VPN how much does it hide

[royarcher]

Here (in Australia) we have just recently been forced on to a new nation wide initiative our excuse of a government call the NBN ( national broadband network) . It is supposed to provide us with a faster internet speed,and it does.Job done you think but no not yet.Now the NBN company wants to charge people who stream media like Netflix and the like an added charge truly making us the joke of the century.Ok enough bitching my question is how well does a VPN hide our use, ? if we use a VPN can they still know that we are streaming say Netflix.? Also what about smart DNS proxy services can they tell what we are using our internet for while using this service to stream media ? The worst thing about this is we all (Australian's) have to use the NBN if we want internet as the NBN act's like a go between, between us and our chosen internet provides.Man that just makes my blood boil.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Provided your VPN client is setup correctly and all the streaming traffic is going through the VPN (including DNS) then there is no way your ISP can identify the type of traffic as anything other the "encrypted". But it depends on what they are charging for. Are they extra charging based on the destination IP address (i.e. Netflix), or maybe traffic volume over time?

 

[royarcher]

Provided your VPN client is setup correctly and all the streaming traffic is going through the VPN (including DNS) then there is no way your ISP can identify the type of traffic as anything other the "encrypted". But it depends on what they are charging for. Are they extra charging based on the destination IP address (i.e. Netflix), or maybe traffic volume over time?

No the charge from the internet provides is unlimited download on all there plans then you pick the speed you want e.g. 25/50 or 100 mbs and you pay accordingly.It's good to know they can't tell what I am doing with it.I really don't think that the NBN will get the green light for this new charge but its a worry especially when the government owns the NBN company

 

[royarcher]

No the charge from the internet provides is unlimited download on all there plans then you pick the speed you want e.g. 25/50 or 100 mbs and you pay accordingly.It's good to know they can't tell what I am doing with it.I really don't think that the NBN will get the green light for this new charge but its a worry especially when the government owns the NBN company

Talk about monopoly

 

[ColinTaylor]

It's good to know they can't tell what I am doing with it.

Of course it could depend on how authoritarian they were. Whilst they can't see the traffic inside the VPN tunnel they know it's a VPN connection. So they could say "VPN = bad" therefore we're going to block/throttle it.

Netflix are legally obliged to block streaming to other countries, so their policy is to block VPNs that are being used to get around the geo-blocks. It's just that they're not particularly effective at it.

 

[royarcher]

Of course it could depend on how authoritarian they were. Whilst they can't see the traffic inside the VPN tunnel they know it's a VPN connection. So they could say "VPN = bad" therefore we're going to block/throttle it.

Netflix are legally obliged to block streaming to other countries, so their policy is to block VPNs that are being used to get around the geo-blocks. It's just that they're not particularly effective at it.

 

[royarcher]

Yes I know that's what worries me (re government) I don't think that the streaming services take blocking to seriously these days.They were more effective at blocking in 2016/17 than now .The problem that Netflix found was that rather than pay for Australian Netflix people were just cancelling their subscripts in droves so I think these days they just want to be seen to be doing something but don't want to be terribly effective at it.The same thing for amazon prime.In fact whenever I get the dredded error message,, turn your proxy off and try again,,all I need to do is swap locations and all is good again