Nostr Web Client

Urghhh

How the fuck can an “always on” or “kill switch enabled” VPN just turn off without warning - like the application just closes and vpn shuts off - and yet there is no notification provided whatsoever to the user??

I’ve encountered this on mobile and desktop. Mullvad and Nord. Not even while doing anything particularly sensitive, but I try to have really good privacy hygiene, so when this happens it is extremely frustrating.

Especially at 3am when I’m tired and wondering what I did wrong (even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t).

Does this “just happen”? Double check VPN is active every time you pick up the device? Grumble grumble feeling rugged grumble

#asknostr #privacy #vpn #wtf

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Discussion

Ava 1y ago

When it shuts off did you run an IP check? Does the killswitch fail?

boston wine 1y ago

Hm, I’m not sure. Do you mean in the vpn’s logs, or like a “what’s my IP dot com” website checker?

The latter, I didn’t. The former I tried with Mullvad. but wasn’t able to make clear sense of it to feel confident about it

Ava 1y ago

What I mean is, are you on mobile or? But either way, if the VPN has Killswitch engaged, then you won't be able to access the internet if it crashes. You can check to see if it's still active by whether you can access the web and if you CAN, you can do a web search for your IP address, like https://www.whatismyip.com/ to see if you are still protected.

Ava 1y ago

If a VPN with killswitch engaged crashes, you should not be able to access the internet until the connection is reestablished. So we want to know if the app crashed or whatever, or if the actual service crashed and is leaking your IP.

boston wine 1y ago

I see, that makes more sense. I’m guessing there’s no way to check this after the fact, since I’ve restarted the vpn immediately each time this happened. But I’ll do so next time!

To your question, it has happened on mobile (nord, Mullvad) and on desktop (nord).

The Nord ones seemed “worse” as I had to log back into the account and reconfirm the permissions to run all traffic through the app, whereas with Mullvad it just seemed that the app quit (and the little “you’re protected” indicator icon disappeared from the phone’s top menu bar), and I don’t remember for sure but I think I just had to restart the app, not log in again. Not sure if this helps troubleshoot 🤔

Diego Valley 1y ago

I get this too. Like the vpn just ‘times out’ 🤷‍♂️

Brandon 1y ago

iOS or Android?

boston wine 1y ago

iOS and MacOS primarily