Snoopers Charter

[jjlynn27]

Someone was confused in regards to location of VPN server.

It's rather simple;
Scenario 1; VPN at your home, your isp keeps logs, and is bound to give them when asked;
HMGS : 'Hi, this is John from govt, gimme logs now'.
ISP : 'uhm, ok. here they are'

Scenario 2: VPN hosted on a server located in Moscow;
HMGS ; 'Hi, this is John from UK govt, gimme logs now'.
Sergei ; random words ... uncontrollable laughter ... line goes dead.

I run 3 VPN servers (Rus, USA and Mexico). Chances of UK govt getting any logs from any of them are 0.

[techguyone]

Really? US is a 5 eyes country, I'd not personally have a US VPN...

[jjlynn27]

techguyone said:

Really? US is a 5 eyes country, I'd not personally have a US VPN...

Yes, it probably helps that it's hosted by small isp and I know both owners very well. I'll confirm when i speak to them, but they don't keep any logs whatsoever.

[768]

techguyone said:

Really? US is a 5 eyes country, I'd not personally have a US VPN...

They're much tighter than we are on not spying against their own citizens, so there might be more mileage there than would otherwise be expected. It does strike me that Russia is a better bet though.

Also, even if they do hoover up anything useful I'd imagine it'd only be shared with a short list of UK parties, rather than down to the dregs of the Food Standards Agency and others that somehow made the list on this bill.

[All that jazz]

What actual powers do local councils have now? I was rather surprised to receive a call on my mobile number recently (to my full name) about a council tax issue but the puzzling thing is that very very few people know my mobile number and they are most certainly not one of them. The only 'official' places that know it are the network operator and my bank for the one-time passcode thingy. None of the util cos know it, water don't know it, nor do any of the insurance cos. I've spoken to my landlord and he assures me he hasn't given it out either. The sim number was bought privately so wasn't subject to the automatic number directory enrolment that all new mobile contracts undergo unless you opt out. None of my friends or work contacts would have any reason to pass it on to them. How the fk have they got it? Have they been abusing their new powers already?

[RizzoTheRat]

Have you ever phoned the council on it? It might be that they log incoming call numbers against the account or address.

[All that jazz]

Nope.

[Tonsko]

Without significant proof I'd be hesitant to level an accusation. The best way, if you are concerned, is to lodge an FOI request to see what data they hold on you. The other information surrounding it may give you a clue as to the source.

https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/official-informa...

[mizx]

Tonsko said:

Without significant proof I'd be hesitant to level an accusation. The best way, if you are concerned, is to lodge an FOI request to see what data they hold on you. The other information surrounding it may give you a clue as to the source.

https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/official-informa...

This, there's probably some simple explanation for it.

I had some odd stuff happen around the time I had my stairlift put in, with companies phoning us speculatively. It wasn't anything on the occupational therapy side, but I think the third party provider passed details on.

As for Local govt. we don't do anything like what's being implied above. I would know about it if we did. I wouldn't know what information any areas that interact with the public say Social care etc. keep or may pass on. The only thing public we analyse is libraries internet logs to identify anything illegal (child abuse images etc., people really are stupid enough to try that in libraries), we have to keep the logs anyway for PSN compliance.

Edited by mizx on Sunday 11th December 23:25

[RizzoTheRat]

mizx said:

I had some odd stuff happen around the time I had my stairlift put in, with companies phoning us speculatively. It wasn't anything on the occupational therapy side, but I think the third party provider passed details on.

Can't do it with a phone obviously but a mate of mine runs his own mail server. Everything with the correct domain name comes to him, so he can use whatever he wants as a mailbox name. Hence anything to British Gas he uses BG@, anything to the waterboard he uses Water@, etc. So whenever he starts getting spam e-mails he knows by the e-mail address who gave his address away and knows who to have a rant at.

[Tonsko]

I do that. Started getting emails addressed to 'economist'@ my domain and one other well known outlet. Repeated queries as to why they sold me deets/got hacked/whatever and didn't tell me fell on deaf ears. wkers.

Makes it easy to bin it all though.

[Sheets Tabuer]

I'd love to see this debated..

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/174475

[8bit]

SystemParanoia said:

you setup thedroplet with ubuntu https://www.digitalocean.com/products/linux-distri... ..
then run Streisand https://github.com/jlund/streisand from github on it.

and then you connect all of your\your families\friends\people you care about's devices through that vpn.

the difference is more than just having control.
you can also open up peer to peer communication within the vpn and have all of your devices locally* networked at all times and segment that network into layers of trust, or isolated in a virtual dmz for those you dont, or any you jus want to keep protected from everything.
you are less likely to get throttled by your isp too as they don't know what you're doing, only that you're doing it.
finally, you have the flexibility to do whatever you want with it without having to trust if 'cyberghost' aren't going to profile your traffic and inject ads/malware or sell off your info to make a quick buck later on.
or worry if they will submit all your identifiable data to whatever enforcement company come-a-knocking

you can also control what ports your tunnels run on to defeat known local defences. port 53 is nice.

finally having a server in the cloud lets you do fun stuff like ipv4 over dns which is near unstoppable in practice. https://github.com/yarrick/iodine

orther uses of far away servers can include trying out bleeding edge ideas like a ping based filesytem https://github.com/yarrick/pingfs ... anyone know the ip address of the ISS ?

Edited by SystemParanoia on Tuesday 6th December 20:15

Thanks very much, I'm going to do just that.

It strikes me that to complete the puzzle it's worth using a privacy-strong email address/provider to register with this. Any suggestions as to who to use for that?

[Wobbegong]

Sheets Tabuer said:

I'd love to see this debated..

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/174475

[techguyone]

8bit said:

Thanks very much, I'm going to do just that.

It strikes me that to complete the puzzle it's worth using a privacy-strong email address/provider to register with this. Any suggestions as to who to use for that?

Yes

https://protonmail.com/

[All that jazz]

techguyone said:

8bit said:

Thanks very much, I'm going to do just that.

It strikes me that to complete the puzzle it's worth using a privacy-strong email address/provider to register with this. Any suggestions as to who to use for that?

Yes

https://protonmail.com/

Not much use if the end party isn't also using it or chooses to communicate encrypted with a PGP key.

[SystemParanoia]

All that jazz said:

techguyone said:

8bit said:

Thanks very much, I'm going to do just that.

It strikes me that to complete the puzzle it's worth using a privacy-strong email address/provider to register with this. Any suggestions as to who to use for that?

Yes

https://protonmail.com/

Not much use if the end party isn't also using it or chooses to communicate encrypted with a PGP key.

You can send time expiring password protected emails in the clear that link back to your encrypted message. So third party doesn't HAVE to use proton.

And proton uses PGP/GPG anyway so you can add ttgeir piblic key if they have one.

Or you can use mailvelope with your gmail.

And you can share the password through [url]cyph.com[\url]

[8bit]

All that jazz said:

Not much use if the end party isn't also using it or chooses to communicate encrypted with a PGP key.

The point was about using another mail account to register with the cloud provider with instead of my gmail account, and the privacy-friendly mail provider being one that won't just roll over in the event that UK.gov comes asking.

[techguyone]

8bit said:

The point was about using another mail account to register with the cloud provider with instead of my gmail account, and the privacy-friendly mail provider being one that won't just roll over in the event that UK.gov comes asking.

In that case, the one I provided should work out just fine for you.

[768]

$2.87 a month for PureVPN (2 year deal) seems good value.