It’s not a VPN service in the usual sense, and does not allow you to change locations, and they also have a mapping of IP addresses and the served geographical users.

I also assume being a service that requires an expensive device and that the browsing happen through Safari limits the abuse somewhat.

It’s better than most VPNs, but the amount of Cloudflare challenges I get is really annoying.

It’s a little weird because Apple has device attestation which is run via Cloudflare and Fastly. You’d think that would get you around the challenges, but that doesn’t seem to happen.

Only one I have issues with is Ticketmaster, other than that I forget that it’s even on all the time

My bank app forces me to turn my VPN off. I’m not going to change my bank over that and I imagine most others do the same anyway or will eventually. I imagine many sites and services will just continue go “we’re gonna break this thing you need until you turn the vpn off.”

thank you. that is a really good point. the economic incentive! i will keep using mine!

Check reddit.com/appeals some time after creating an account. If you are auto shadow banned, you can appeal.

i can live without reddit and hackernews. i can't live without online banking, bill paying, insurance, healtchare portals, etc.

it is funny i have been probing HN for years, and i've found a number of cases when everything is normal, but i check the account from another device and it isn't there, or is free of posts despite having made many. yet i would do the same if i was an admin trying to keep a walled-garden free of trolls.

How about not using Reddit at all? It's awful.

A better metaphor would be that Tor and VPNs are like wearing a mask in public. It's obvious that you're trying to be anonymous, but you're still wearing a mask, so no one knows who you are.

You may be denied entry to certain establishments, but some of the bouncers don't block all masks and if you're persistent with changing your mask (Tor or VPN exit node), there's a good chance you'll get in. CTRL+SHIFT+L works on Tor Browser to change your circuit. The linked article blocks Tor, but after pressing CTRL+SHIFT+L a few times, I was able to read it.

For the sites that don't let me view them via Tor, I can install FoxyProxy and try some IPs from the free public lists. Lots of sites that block Tor don't block these IPs, although it's a bit of a pain. Another option is to load an archived version of the site on archive.org or archive.md (or .is or the various different TLDs it uses).

As for HN - it sometimes gives a "Sorry." if you try to access a certain comment directly, but after a few tries it works. This account was created over Tor and I've only accessed it through Tor. I think my first comment was dead and someone vouched for it, but now my comments appear instantly.

I've heard that banking sites don't work over Tor, but I haven't had a need to use Tor for banking, as the bank already knows who I am pretty well.

Most of the big social media sites don't allow Tor, but if I wanted to create a fake account, I'd most likely buy a residential proxy.

So it's not that bad, considering what you get from Tor (and with some VPNs, depending on your threat model) - no tracking, anonymity and so on.

there was a talk about this at defcon maybe 7 years ago how even going to a tor entry node could get you disappeared in türkiye. same in china (it was something about ethically exploring networks in authoritarian regimes where even pinging a chinese address from the united states could get someone arrested... methinks harvard student was presenting it?)

> less likely to visit the site in the future or view it with contempt and abandon it a soon

> fiddling with a VPN is often more hassle than its worth and its just left always on.

Not to saying this is wholly preferable, but I have often found this to be beneficial for me in that it tends to deter me from wasting disproportionate amounts of time on crap web content (either that, or HN wins over that remaining browsing time when it's not blocking me :)

From a datacenter IP, if the IP address is not shared with other users, you still get blocked from sites like Reddit, but you don't get most annoying captchas (for example on Google).

Yes and No. The internet sees it as a datacenter ip and some will degrade the experience based on that. Other are more strict and use a service like ipinfo.io (the op) to know exactly which Ip are used by a VPN provider and block access based on that list.