Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2022 December 30

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December 30

DuckDuckGo and VPN

If you are using DuckDuckGo for privacy, would it help to also use a VPN? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:43, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

A VPN could avoid interceptors knowing that you are using DuckDuckGo, as it could hide the DNS requests and connections to the web site. Who that helps though is open to question. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

So it might not help the user to also use a VPN? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:56, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Help the user how? What are your goals? What actors are you concerned about in regards to the privacy issue? What are your use cases? What is the value of information you wish to protect/ Elizium23 (talk) 04:59, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I worry about a website getting my IP address and using it to send me unwanted email. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:19, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

It is incredibly unlikely a website will know your email address from your IP. If you've already provided your email to a website eg if you have an account a website may profile you possibly even when you're logged out to decided what marketing emails to send you although your IP will likely only be a small part of this with browser fingerprints especially cookies generally being far more important. Note that depending on how sticky the VPN IP is compared to your regular IP, how many users share it compared to your regular IP, whether you eg take care to ONLY use your regular IP when logging on and the VPN for regular browsing or vice versa and properly segment the browsers and anything else that may help them track you, how much the website even uses the IP, etc a website's ability to use your IP as part of their efforts to track you may not be significantly affected. Nil Einne (talk) 07:15, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

(ec) A web site should not be able to determine the email from just your IP address. However if you gave your email address to some site, eg google or facebook, another site may be able to make use of that. Social media tracking should have an article. Make sure you are logged off all social media sites and cookies deleted. And if you use Chrome then info will all be harvested by Google. Use Edge and be harvested by Microsoft. DuckDuckGo browser may be better, and only give some limited info to Microsoft. VPN can help an end user once you are not giving cookies and browser info out. A VPN can stop governments or service providers from blocking, hijacking or inserting data in your connection session. But on the other hand, a government may prevent use of VPNs if they are paranoid. A VPN will not stop someone insulting you on Facebook or twitter. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:28, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

DuckDuckGo will keep your data away from Google, such as search queries, IP address and browser fingerprints. Of course your data is still going to DDG. They have a different business model and privacy policy from Google. That may not prevent your data from being sold or stolen in the future.

A VPN is good for use cases where you don't trust your ISP and you wish to conceal your traffic from them as an intermediary. Especially good if you frequently use open unencrypted WiFi hotspots. VPNs are also good for causing servers to geolocate you differently and thus access content that is forbidden in your jurisdiction, but geolocation is inaccurate and discouraged for legal decisions.

The nature of the Internet means that even when you use a VPN, it still has an egress point and many intermediaries. So if you believe that your ISP or your coffee shop WiFi is the weakest link in the chain, by all means use VPN. But don't believe the hype, it is not a panacea for privacy. Elizium23 (talk) 09:28, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. There must be a connection between my email address and IP address somewhere. Does that kind of thing get on the dark web? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:26, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

What makes you think that? Elizium23 (talk) 02:32, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

There isn't really any connection between an IP address and an email address. An email account is a permanent thing but an IP address is transient. If you access your email from different machines, different locations, or at different times, you could be using many different IP addresses to access the same email account. When you check your email, your current IP address does get sent to the email server, but if your email transactions are via secure (SSL) connections, as they should be, no third party would be able to see that association. CodeTalker (talk) 23:21, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I only access my email from my home computer. Its modem seems to have a permanent IP address. The way I thought it worked is that when my ISP gets email to my email address, it has to know which modem to send it to. Is that right or wrong? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:05, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

That is wrong. First of all, the ISP always knows your IP, it's sort of its main function to ISSUE an IP to you. Second, your computer generally fetches your email, it does not receive it. Even if it is 'pushing' it to you, your computer first reaches out and at no point will this reveal your IP to a 3rd party other than the email provider. BUT, where such a connection can be made is when you load either a 3rd party's webpage or email. So if you open an email, you might reveal your IP address, IF there is for instance an image included that is loaded from the Internet automatically. This can allow them to connect your email adres to a specific IP address, but they already have to know your email to begin with. Still this is a privacy problem and many email clients therefor have an option to NOT load images etc automatically, but will instead present you a banner to load them on demand. Please consult the documentation of your mail client to find that option. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:46, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

What if is a PC is as "asleep" Could the information stole?

What if is a PC is as "asleep" Could the information stole? AboutFace 22 (talk) 03:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

If the PC is stolen, then the data is at risk of being extracted. If the data is on the cloud or on a server or on the disk, then it might be extracted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:40, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Wake on LAN is a configurable option that would permit remote systems to wake up that sleeping host and then have at it. You should also consider the reduced security of a sleeping host vs. one that's turned off. A sleeping system's full disk encryption would probably be unlocked. One or more users may be logged in; hopefully the screen lock works, but this may be less of a defense than a machine with no users logged in. Elizium23 (talk) 04:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)