⚠ Unofficial machine translation of the Italian original, produced for this restore — not by AvANa. For anything safety-critical, refer to the Italian version. Italian original.

Vpn

Restored from the project wiki (we.riseup.net), which is no longer online.

1 What are VPNs?
2 Why use VPNs?

2.1 Tor vs VPN

3 Limits of VPNs
4 How do I use VPNs?

What are VPN?¶

The VPNs are “tunnels” that connect you securely to a network. The VPNs we will talk about, known as “private VPN”, connect you to a network other than your home one, on which you have internet access.

In practice, with a VPN your Internet traffic passes, in encrypted form, through a third-party server that you trust, for example Riseup and Autistici/Inventati. This way your computer cannot be intercepted.

Why use VPN?¶

to avoid being intercepted: whether for the purposes of judicial repression, corporate monitoring, or commercial purposes
to avoid being censored: all Italian networks are subject to heavy censorship. On top of this comes corporate censorship: in many places many otherwise visitable sites are filtered (and therefore unreachable) because they are “inappropriate” (for political or religious reasons, or because they are considered pornographic); moreover, it is often not possible to use file sharing programs (BitTorrent, eMule,…)

Using a VPN is generally always advisable, but it becomes very strongly recommended in these scenarios:

connecting from a corporate network
connecting through an unknown or unprotected wi-fi network. This case is increasingly frequent, and it is a very serious threat to the security of your data.

Tor vs VPN¶

A brief comparison between using tor and using a VPN:

Tor slows browsing down considerably; a VPN slows it down very little.
Tor provides anonymity; a vpn, in general, does not give this guarantee (but those of riseup or a/i give a moderate level of anonymity)
In both cases your provider cannot read your traffic
A VPN, configured as shown below, “tunnels” (puts into a tunnel) all of your computer’s traffic automatically; Tor, on the other hand, has to be configured for each application (or, by using the tor-browser, you get a “torified” browser while the rest of the system is not)

In short we can say that a VPN gives a medium-high level of security at a very low cost (in terms of slowdowns, configuration and other nuisances for the user). Tor gives a higher level of security but has a high cost in terms of slowing down browsing and a negligible one (when using the tor-browser) in terms of configuration.

Limits of VPN¶

with a VPN, your provider cannot intercept you; but the provider of your VPN could! For this reason we recommend using SSL/TLS: see https booklet
the VPN will not help you if your PC has already been compromised by malware, spyware or by law enforcement.

How do I use VPN?¶

To use VPNs you need an account on the servers of Autistici/Inventati or on Riseup.net; once you have requested and activated the account you can configure your VPN starting from this link:

A note: the autistici VPN has to be reconfigured every week. This was done to prevent abuse and to encourage use “only when necessary”.
If you want to use the VPN permanently, riseup’s will suit your needs better, because once configured it always works. If you use it intensively, though, remember to donate a few coins :)