[chewz]

People from the First World have no idea that porn and politically sensitive content is blocked in so many countries. Youtube is heavily censored - you won't be able to watch Charlie Chaplin movies or some lectures on Greek democracy in Thailand.

Also this censoring is poorly executed by some ISPs via simple DNS hijacking. As a result your connection is slow and with terrible jitter.

As for the proverbial airport/cafe WiFi - using VPN is not about not beeing tracked - it is about blocking easy access to your laptops filesystem by attacker on the same network.

Also if you do not trust commercial VPN provider just set up your own.

[chewz]

> Thailand’s Junta Got Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ Blocked From YouTube YouTube caved to requests from Thailand's military-backed government to block a Thai-subtitled clip from the renowned political satire.

https://www.indiewire.com/2017/06/great-dictator-blocked-tha...

[snazz]

How would an attacker access your laptop’s filesystem if you’re connected to the same network? I can’t think of any way that would work unless your operating system is horribly misconfigured (maybe to make the entire filesystem a network drive?). And how would a VPN protect you here?

[chewz]

Do you think every single machine/local network access is properly configured, especially with Windows? Not once I have been browsing Point-Of-Sale files in a cafe where I have been using WiFi cause someone did not separate networks. Just an example.

[JetSpiegel]

> unless your operating system is horribly misconfigured

So, Windows with (default?) settings?

[najra]

What would you consider the best/easiest way to setup your own?

[martinraag]

Streisand [https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand] automates the setup of several different VPN services on cloud providers.

[chewz]

I am running strongswan[1] with IKEv2 on cheap (10$ per year) VPS in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Or you can google for how to set up your own VPN on AWS/Google Cloud free tier.

[1] https://wiki.strongswan.org/projects/strongswan/wiki/UserDoc...

[2] https://medium.com/@tatianaensslin/how-to-create-a-free-pers...

[auslander]

IKEv2 is solid, fast and secure. And major OSes have native VPN clients, including iOS - no need to use 3rd party client software.