Glad I never joined Facebook

[Curt Harms]

I have never understood it did anything else, can you please explain your view on VPN's for this naive user. Thanks.

I use one when connecting via a public access point such as a hotel, restaurant and the like. Data is encrypted by the VPN provider from my machine to the 'other end' of the provider's network. From the provider's server to the target site is up to the browser/destination site AFAIK, i.e. HTTPS or similar. For my purposes VPN is another layer for the ner'do'wells to compromise.

[Larry Edgerton]

I figure they can only get out what I put in, and not just on facebook. I do not do any financial transactions on the same computer that I play online with, different email address as well. I lie about things like my birthday, and only say things I would not mind the whole world knowing. I just like to see what my kids, grandkids are doing.

[Keith Outten]

Keith, what would the "contributor" fee need to be to support the site? I've thought that the requested $6 per year is absurdly cheap, and wouldn't have particularly blinked had you asked for $6 a month. I've made the seemingly incorrect assumption that you ask for what you need. I'm a member on several sites that ask for $20-30 a year to be exempted from ads, and this seems completely reasonable.

I'd be very concerned that if the site disappeared behind a paywall that new members would quickly dry up and the site soon dwindle. While only a small percentage of "visitors" are even actual people, where would new users come from if the site were hidden? I found it because it frequently came up in search results with sensible answers to things I was looking for. I don't know how I would have found it otherwise.

Yep, this is a rock and a hard place situation. Without free access people won't be able to check out the waters here and that might slow our new registrations to a crawl. But, its possible that when people who have refused to register cannot access our forums they might register. At the same time I expect the number of discussions might suffer if less people participate. Without a crystal ball there isn't any way to predict what will happen.

Its also impossible to predict a means to provide for our funding. There isn't any solid information available concerning how many will donate and how much. We know the current number of Contributors but that number may go up or down, there's no way to tell. I got a Private Message asking why I don't use a poll to generate data but I don't think we could acquire enough information to ascertain accurate data. For starters the majority here won't answer a poll and if I place the poll in only one forum the majority here won't even see it. Rarely do people view more then one forum here and if I placed a poll in every forum the complaints would be brutal. The announcements at the top of every forum receive very few views, this is just the way it is here.

For the near term we will try eliminating Visitor access first. We will continue to provide free access to registered Members until such time our advertising revenue decreases to the point that we are forced to convert to a subscription based Community. We will continue to ask for 6 dollar per year donations from Contributors as long as we can and continue to accept higher donations from those who are willing. If our Contributors are willing to accept another option I would like to restrict access to the Classifieds Forum to Contributors only. Our Classifieds Forum works and it is worth more than the 6 dollars per year to gain Contributor status here.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I have never understood it did anything else, can you please explain your view on VPN's for this naive user. Thanks.

Jim covered it well. I'll add my own words...

A VPN is like teleportation. It puts your computer effectively on another network. Corporate networks aren't accessible from outside, other than the VPN servers. You connect to the VPN server, and all of your data rides a "tunnel" to the VPN server, where it exits onto the local network. And we actually do use the word tunnel. So the ONLY thing it does is make it look like you are somewhere else, and eliminate the ability to see the traffic inside the tunnel. But just like a real tunnel, eventually you come out and the data is wide open again. IT IS NEARLY ALWAYS USELESS. The only thing it solves in reality is that your ISP can't see you pirating movies/software. Oh, and if you want to see a program that is area-restricted, like a BBC show, you could appear to be in the local area to watch it. That's it.

It used to be good for public networks like hotels and open wi-fi, before encryption was prevalent. Now I can't think of any service that isn't already encrypted, and adding a VPN does absolutely nothing. I *only* use VPNs to tunnel back to my company networks to reach servers that are not exposed to the world. Because everything else is already encrypted anyway, and if someone has the skills to crack one, cracking both is no challenge.

[Jim Becker]

VPNs will also reduce performance because of their inherent overhead...I would never use one without a specific purpose, such as a business need, personally.

[Carlos Alvarez]

VPNs will also reduce performance because of their inherent overhead...I would never use one without a specific purpose, such as a business need, personally.

OHHHH, yeah, forgot to mention this, great point. Not only overhead, but also they HAVE to be rate limited to avoid overload. Every VPN I've tested maxes out FAR below my internet speeds (gigabit at home, 100-200Mbps at various offices). No VPN keeps up with that.

Then you have latency and round trip time. Picture a call where I say, "Jim, read the first paragraph of this book to me." And every few words we have to exchange a back and forth handshake to verify reception, decrypt, etc. "Did you get it? Got it? You ready for the next sentence? Sure." That's how TCP/IP works. This back and forth is mostly around 30ms to 60ms each time, but a VPN normally makes that 2-3x. So anything "chatty" with a lot of exchanges back and forth gets really slow, even if the data speed itself is fast.

EDIT: I'm nearly always connected to a few VPNs for business, but I ONLY send the traffic that needs to go to that location, not all internet traffic. Most consumer VPNs take all traffic, on purpose.

[Jim Becker]

Yea, split-tunnel can help, but many companies don't permit it...sometimes to the extent that accessing a printer on the home network is impossible!

I was glad that most of the time prior to retirement I could avoid VPN for the majority of work because the tools I was most often using were accessible via SSL SSO since business partners needed access to them, too. I only had to bring up the VPN to get to a few "behind the curtain" type resources from time to time. Voice/video via SIP connected through an SBC and didn't require VPN, either, which was nice because of ringing multiple devices, including mobiles would make VPN terribly painful. The net result wast that my connections were faster than the poor folks who were using VPN. (they were also saddled by Windows, too...whereas I was using BYOD MacOS...but that's a separate religious thing LOL)

[Carlos Alvarez]

Yea, split-tunnel can help, but many companies don't permit it...sometimes to the extent that accessing a printer on the home network is impossible!

My government clients try to block it. Hah, too bad, I know how to write my own routing tables, they can't stop me. That only works for end users. Which of course, means that the policy did its job. If you can write the routes, you probably won't click stupid crap and get a virus on their network either. It's impossible for me to do my job without split routes, because I have to access our servers with code and such to move it to them. Idiots.

You won't catch me using Windows. That's like the Yugo mechanic also owning a Yugo to try to get to his shop every day to work on all the dead Yugos.

Customer: You're supporting our Windows network but you use only Macs????

Me: Sure, you want someone to use reliable tools to fix your unreliable ones, right?

[Dave Zellers]

Yep, this is a rock and a hard place situation....

I love this thread! It's TWO *click* TWO threads in one!

I can't comment on the Very Personable Nerds being discussed, but Keith- what about accumulating all the confessions made over the years here and blackma... I mean making those members an offer they can't refuse?

Could be a goldmine! Or would that be wrong?

Good luck. A very good friend in sales once told me, 'we don't have problems, we have opportunities.' This will work out. Change will happen but it will work out. I think most contributors will support a higher fee. Count me as one.

[Carlos Alvarez]

It's TWO *click* TWO threads in one!

591795_v2.jpg


I like and will use your new definition of VPN.

[Dave Zellers]

The Count! I raised my 2 kids with The Count!

[Dave Zellers]

But seriously, there are millions in hush money sitting out there.....

[Dave Zellers]

Or in here to be more accurate.

I'll need 3% as a finders fee.

[Ryan Mooney]

The plot thickens to a minor degree. There is now evidence emerging that facebook was also harvesting data off of peoples phones using their app. This included things like contact information, and sms and call records. Its probable (close to certain) that most of that data was sold as well. This was likely within their terms-of-service which probably means it was "legal" but doesn't make it any better.

I've always been a little tinfoil hat about installing apps on my phone (especially if you're paying attention to what permissions they ask for/require to be allowed to run) and this doesn't make me feel any more comfortable with them. You can use facebook on your phone via a browser but they make a lot of things more difficult. The chat interface for instance doesn't work unless you force your browser to pretend to be the desktop version, there is no solid technical reason for this except to encourage people to install the app. While nominally native apps can provide a better user experience, removing the features certainly makes one have to ponder the real reasoning. I see more and more companies pushing their custom apps in order to use their service on mobile, generally if that becomes the hard requirement I just quit using their services (I did install pandora on an old tablet for the shop but it was wiped of personal information first).

More practically it's hard to see how folks without a lot of technical background can manage their way through this, and I fear that the long term effects of the betrayal of trust will do immeasurable harm to the tech industry.

[Carlos Alvarez]

There is now evidence emerging that facebook was also harvesting data off of peoples phones using their app.

They always did that, and said so. I don't understand this "now" stuff. You install FB and the app security tells you what it will harvest and use.