[nugzbunny]

I’ve recently become interested in hosting my own VPN, due to the amount of websites that require me to disable my VPN when visiting their site.

I imagine those websites block IP ranges of popular VPN providers.

Am I right in thinking that hosting my own VPN would resolve this issue?

[nneonneo]

Yep! It’s very easy: rent any cloud server, stick a WireGuard/OpenVPN/ShadowSocks container on it, download the config, and you’re done. Since you’re not interested in compute, you can probably use the tiniest cloud server available to save costs.

I pay approximately 50¢/month for such a setup, and you can probably do it for free forever if you decide to be slightly abusive about it. However, be aware that you don’t really gain any real privacy since you’re effectively just changing your IP address; a real VPN provides privacy by mixing your traffic with that of a bunch of other clients.

Some services will also block cloud ranges to prevent e.g. geoblock evasion, although you’ll see a lot less blocking compared to a real VPN service or Tor.

[wyclif]

I'm interested in doing this, and also running ZNC because I still use IRC and need to run a bouncer, &c.

[neurostimulant]

It's super easy with wg-easy: https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy

[wyclif]

Thanks! I was unaware of this project until now.