[plug] Safely using an untrusted router

[Dirk]

Thanks Gregory and Brad.

Cost isn't the issue (within reason).  There's plenty of paid
(ad-free?) VPN services out there, like ProXPN, ExpressVPN, PureVPN,
and VyprVPN, but why use an overseas service, who I trust less than my ISP,
and unnecessarily arouse suspicion (re averting metadata collection laws,
accessing overseas content, etc), and why pay for bandwidth twice, when the
obvious solution (to me at least) is for a local ISP to offer this service
(for a fee of course), for security-conscious customers (a growing crowd?).

Eventually (hopefully) an ISP will offer this, to be seen to offer
customers a solution to the growing 'hacked router problem', and
thereby also gain a competitive edge.  Down the track, I don't
think they'll have a choice, to be honest.

But I could be wrong, maybe they just don't care.  Maybe it's too
embarrassing for them to admit to providing customers with routers that are
easily hacked.  But everyone should recognise that ISPs don't manufacture
routers and shouldn't be held responsible for all aspects of the firmware,
just because it is configured to be ready out-of-the-box to connect
online.  So they shouldn't be embarrassed to raise the issue / offer the
service.  Btw, my wired routers were bought separately (i.e. not ISP stock).



On Wednesday, 21 October 2015, Gregory Orange <home at oranges.id.au> wrote:

> On 21 October 2015 at 15:48, Brad Campbell <brad at fnarfbargle.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > On 21/10/15 15:43, Dirk wrote:
> > Like I said before, I use openvpn to a co-located box in another country.
> > Spring some $$$ each year for hardware/provisioning/data and it's easy
> > enough to do. Costs me about $400/yr at the moment.
> >
> > There are plenty of available solutions, you just have to pay to play.
>
> I imagine the options are almost endless, but if you want a really
> cheap co-located box, you can have it for a one-off fee:
> http://cloudatcost.com/
>
> --
> Gregory Orange
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