VPN in Thailand: necessary from a security perspective?

[RichCor]

1 hour ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

It's strange, I never used to get the Thai language Google search page in the past when using a U.S. IP address, but that started changing some months back, and recently I get that TH language Google page all the time, no matter what kind of connection I have. Not sure what changed along the way to cause that.

 

Check your computers VPN setting and make sure everything is set to Dynamic (obtain automatically).

You may need to disable IPv6 (at that also identifies your device).

 

If you're getting Thai page responses to google, sounds like your local network DNS is acting as primary (and that leak is also giving away your location).

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

More weirdness....

 

I went in, and changed the DNS settings on my wifi router that runs VPN, and on my PC and its networks all to standard Google DNS servers (8888 and 8844) instead of automatic. Tested it, and flushed DNS cache. Then connected my US VPN.

 

Did the same "Google" entry in the Opera browser search bar, and got a Thai language search results page.

 

Changed nothing, but then switched to Firefox browser on my PC, did the same "Google" entry in the Firefox browser's search bar, and got an ENGLISH language search results page.

 

So perhaps, the time when I started seeing the Google page results in Thai was when I switched to using the Opera browser from Firefox a few months because, because Firefox was stalling/crashing due to insufficient RAM on my desktop PC. But last weekend, I upgraded the RAM, and so now I hope I'm OK to go back to using Firefox.

 

I understand that Opera is based on Chrome. So perhaps there's something else somewhere leaking out of Opera (even with WebRTC disabled) and Chrome that doesn't leak out in Firefox. Hmmmm....

 

[Katia]

17 hours ago, RichCor said:

 

WHO are you trying to secure your Internet traffic/transactions from?  A VPN can encapsulate and hide your Internet traffic between you and the VPN endpoint.  And how well do you trust the endpoint, the company that operates the VPN, the people working at that company, the 3rd-party service they contract with, the government(s) they reside in?  

 

I can understand why the coworker gave you a funny look.

Couldn't you say that about any VPN in any location, though?

[Pib]

TallGuy,

   Your residence has also probably been bugged (including night vision capability) by Google....they know your every move 24/7. 

[RichCor]

14 minutes ago, Pib said:

TallGuy,

   Your residence has also probably been bugged (including night vision capability) by Google....they know your every move 24/7. 

 

What TallGuy's every move might look like:

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

9 minutes ago, RichCor said:

 

What TallGuy's every move might look like:

 

 

Nahhh... It's more John Travolta style...

 

But bottom line: once I made the DNS changes and switched out of Opera and back to using Firefox as my browser with VPN, the Thai language Google web pages went away. Just told ole' EN now... again.

 

[chubby]

VPNs for real geolocation are pretty worthless for anyone whom cares, Craigslist & Yelp just flat out refuse all VPNs endpoints along with Tor , Cloudflare added is death of any anonymity including Geolocation. I think Google consciously allows it for things they care about, disallows it for others.

 

Google is the new Goldman Sachs  Vampire Squid :)

 

see: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

 

2) Dont use google's DNS, use the VPNs or OpenDNS ; and check your VPN for leaks maybe,  anyway your modem packets go thru your Thai ISP , what that ISP does with the packets may depend , esp in Thailand under military rules :)

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

On 4/27/2017 at 8:23 PM, RichCor said:

 

What TallGuy's every move might look like:

Notwithstanding Rich's prior marginal attempt at humor, I was able to solve my browser geolocation issue yesterday and was able to finally log-in/register to the U.S. service I'd been trying unsuccessfully to access.

 

Even with a VPN, it turned out, the built-in browser geolocation features in Firefox and Chrome were giving away my location and blocking my access. So in noodling around a bit, I found the following extension for Firefox: LocationGuard, and it worked like a charm to solve my problem using its "fixed location" option.

 

 

I also installed, just for the heck of it, a WebRTC disabling extension:

 

 

But once I had Location Guard up and running in Firefox along with my VPN, I tried then turning off the WebRTC blocking extension, and that setup still resulted in only my U.S. IP address being released.

 

One handy website I found along the way for dealing with this kind of stuff was:

 

mylocation.org

 

Not only does it have the usual IP location detecting feature, but it also has a companion browser geolocation test. It was only when the website's browser geolocation test stopped showing a Thailand location, thanks to LocationGuard, that I was finally able to access and register for the U.S. service I wanted.

 

You can, of course, turn off browser geolocation in Chrome or Firefox entirely via settings in the browsers. But if you do that, then third party services/sites that insist on checking your location via browser geolocation will deny you access, because you've denied them geolocation data. It's better to have a service that instead provides the browser geolocation data that you WANT it to provide.

[RichCor]

 

 

Most people fail to realize just how many hooks and tattle-tails are now engineered into web 2.0.  JavaScript, Cookies, shared-tokens, file finger-printing, web-service location, WebRTC, form autofill, browser description, even browser screen size can all be used to potentially identify and track you. Add in an iPhone or android device connecting to your WiFi with location enabled (GPS or Tower) and they'll associate your current IP address with your exact location.

  

Can we use this tech to catch criminals in the act?  Sure, but where's the profit in that.

 

** Not suggesting that @TallGuyJohninBKK's dance moves are at all criminal, but some definitely don't meet up with community standards.

Edited April 30, 2017 by RichCor

[Pib]

John's hand-face movement is saying, "you can no longer see my location on the internet."

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, Pib said:

John's hand-face movement is saying, "you can no longer see my location on the internet."

Actually it's saying, "you can see my location just fine right back at my home in the U.S.A."

[Randell]

What are some other options for a free VPN now that  Opera's VPN is going off line soon