Hardware Solution for Hiding My IP - In Plain English Please!

Ticker305 said:
Just sign up to a vpn service that uses shared IP, so even if they are forced to turn over records or logs, nothing can be directly traced back to you. They're only around $40 a year.
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Wrong, the endpoint sees a shared IP, the VPN service provider itself can track everything...$40 a year does not buy anonymity it just shifts who can track you.

j-sta said:
home users pretty much never have a real reason to use a VPN router, unless they telecommute or the like. When I was a field tech for a local ISP, I only came across this once for a personal account, and it was for their work.

if you get a VPN service that supports the use of a VPN router, it means the router itself establishes the VPN tunnel. This then means you do not need to run VPN software on each computer to establish the VPN tunnel.

Some posts in this thread are making this out to be much more complicated and obscure than it really needs to be. The OP is asking a fucking question for God's sake, what's the point of some of the harsh posts?
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Clearly you only read a small amount of this thread. The OP's question was far more broadranging than what does a router with VPN capability do - wikipedia would have answered that.

The OP is asking for something that is technically impossible, and asking it in such a way as to just about avoid breaking the T&C's of this forum.
 
young_one said:
Wrong, the endpoint sees a shared IP, the VPN service provider itself can track everything...$40 a year does not buy anonymity it just shifts who can track you.



Clearly you only read a small amount of this thread. The OP's question was far more broadranging than what does a router with VPN capability do - wikipedia would have answered that.

The OP is asking for something that is technically impossible, and asking it in such a way as to just about avoid breaking the T&C's of this forum.
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THANK YOU !!!
 
This thread really is funny. The OP is very demanding too about how he wants his questions answered and how he wants to accomplish his master plan, all while ignoring the fact that he basically can't do what he wants to do.

Then you have some folks (badly) explaining how VPN's work and what they're used for, only obfuscating the issue even more while simultaneously helping the OP believe this is still possible.

Frankly, someone should probably just recommend a router and lead the OP to believe that his IP is now hiding and we'll try and see how fast he ends up in jail. I'm only kidding, don't do any of that :D.
 
You know I have to say I am disappointing. I come into this forums expecting professional, reputable help. But I get insulted, offended, and consistently misinformed instead. Kiddie porn? Are you serious? When did "Hard Forums" become, "Troll Hard Forums?"

So here we are then. Two people say using a VPN router will do what I want. They agree that the ISP will see some data moving around and that's it. Everyone else seems to say that VPN routers do not work that way. But none of this group clearly explains to me exactly ow they do work. For connecting remotely to one's own network? You don't need a VPN modem for that, even I know that. As I also know that you don't need a VPN modem to use an online VPN service.

Well it's obvious I will have to do some more research and find a different forums to post my questions at. For those who have been helpful and courteous here I appreciate it. As for the rest of you I'm ashamed of you. You are entitled to have your opinion's of course. But I never said what I was going to use this for. You assumed and posted based on your opinions, strongly and rudely. I never asked for your opinions, I asked for answers to simple questions. If you acted like this while employed in an IT department you would loose your job.

Opinions, like sexual diseases, should be kept to yourself -
- Deathbliss

P.S. I have no "master plan" (which would imply I'm some evil genius.) I will not buy any VPN router for now. Don't have the money anyway. All I was trying to do was to figure out if it would be worth it to earn the funds to get a VPN router. That's it.
 
Long of the short what you are asking for is not possible.
Closest you are going to get is a TOR browser, but that's software based.

No matter how you route your IP it can still be traced back to the source of the transmission, even with a TOR browser.

Its the internet bro your asking for something that can not be done.
Every computer leaves a trace.
 
1. What you are wanting to accomplish by using a VPN will make it so your ISP can't see your traffic, but once you exit that tunnel, whoever is on the other end can see your traffic (if it's not HTTPS traffic already.)

2. You could either use a free service or a paid service, but again like mentioned the speeds could very well suck and who's to say they aren't a shady service who snoops on your traffic?

3. A VPN router or something like DDWRT or Mikrotik or a Cisco ASA or ISR can do this easily.

Cliffs: The Internet is not secure. The only way you can guarantee complete security of you traffic is by controlling the networks your data travels over and that just isn't possible.
 
dashpuppy said:
Because it doesn't make sense what he is doing. he's trying to hide him self, but thinking a VPN will do this. all the VPN is doing is changing where the traffic is going in and out of, that's it. It's not hiding anything...
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did you not read the OP? He wants to hide activities from his ISP. While sure, making sure to point out that the VPN provider will be able to view the activities and data is important, that doesn't change the fact that his ISP won't get any usable data.
Yes I know that hiding your IP from your ISP is impossible.

young_one said:
Clearly you only read a small amount of this thread. The OP's question was far more broadranging than what does a router with VPN capability do - wikipedia would have answered that.

The OP is asking for something that is technically impossible, and asking it in such a way as to just about avoid breaking the T&C's of this forum.
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I read the whole thread.
And no, his question was not more broad ranging than what does a router with VPN capability do. His question that I replied to clearly stated, and I quote
Deathbliss said:
Another question... What is the point of a VPN router? I mean what does the typical home user use it for?
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How is that "broadranging?"
 
You cant hide your IP from your ISP. They own the IP that they give you. Do you not think that they know what your IP is lol??

Anyways you need to use something like a VPS, or VPN service that tunnels to some server in Uganda or something and then you can be as private as you want. There is no way they can trace what you are doing.

As far as keeping your business private from the government and ISPs I agree 100%. That is your natural born right to privacy. If you break the law then that is on you and no one else. Bur privacy is not unlawful.
 
Your ISP will see the exact same thing it would without the VPN

Look at it like this.

People are watching your front door so you dig a tunnel from your back door into your own living room and use that to exit your house, yes you are hidden going through your house but you still come out your own front door and the people watching still see you through the glass in the door and also still see you exit the door

The above is your initial idea.

Now a second idea. You dig the tunnel from just behind your front door to your neighbors living room and exit via his front door. Now the people watching your front door can see something going on through the glass in the door as you enter the tunnel but don't know what it is then after that see nothing and don't care who comes out of your neighbors front door.

This is a VPN to a VPN or VPS service.
 
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On a tangentially related question- is my understanding correct that use of a VPN router enables you "secure" access when you are out and about (and using public unsecured wireless networks)?

So for example, you take your laptop to an airport/coffee shop where they have free but unsecured wifi. To protect your transmissions from this remote location, you connect back to your home router via VPN tunnel. A bad guy sniffing packets on the unsecured network only sees encrypted traffic going to X IP address, but cannot read it. Your home ISP, obviously, sees everything but that's not the point. The "bad guy" you're trying to hide from here is the hacker logging packets on the unsecured wifi, not your ISP.

This I could see being very useful, since it allows you relatively secure communications from anywhere as long as you can connect to your home router via VPN (I notice that some public networks block VPN traffic). My alma mater actually provides free lifetime VPN service for alumni and retirees (as well as current students/employees) and I use this feature often when I am traveling.
 
Ruahrc said:
On a tangentially related question- is my understanding correct that use of a VPN router enables you "secure" access when you are out and about (and using public unsecured wireless networks)?

So for example, you take your laptop to an airport/coffee shop where they have free but unsecured wifi. To protect your transmissions from this remote location, you connect back to your home router via VPN tunnel. A bad guy sniffing packets on the unsecured network only sees encrypted traffic going to X IP address, but cannot read it. Your home ISP, obviously, sees everything but that's not the point. The "bad guy" you're trying to hide from here is the hacker logging packets on the unsecured wifi, not your ISP.

This I could see being very useful, since it allows you relatively secure communications from anywhere as long as you can connect to your home router via VPN (I notice that some public networks block VPN traffic). My alma mater actually provides free lifetime VPN service for alumni and retirees (as well as current students/employees) and I use this feature often when I am traveling.
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Not quite. You get a yes and a no.

Your ISP will have no idea what traffic you are passing when using a VPN period. A VPN can only be viewed by the two ends of the connection and only if those ends have the proper encryption decryption algorithms in place.

There is no way anyone beside the people behind router A on the VPN and people between router B can see the data. Other than that the ISP only sees the TCP frame headers and trailers but the data in the middle of the header and the trailer is all fully encrypted and they have no way of seeing that randomly encrypted data. This is why VPNs were designed in the first place was to tunnel aka "Create a pipe within the pipe that is unreadable".

Now a great many number of residential ISP will prevent VPN passthrough or tunneling by blocking the VPN taffic at the source. It doesnt effect their bandwidth at all but it also prevents them from seeing what you are doing if they block this stuff. So if you can tunnel then I urge you to tunnel away.

I absolutely refuse to connect to the internet in public from my laptop whether on a remote network connection or tethered to my galaxy S3 without first connecting to my Cisco 1921 router via IPSEC VPN. This is why I am also sticking with Verizon because they do not block IPSEC/SSL ports on their networks therefore allowing anyone the ability to tunnel to remote networks of their choice. Verizon honestly could care less what traffic you are passing on their networks as long as you are paying them your $179.99 a month.

I also use Comcast and they do NOT block VPN traffic on their network either both business class and residential.

If you do not want to invest in hardware VPN there is always LogMeIn Hamachi which works VERY well indeed if you have a computer at your remote location always up and running with the client on it to tunnel into. Since it is a software VPN product the faster your CPU on your PC is the faster the encrypt/decrypt of data will be.

sigh... Lastly remember that if you do connect via VPN your tunnel is only going to be as fast as the remote locations upload speed. i.e. You might be sitting on a 100mb metro ethernet line at work but if you tunnel home to your 384kbps DSL line at your house then your effective speed to the net is going to be 384kbps plus the slightly longer latency of being on a ipsec/ssl tunnel.
 
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Deathbliss said:
You know I have to say I am disappointing. I come into this forums expecting professional, reputable help. But I get insulted, offended, and consistently misinformed instead. Kiddie porn? Are you serious? When did "Hard Forums" become, "Troll Hard Forums?"

So here we are then. Two people say using a VPN router will do what I want. They agree that the ISP will see some data moving around and that's it. Everyone else seems to say that VPN routers do not work that way. But none of this group clearly explains to me exactly ow they do work. For connecting remotely to one's own network? You don't need a VPN modem for that, even I know that. As I also know that you don't need a VPN modem to use an online VPN service.
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If you spent any time in this section of the forum, you'd know that there are some VERY reputable people in this very thread (even myself only being here a few weeks can already recognize that they are knowledgeable.) Several of those people have told you that your basic idea can not be accomplished.

VPN's can be quite complex, but the basic principle is:

Network A <> VPN A <> Private Tunnel across Internet/WAN <>VPN B <> Network B

You can't be serious because other than telling us "none of your business", how can someone help you when your not even telling people what you need help with. So the best you could do would be, and this would accomplish nothing:

Your Network <> VPN A <> Private Tunnel across Internet/WAN <> VPN B <> Network B <> Internet.

In your case, "network B" would have to be someone you'd have to pay, probably every month and probably on time. You'd now essentially have two ISP's, one that could see what you're doing (and knows who you are) and one that couldn't, instead of just having one ISP that can see what you do.

If you want to pay money to assure yourself a roundabout route to the internet, while affording you absolutely no extra anonymity, introduce complexity and quite likely much slower speeds, then by all means. A VPN creates a private tunnel between two endpoints, that is all. You can't hide on the internet, and regardless of if you go through a VPN or don't, you're on the internet at the end. The internet is a massively public network, that's the idea of it. If you want privacy, you better get off it real quick. What you want is no more possible than going out to Times Square and being invisible.

You also say that you don't need a VPN "modem" for remotely accessing your own network, but in fact that's exactly one of the functions they perform.

And this idea in your original post about "hiding your ip", which has been repeated by others in this thread, is absolutely ridiculous. You may as well say, "I want to hide my Social Security Number from the government." Your ISP gave/assigned you the IP, you can't then hide it from them.
 
Deathbliss said:
You know I have to say I am disappointing. I come into this forums expecting professional, reputable help. But I get insulted, offended, and consistently misinformed instead. Kiddie porn? Are you serious? When did "Hard Forums" become, "Troll Hard Forums?"

So here we are then. Two people say using a VPN router will do what I want. They agree that the ISP will see some data moving around and that's it. Everyone else seems to say that VPN routers do not work that way. But none of this group clearly explains to me exactly ow they do work. For connecting remotely to one's own network? You don't need a VPN modem for that, even I know that. As I also know that you don't need a VPN modem to use an online VPN service.

Well it's obvious I will have to do some more research and find a different forums to post my questions at. For those who have been helpful and courteous here I appreciate it. As for the rest of you I'm ashamed of you. You are entitled to have your opinion's of course. But I never said what I was going to use this for. You assumed and posted based on your opinions, strongly and rudely. I never asked for your opinions, I asked for answers to simple questions. If you acted like this while employed in an IT department you would loose your job.

Opinions, like sexual diseases, should be kept to yourself -
- Deathbliss

P.S. I have no "master plan" (which would imply I'm some evil genius.) I will not buy any VPN router for now. Don't have the money anyway. All I was trying to do was to figure out if it would be worth it to earn the funds to get a VPN router. That's it.
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Read up a few post. I and other still have continued to answer your questions. If you still feel there has been no professional response to what you are seeking then I am not sure anyone can help you, on these forums at least much less anywhere else.

You are apparently trying to spoof your IP. I cant tell you how to do that. Only hackers in movies in hollywood seem to make that apparently easy. And if I am correct it is illegal on an international level to spoof IP addresses.

Can it be done yes, will you get the info to spoof here, no. But we are more than happy to explain what a VPN is and how it works.
 
The way hackers avoid being backtraced is by compromising computers in countries unfriendly to the US where any sort of request for info will be summarily ignored. They actually do this several times and chain the connections bouncing all over the world, botnet nodes are great for this Due to lack of logging for incoming sessions on the vast majority of these compromised nodes you can only trace them while they're actively using that node, and if they have thousands of nodes and only use a fraction of them in a random order the chance that you can find your way back to the source through all of that is slim to none. Even if you can if they install their own malware on a machine in their own house then they get plausible deniability that they were actually the source.

Traditional IP spoofing is as easy as it is ineffective for the vast majority of uses you'd want it for. All you have to do is setup your network stack to replace the source IP with one that isn't yours. Problem with this is it only works on connections that don't require some sort of a handshake or a handshake that can be guessed. Even if you can connect with a spoofed IP it's a one way connection as the internet will try to route the responses to the IP you're spoofing, so while you might be able to send commands you can't see what the response is. You could use this for instance if you knew the username/password of a router that had an ACL to only accept login connections from a certain IP range, assuming you knew the syntax you could spoof a connection to the device and add the IP to a computer you control to the ACL then log in directly.

Obviously both of the above are illegal in most jurisdictions and doesn't really give what the OP wants anyway.

What the OP really needs to do is pull his head far enough out of his ass to read all the posts that say VPN ON THE ROUTER IS ONLY HALF OF THE EQUATION. You still need somebody on the other end to talk to and that person will then be the one able to see ALL of your traffic. Additionally you WILL pay that person in some way for the privalege of them providing that connection, either in real money in a monthly fee, them inspecting your traffic to provide injected adds or DNS redirects, or them waiting a few months then sending you a letter "Hi we noticed you were using our free service for certain illegal activities, and while we're legally obligated to turn you over to the proper authorities we'd like to first offer you our special privacy plan for the low low price of $100/mo to pretend we don't have this info, please note that since we are located in a 3rd world country we actually CAN get you in trouble where if you try to turn us in for blackmail the police here would require you to come in in person at which point they'd break your knee caps because we own them."
 
-Dragon- said:
The way hackers avoid being backtraced is by compromising computers in countries unfriendly to the US where any sort of request for info will be summarily ignored. They actually do this several times and chain the connections bouncing all over the world, botnet nodes are great for this Due to lack of logging for incoming sessions on the vast majority of these compromised nodes you can only trace them while they're actively using that node, and if they have thousands of nodes and only use a fraction of them in a random order the chance that you can find your way back to the source through all of that is slim to none. Even if you can if they install their own malware on a machine in their own house then they get plausible deniability that they were actually the source.

Traditional IP spoofing is as easy as it is ineffective for the vast majority of uses you'd want it for. All you have to do is setup your network stack to replace the source IP with one that isn't yours. Problem with this is it only works on connections that don't require some sort of a handshake or a handshake that can be guessed. Even if you can connect with a spoofed IP it's a one way connection as the internet will try to route the responses to the IP you're spoofing, so while you might be able to send commands you can't see what the response is. You could use this for instance if you knew the username/password of a router that had an ACL to only accept login connections from a certain IP range, assuming you knew the syntax you could spoof a connection to the device and add the IP to a computer you control to the ACL then log in directly.

Obviously both of the above are illegal in most jurisdictions and doesn't really give what the OP wants anyway.
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Thanks Dragon. Now I have a better understanding of why hackers such as Anonymous are hard to track.
 
More importantly, did anyone notice that the OP's handle is somewhat unique? 5 minutes with google lets one find out probably a great deal more about OP than he might like.

I'm not trying to be a jerk or make some kind of weird threat; just point out that there is more to anonymity than hiding your IP.
 
Actually not to be a buzz kill or anything but this is dangerously close to against the forum rules particularly the rule about talking about illegal and how to do illegal things.

But like everyone else has already said the only way to not be traced is to take a pair of scissors and cut the network cable. Even if your connection is covered up even if it is encrypted with 1024-bit encryption the traffic produced will still have a signature that flags it p2p and that is all comcast needs to flag you.

Now a little basic rough cut guide on how cable modems work comcast gives you a modem or you buy modem and tell comcast the mac address of that modem then they white list it on their system and push out the provisioning information to it this is what your cap is set at what dhcp server to use and from there comcast dynamically assigns you a ip address now they keep records like this

lease time 01/01/12 00:00 - 01//02/12 12:00
mac: ab:cd:df:00:00:00:00
ip: 82.123.1.1
account holder: TharSheBlows

Your account information is tied to the hardware address of the modem you have with them if you want to connect to them they have to give your equipment the green light and to do so they have to have your identity if you paid your bill and where you live. Now with those vpn and proxy services your traffic goes like this you:comcast:vpn:website isp:web server->website isp:vpn:comcast:you what those vpn services do is in theory encrypt the stream and decrypt the stream as it passes through the backbones of the internet essentially 100% ripoff.

Traffic is sampled they might just generalize it to ports or protocols used and can look more closely at it from there. These are all things they would be able to know without decrypting the packets all encryption does it make the content your downloading not easily known but they could find it out in other ways. Remember they spend millions of the billions they make on equipment you spend what a couple hundred or $40 a month
p2p: 75%
web:20%
ftp:5%


Cliffs: The internet does not work this way... good night
 
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FYI - while it is really easy to spoof your IP, if you do it means the traffic is one way only and is only slightly useful if the traffic is UDP. Course sending packets out and not getting anything back is really only good for one task. :)
 
tangoseal said:
Not quite. You get a yes and a no.

Your ISP will have no idea what traffic you are passing when using a VPN period. A VPN can only be viewed by the two ends of the connection and only if those ends have the proper encryption decryption algorithms in place.
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it's pretty obvious he's talking about using the the internet connection at his house for internet browsing... after he gets back home through his tunnel, when he goes back to out to surf the web, that's unencrypted and his ISP will see that traffic...
 
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