
to use the VPN when I want to look at a url I can't otherwise see, and
then not use it when I'm doing regular stuff?


In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky
wrote:

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

I read these are vastly popular in China, where the govt restricts what
Chinese can see on the web, but VPNs bypass this.

I subscribe to spotcrime.com which gives a list of crimes in many/most
areas of the US including where I live. I get a frequent email with a
list of reported crimes within 2, 5, whatever miles of my home. The
email does not give street numbers. I'm abroad now and the list that
came lists a crime in my block of my street, occurring the day after I
left!!! Fortunately for me it's listed as Other, which means IME
miscellaneous, usually little things, like a process could not be
served, or in one case, sudden death**. Big famous ones like burglary,
robbery, are listed with those terms. But I'd still like to see what
it is, and it's about time I learned about VPNs.


**which in this case was my next-door neighbor, who died of heart and
lung problems right in front of his son. Age 65 but had lung problems
from being a fireman. He was retired for disabiltiy and had to carry
an oxygen generator. OTOH, two days before he died, he looked fine.

I should have said that there is no wifi where I'm staying and I'm using
a cellphone as a hotspot. Does that limit my choices or use of a VPN?




In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky
wrote:

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

I read these are vastly popular in China, where the govt restricts what
Chinese can see on the web, but VPNs bypass this.

I subscribe to spotcrime.com which gives a list of crimes in many/most
areas of the US including where I live. I get a frequent email with a
list of reported crimes within 2, 5, whatever miles of my home. The
email does not give street numbers. I'm abroad now and the list that
came lists a crime in my block of my street, occurring the day after I
left!!! Fortunately for me it's listed as Other, which means IME
miscellaneous, usually little things, like a process could not be
served, or in one case, sudden death**. Big famous ones like burglary,
robbery, are listed with those terms. But I'd still like to see what
it is, and it's about time I learned about VPNs.


**which in this case was my next-door neighbor, who died of heart and
lung problems right in front of his son. Age 65 but had lung problems
from being a fireman. He was retired for disabiltiy and had to carry
an oxygen generator. OTOH, two days before he died, he looked fine.

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky
wrote:

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Looking through the list of VPN's I came across Opera, which has VPN as
a built-in option. I've been using Opera anyhow so that would be very
convenient. And I'm trying it now although so far it doesn't work.

Restarting Opera, even though it didn't say I had to do that.

micky wrote:
In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky
wrote:

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Looking through the list of VPN's I came across Opera, which has VPN as
a built-in option. I've been using Opera anyhow so that would be very
convenient. And I'm trying it now although so far it doesn't work.

Restarting Opera, even though it didn't say I had to do that.

A VPN is a remote machine which "attempts" to hide the IP
of the packets.

You ---------- VPN server ------------- Server_using_geolocation_via_IP

The VPN server is a kind of MITM attack. The VPN server
sees everything you're doing.

A company can have multiple VPN servers, so the "IP" of the outgoing
side is not so predictable. If you "rent" a real VPN service, you
can specify what country you want to come out on.

Note that with the protocols involved, the protocol could
have the web-browser attempt to report an IP on the
left hand side of the diagram. At least services like
Netflix, have some mechanism for fighting against the
abuses of VPN users. The idea is, Netflix has a license
for the media they are serving, which is only valid
within the USA. A Canadian can only view Canada-licensed
content, rather than USA-licensed content. Consequently,
some Canadians have an American account, and use a VPN in
an attempt to fool Netflix into thinking they are
physically within the footprint of the USA on the map.

But that doesn't always work. So if your little experiment
fails with a "You are using a VPN" error message, then that
means that some aspect of the protocol has "leaked" information.
And not at the packet header level, which is what the
VPN server is re-writing. While Netflix could "know" all
the locations of the Opera servers, it's likely they have
some second mechanism for "busting" people.

The simplest scheme, "processes" all the packets on the machine.
I used an encrypted work VPN for example, and even if I was
doing casual web surfing, all the packets went through the
VPN tunnel.

But it doesn't have to be that way. If Opera runs Opera traffic
through an Opera server, it's possible only the web browser
traffic takes that path.

Paul (who cares not about VPNs because of the level
of details needed to be a "success" at it)

On Mon, 25 Feb 2019 22:21:20 -0500, Paul wrote:

micky wrote:
In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky
wrote:

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Looking through the list of VPN's I came across Opera, which has VPN as
a built-in option. I've been using Opera anyhow so that would be very
convenient. And I'm trying it now although so far it doesn't work.

Restarting Opera, even though it didn't say I had to do that.

A VPN is a remote machine which "attempts" to hide the IP
of the packets.

IMHO, there are two things wrong with that statement:
- the VPN client is missing. A VPN needs two endpoints, not one.
- the purpose of a VPN isn't to hide your IP, even though that's what
people are doing with it these days.

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is actually a tunnel created between
two endpoints. It's purpose is to allow traffic to securely pass from
one endpoint to the other, bidirectionally, through an unsecure network.
The local endpoint could be your PC, another PC on your LAN, your local
gateway router, etc. The remote endpoint could be another PC, a router,
a server configured to act as a VPN endpoint, etc. The recent contortion
of using a VPN to "hide" your IP address is interesting, but it's really
not what a VPN is designed for. That doesn't stop anyone, of course.

You ---------- VPN server ------------- Server_using_geolocation_via_IP

Where "you" presumably includes the VPN client, or else none of it
works. You can't just connect to a VPN server and expect anything good
to happen.

The VPN server is a kind of MITM attack. The VPN server
sees everything you're doing.

I hate to let that go, but I'll skip it for other lower-hanging fruit.

A company can have multiple VPN servers, so the "IP" of the outgoing
side is not so predictable. If you "rent" a real VPN service, you
can specify what country you want to come out on.

Decouple the number of VPN servers with the number of Internet-facing IP
addresses. There's no relationship between those two things. You can
have one server with dozens or hundreds of IPs or you can have a hundred
servers all sharing a single IP, or any variation in between and beyond.
I recently configured a solution for a customer where they had 100
[virtual] VPN servers that shared a pool of 2000 Internet-facing IP
addresses. At any time, they can seamlessly spin up or turn down
servers, just as they can add or remove IPs from the pool. Either of
those things has no impact on, or relation to, the other.

Note that with the protocols involved, the protocol could
have the web-browser attempt to report an IP on the
left hand side of the diagram. At least services like
Netflix, have some mechanism for fighting against the
abuses of VPN users. The idea is, Netflix has a license
for the media they are serving, which is only valid
within the USA. A Canadian can only view Canada-licensed
content, rather than USA-licensed content. Consequently,
some Canadians have an American account, and use a VPN in
an attempt to fool Netflix into thinking they are
physically within the footprint of the USA on the map.

But that doesn't always work. So if your little experiment
fails with a "You are using a VPN" error message, then that
means that some aspect of the protocol has "leaked" information.
And not at the packet header level, which is what the
VPN server is re-writing. While Netflix could "know" all
the locations of the Opera servers, it's likely they have
some second mechanism for "busting" people.

The simplest scheme, "processes" all the packets on the machine.
I used an encrypted work VPN for example, and even if I was
doing casual web surfing, all the packets went through the
VPN tunnel.

That's a full tunnel VPN. All traffic must enter the tunnel, which means
that when you're connected to the VPN, you're no longer able to connect
to any other resources on your LAN. No network shares, no network
printer, etc.

But it doesn't have to be that way. If Opera runs Opera traffic
through an Opera server, it's possible only the web browser
traffic takes that path.

That's an example of a split tunnel. With a standard split tunnel, only
specific traffic enters the tunnel, with everything else bypassing the
tunnel. Local network access remains available. A variation of that is
an inverse split tunnel, where everything enters the tunnel except for
the exceptions. Out in the business world, I see mostly split tunnels,
some full tunnels, and rarely an inverse split tunnel.

Paul (who cares not about VPNs because of the level
of details needed to be a "success" at it)

If you and a buddy both have routers that support VPN, it's super easy
to set up a VPN between the two of you. For a couple of years my nephew
and I had a VPN between us for file sharing and remote storage of
backups. It took only a few minutes to set up and it just worked, but we
abandoned it after about two years because the novelty wore off.
Upstream Internet connections were still too slow to make it worth
while.

If you just want to play, you can set up a VPN within your LAN. It makes
no sense to do so, except as a learning exercise. VMware makes such
things very easy to do. It's possible that your favorite virtual
environment can do likewise.

--

Char Jackson

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 02:19:14 +0200, micky
wrote:

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky
wrote:

I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Looking through the list of VPN's I came across Opera, which has VPN as
a built-in option. I've been using Opera anyhow so that would be very
convenient. And I'm trying it now although so far it doesn't work.

Restarting Opera, even though it didn't say I had to do that.

I found where Opera let you choose an IP. It only has 4 choices, Europe,
Americas, Asia, and Optimal location, and though each does show a
different IP address, it still doesn't work with any of them. At least
I can't get spotcrime.com, which is at the moment, all I want.

So I'm back to looking for a real VPN program.

I'm not going to do any streaming that I can't already do, and I'm not
worried about security or privacy, only access. And I want to be able
to stop paying when I return home, not pay for a whole year, not have
them continue to charge after I want them to stop. Recommendations, for
or against?

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky wrote:
I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

Free VPNs. There have been horror stories about them tracking you and
selling the information. I'm sure there are some honest operators of
free VPNs, but how can you know?

Private Internet Access is the one I use; it costs me $2.50 a month.
Signup was trouble free. You download and install an EXE, then all
you have to do is run the installed program whenever you're about to
use an insecure network or want to make web sites think you're in a
different country.(*) There's also an app for your phone, if you want
it (and I do).

(*)How-to Geek, or maybe Lifehacker, reports that some Web sites are
denying access to people on VPNs. They didn't say how widespread this
is.


--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:56:29 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky wrote:
I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

Free VPNs. There have been horror stories about them tracking you and
selling the information. I'm sure there are some honest operators of
free VPNs, but how can you know?

Private Internet Access is the one I use; it costs me $2.50 a month.

Okay, I'm convinced, though now the google summary says $2.91/month and
starting as low as 3.33 a month. But I only want 3 months worth so it
will be fine. Oh, monthly it's 6.95. So for twice the price of 3
months I can have a whole year. Am I going to want this after my trip
is over? I never felt the need until I couldn't get webpages.

Why exactly does it hurt me if a free VPN tracks and sells my info?

Signup was trouble free. You download and install an EXE, then all
you have to do is run the installed program whenever you're about to
use an insecure network or want to make web sites think you're in a
different country.(*) There's also an app for your phone, if you want
it (and I do).

(*)How-to Geek, or maybe Lifehacker, reports that some Web sites are
denying access to people on VPNs. They didn't say how widespread this
is.

We shall see.

As I reported, some game sites do but I don't play games.

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:56:29 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky wrote:
I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

Free VPNs. There have been horror stories about them tracking you and
selling the information. I'm sure there are some honest operators of
free VPNs, but how can you know?

Private Internet Access is the one I use; it costs me $2.50 a month.
Signup was trouble free. You download and install an EXE, then all
you have to do is run the installed program whenever you're about to
use an insecure network or want to make web sites think you're in a
different country.(*)

Okay, you convinced me, and I signed up for one month and counting.
But the userid and 3 passwords in a row would not work. Maybe it's
because I'm using a phone as a hotspot? At any rate, I put in a
trouble report.

BTW, all of the countries I would go to have flags shown there in the
list of countries. But what would happen if I went some country where
they had no servers. It wouldn't work?

There's also an app for your phone, if you want
it (and I do).

I'm not ready for the big time yet.

In alt.windows7.general, on Wed, 27 Feb 2019 17:12:33 +0200, micky
wrote:

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:56:29 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky wrote:
I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

Free VPNs. There have been horror stories about them tracking you and
selling the information. I'm sure there are some honest operators of
free VPNs, but how can you know?

Private Internet Access is the one I use; it costs me $2.50 a month.
Signup was trouble free. You download and install an EXE, then all
you have to do is run the installed program whenever you're about to
use an insecure network or want to make web sites think you're in a
different country.(*)

Okay, you convinced me, and I signed up for one month and counting.
But the userid and 3 passwords in a row would not work. Maybe it's
because I'm using a phone as a hotspot? At any rate, I put in a
trouble report.

A couple minutes after the trouble report, it seemed to work. I can't
tell any difference yet, however. :-)

BTW, all of the countries I would go to have flags shown there in the
list of countries. But what would happen if I went some country where
they had no servers. It wouldn't work?

There's also an app for your phone, if you want
it (and I do).

I'm not ready for the big time yet.

On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 18:22:29 +0200, micky
wrote:

In alt.windows7.general, on Wed, 27 Feb 2019 17:12:33 +0200, micky
wrote:

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:56:29 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky wrote:
I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

Free VPNs. There have been horror stories about them tracking you and
selling the information. I'm sure there are some honest operators of
free VPNs, but how can you know?

Private Internet Access is the one I use; it costs me $2.50 a month.
Signup was trouble free. You download and install an EXE, then all
you have to do is run the installed program whenever you're about to
use an insecure network or want to make web sites think you're in a
different country.(*)

Okay, you convinced me, and I signed up for one month and counting.
But the userid and 3 passwords in a row would not work. Maybe it's
because I'm using a phone as a hotspot? At any rate, I put in a
trouble report.

A couple minutes after the trouble report, it seemed to work. I can't
tell any difference yet, however. :-)

BTW, all of the countries I would go to have flags shown there in the
list of countries. But what would happen if I went some country where
they had no servers. It wouldn't work?

There are two aspects to consider. Since a VPN is a tunnel, by
definition it has two endpoints. The first question is can you reach the
entrance to the tunnel? They claim to have a presence in 33 countries,
so as long as you can reach one of those entrances, you'll be able to
enter the VPN tunnel and you'll then be able to exit the tunnel using an
IP address assigned to that country. You can see how certain countries
might be able to block you from entering that tunnel, (since the tunnel
entrance IPs are well known), but those countries are relatively rare.

Separately, there's the question of whether, once you exit the VPN
tunnel, you can access the service that you're looking for. Any such
service is able to ascertain the publicly known exit IPs used by the
VPN, so being able to reach the VPN entrance, transit the tunnel, and
exit the other end is not a guarantee that you'll be able to use a
specific service. Make sense?


--

Char Jackson

In alt.windows7.general, on Wed, 27 Feb 2019 11:52:01 -0600, Char
Jackson wrote:

On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 18:22:29 +0200, micky
wrote:

In alt.windows7.general, on Wed, 27 Feb 2019 17:12:33 +0200, micky
wrote:

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:56:29 -0500, Stan Brown
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 01:42:09 +0200, micky wrote:
I have heard about VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, I think, which might
enable me to view a USA website for which I currently don't have
"permission", even though I can when I'm in the USA. What would be the
easest way set up a VPN on a Dell laptop Latitude E4300 running Win7?

Anything I should avoid?

Free VPNs. There have been horror stories about them tracking you and
selling the information. I'm sure there are some honest operators of
free VPNs, but how can you know?

Private Internet Access is the one I use; it costs me $2.50 a month.
Signup was trouble free. You download and install an EXE, then all
you have to do is run the installed program whenever you're about to
use an insecure network or want to make web sites think you're in a
different country.(*)

Okay, you convinced me, and I signed up for one month and counting.
But the userid and 3 passwords in a row would not work. Maybe it's
because I'm using a phone as a hotspot? At any rate, I put in a
trouble report.

A couple minutes after the trouble report, it seemed to work. I can't
tell any difference yet, however. :-)

Now it doesn't seem to work, but I already told them to ignore my first
request for help. I wrote again to say Don't ignore it, but that email
is having delayed delivery! Fortunately this is not a rush situation,
and if worst comes to worst, I can read this stuff when I get back.


BTW, all of the countries I would go to have flags shown there in the
list of countries. But what would happen if I went some country where
they had no servers. It wouldn't work?

There are two aspects to consider. Since a VPN is a tunnel, by
definition it has two endpoints. The first question is can you reach the
entrance to the tunnel? They claim to have a presence in 33 countries,
so as long as you can reach one of those entrances, you'll be able to
enter the VPN tunnel and you'll then be able to exit the tunnel using an
IP address assigned to that country. You can see how certain countries
might be able to block you from entering that tunnel, (since the tunnel
entrance IPs are well known), but those countries are relatively rare.

Separately, there's the question of whether, once you exit the VPN
tunnel, you can access the service that you're looking for. Any such
service is able to ascertain the publicly known exit IPs used by the
VPN, so being able to reach the VPN entrance, transit the tunnel, and
exit the other end is not a guarantee that you'll be able to use a
specific service. Make sense?

Yes, it does.

I'll know more when I can actuallly use it!