Privacy

31998 readers

702 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Does VPNs even work against Big Brother apps? Using one really protects our privacy? (masking our location) (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am currently using Proton VPN (free tier) which is set to Always-ON and Block Connections on disable.

Today while I am going through my Gmail security option, on the devices/sessions I found my real location mentioned over there. Even when I use desktop I always connect to VPN.

On this issue I got couple of doubts:

Is this because I am using a free tier VPN? so it's not functioning properly etc...
Else google fixed my location based on my previous location history? I used my google applications without VPN for many years, I am just learning & following privacy tips recently.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Is this because I am using a free tier VPN? so it's not functioning properly etc...

Nope ! I use the free tier on all my devices and nothing is leaked based on all tests I did.

If you are on linux you need to check your /etc/resolv.conf and see if your home's router/ISP DNS is in there.

Check also if networkManager hasn't your ISP's dns configured.

There are other locations where your home router's DNS could be hidden on linux after a DHCP configuration.

If it's on windows :/ sorry can't help there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I am using windows but thank you for the information. Maybe it's because of my gps, metadata, phone ping, cellular network and other thing associated with play services like few mentioned in the comment section.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Long time I haven't booted into windows, so can't help there.

But rest assured that the free tier hides your real IP the same way as the paied tier.

load more comments (2 replies)