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Surf securely overseas
Hello,
I will be travelling to different countries soon and I will be handling work during the travel.
I will most likely be working via the hotel network but I'm still quite paranoid with some of their internet connections. Hence, I'm seeking advice on the methods to surf securely and anonymously when I'm travelling.
I currently have OpenVPN setup on a VPS which I intend to use. However, will that be sufficient to ensure a secure and anonymous connection?
Regards
Comments
It depends, what country as you seeking to securely establish a connection from?
USA. The VPN is set-up on my VPS so I do not have to worry about the logs issue. (I can just disable logging on my part)
So you want to connect from the USA to your VPS or to the USA from the country?
I don't think you understand, I asked the country you're trying to connect from. For example: Brazil -> USA or Turkey -> USA
Sorry, I misinterpreted your post. Does the country where I'm trying to establish a secure connection matters? Tentatively it should be Philippine, Thailand as well as China.
no Japan , Singapore, India ?
Those are the places I'm planning to travel and not where the VPN servers are located.
so basically you will travel in a Asian country and want to surf using a neighbour country's VPN ?
I think he is visiting Philippine, Thailand as well as China. Wanting to use his VPS in the US?
Yes, this is right.
I dont think these govts sneak into random user's internets. What exactly you want to do that you want to hide from the authorities?
What planet do you live on?
Sometimes you just don't want someone intercepting your traffic over an unsecure network (ie. open WiFi AP). Forget gov't spying, I use a VPN to protect myself from some random idiot sniffing packets.
Long time ago I asked a similar question about social media(twitter/facebook) accounts. Do the authorities have any way of knowing which accounts we login to? But I didnt get a clear answer. As I see it if you are browsing a https site then nobody other than you and site owner can know about you activities.
I haven't visited any hotels in those countries, but from other hotel's i have visited my experience is this: hotel WiFi sux. It's not suitable for doing work.
I visited PH,TH and used singapore VPN for fast browsing and used EU for torrent .
I also used usa vpn works fine .
Internet is quit good in Thailand's hotel , stayed in 3 ,all if them had 10mbps > 20mbps . not sure if all hotels have good connections.
Only if non-SSL, MITM or URL transmitted on another unencrypted way.
True unless the other side has the key, the CAs key or MITMs you.
In Thailand? Should, in major cities. As in Europe the further you go to rural areas the quality/speed is going to suck more. Only a few countries in Asia have horrible internet in the capital cities now (Myanmar, Laos, Afghanistan).
Hotels, especially targeted to business or 3*+ in Asia are usually on a business connections or use local best practice (i.e. dual feeds) but it is not as far as some African cities yet (things are so unstable there that high-scale hotels in insecure countries tend to run their own BGP/VSAT combination now, like Hilton).
China blocks OpenVPN iirc.
I'd give a cautious yes. Make sure your VPN/SSH ports are 80 or 443, to avoid filtering/port blocking that some hotels do.
Secure, yes in some sense. Anonymous, no. You will be making a connection to your VPN so will be identifiable and may even have DNS leaks. In other words, at the least it is possible to find out who you are, which by definition is not anonymous. Use Tor if you want a reasonable level of anonymity. That said, I think you might have meant privacy.
Have fun with the GFW.
GFW: Great Firewall of China at your service, blocking your favorite sites since the internet began
This is clearly out of context. I'm not trying to hide anything from the authorities. It's clearly written that I'm doing work (from my home country) but I'm paranoid with the hotel connection which was what Mike had mentioned.
You need help if you associate privacy and security to illegal activities.