I have seen the following argument (summarized here as I understand it):
Despite the promises that VPN providers make, it is known that they will often monitor your traffic, collect logs, might share your information, and will collaborate with law enforcement. Renting a VPS and running an OpenVPN server on it and using that as your VPN, is better - because you have full control over the logs. Let’s assume we trust the VPS provider to adhere to their TOS and privacy policy.
To talk about a concrete typical usecase, I am thinking about how this applies to downloading illegal torrents. In my current view, the only scenario in which the self-hosted option makes sense is if you pay for hosting using crypto and reveal no personal information during the process. Otherwise using a VPS would be virtually the same as downloading it through your ISP - and in some cases even worse - because the VPS provider might be more easily pushed to throwing you under the bus if abuse is reported since this might be a TOS violation. On the other hand, a VPN provider has a much larger motivation to protect users against this because the way that users perceive these protections is fundamental to their business model.
So, is there a reason to self-host a VPN instead of using a VPN provider? If so, should the VPS be acquired anonymously, or are there ways to protect yourself while using a provider that you gave your personal information to?
Thank you. VoIP is something that I have vaguely heard about but have never looked into - maybe I should, it sounds interesting.
From this thread I have gotten a few ideas. It would make sense to host a VPN from my raspberry pi at home. The network at my university is monitored in a personalized manner, for example, so I could route most of my connections through my raspberry pi to avoid snooping. The university network is good for accessing papers though, so I need to learn how to specify that the browser should access academic papers through the uni network directly and everything else via VPN.
Voice over IP. If you ever had a voice call on your phone that wasn’t through your mobile phone number, like Messenger, Telegram, Jitsi, Discord, TeamSpeak, Mumble etc.
Yeah, funnily enough through lots of mobile phone network operators block SIP VoIP calls while allowing WhatsApp etc through.
Ah, thank you. I thought that it meant a way to simulate having a phone in the sense that one is able to have a “phone number” associated with a voice call program.