Encrypt all the things!

Less in that you know what your cloud machine is doing, but you don't know what PIA is doing.

More in that if you're going for privacy/anonymity over just encryption, PIA is going to blend your traffic in with a lot of other people and not store logs tying it all together.

Cheers, so swings and roundabouts. I moved away from PIA on a few machines as, although it's OK for browsing, it capped out at 15-20Mbps which is annoying on a connection ten times faster.

if you really think you are a target for a state actor then absolutely use Tor.

If you're not a target now, you certainly will be after.

right thanks all sorted this morning.

I'll presume as PIA runs on the desktop it's running a VPN for everything from my laptop?

How come lastpass over chrome password manager?

I'll presume as PIA runs on the desktop it's running a VPN for everything from my laptop?

Short answer: Yes.

Better answer: Mostly.

It will run everything over the VPN for the routes that the VPN declares, which is typically the common ports across all non-local IP addresses. Obviously local network traffic remains local, so it should also be obvious that not everything goes via the VPN. It is further possible to configure a VPN to not be used for certain apps, protocols or websites. I actually do this on my Android, because I let Google Play Music download music direct from Google and to allow Cast to work on the local network, whilst everything else goes over the VPN.

Most VPNs and VPN software offers a network kill switch if you want to be at the extremes of things, you can disable networking if the VPN isn't being used for a communication.

As a generalisation though... yes, everything goes over the VPN by default.

Thanks.
I assume logging into sites will leave a clear trace? Given that they will be storing their history.

It's seeming near on impossible to just be non trackable!

I mean my life is boring. But I feel for all the companies out there now, not taking this seriously. Serious vulnerabilities for corporate espionage and minimum.

I assume logging into sites will leave a clear trace?

Any action you perform on a site will probably be logged by that site and leave a trace on the server.

Just viewing a site will probably see an attempt at tracking, that uBlock should handle and prevent.

In the case of the server logs, it's up to the site in question. For LFGSS logs are only retained for 72 hours for the vast majority of data, and only a small amount of non-identifying data is kept beyond that time.

Which region is recommended with PIA? Sweden seems like a good bet or does it not work like that?

It doesn't work like that. You don't have to exit in any place you think sympathetic, etc. Plus Sweden monitors more than almost anyone except Denmark and France nowadays.

VPNs work by encrypting from you to them, and then letting your traffic out without it being strongly associated to the inbound, and thus you get lost in the noise and it's very hard to piece it all back together.

Either pick the closest to you (will be the fastest internet), or pick the one you want in a country that you want to appear in (i.e. if you want Netflix US, you'll want to surface in New York or something).

may reset the device

Out.

Use Chrome

Why not Firefox? Or better still, Tor?

ABP vs. uBlock Origin? I've still got browsers with ABP no uBlock Ori..

uBlock Origin is far better.

Lower memory footprint, quicker matching, less intrusive, easier to fine-tune and adjust.

They do share most of the same underlying block lists though, so in that respect the default install-and-forget is a very similar experience.

ABP isn't bad, but uBlock is slightly better. I also find that there are too many AdBlock apps, and some of those are bad, so recommending ABP without linking to the actual one is risky compared to just recommending uBlock.

So picking a London exit is fine? Seems faster, I have to say.

I use multiple browsers on my mobile, and that includes Firefox and Dolphin Zero in addition to Chrome.

Chrome on mobile doesn't allow installation of extensions, so I only use it for the things I trust (LFGSS).

Firefox on mobile does allow extensions including uBlock, so I use Firefox on mobile for all things I do not trust. Typically always in private browsing.

I'd always recommend Chrome, because I compartmentalise and use multiple browsers.

Tor was recommended in the footer, but whether or not the performance drop-off is worth it is a consideration for you. I don't use Tor most of the time, but I have it installed for occasional use.

So picking a London exit is fine?

Yes.

And it's faster because physics. Most performance on the internet comes down to the speed of light, and the further you are sending your traffic, the greater distance, and the slightly slower it will be.

You had me at 'lower memory'.

I've just switched it. I have too many machines and too many browsers. This is all getting a bit annoying.

Sounds similar to me, although I lag behind you when it comes to plugins and full-encryption, ok and probably everything else. But I have five different browsers running different shit on just this work machine so it gets annoying trying to protect everything.

You will find some issues using a VPN, iPlayer, Netflix and the rest tend not to like you using a VPN and, for the majority, won't work. There are also some websites which don't function correctly with a VPN. Off the top of my head, both CDKeys and Virgin Trains don't let you log in with a VPN.

On AdblockPlus, they have some slightly dubious business practices. They will allow non-intrusive ads but you have to pay them to get put on the whitelist. AdblockEdge is a more palatable fork, but I favour Ublock

You can disable non-intrusive ads in Adblack Plus and just block all the things. It's not on by default though.

It's not the fact that they show the ads, more the blackmail style of you've got to pay us if you want us to show your ads.

Yeah, its a shitty practice a lot of content blockers employ.

I keep meaning to use my PIA VPN account on a headless Linux 'plug' device running ArchLinux but I haven't fathomed how to do it, and generally get stuck even at basic questions over whether the connection would only be used by the user under which the VPN is running, etc. (not being much of a Linux expert). One day I'll work it out.

I'd also like to use it on my OSMC (Raspberry Pi) but - as mentioned above - I think that might cause problems with plug-ins like iPlayer which don't like VPNs. Although I believe there at least is an OSMC plug-in for using VPNs so it should at least be easy to try out.

Chrome on mobile doesn't allow installation of extensions

Ahh, that's why I couldn't get uBlock and HTTPS everywhere to install last night. I thought I was doing something wrong.

Firefox ftw