I think I get the picture. I don’t specialize in VPNs to say what difference there is between plugin free mods vs paid subscription methods.

If you want to give the pay for privacy model a try, Tunnel Bear has a free service that is bandwidth limited, which one of my sources had uses for.

Generally, this was one guy who had security clearance sold to the Chinese, plus his other info, via the OPM “Leak”. He freezes his credit, so the Chinese can’t setup bank accounts with his info, and uses a VPN, like TUnnel Bear, to encrypt his info so that crackers can’t just lift it from open port WiFi or by decrypting data transfer via broken encryption keys.

Ymarskar:

I’m pretty sure that nobody else is interested in this, but if you’re curious, here’s what happened.

I have an aversion to internet spying and tracking, but I’m also cheap and a little lazy. Consequently, I generally use either the Epic Privacy Browser or the Hoxx VPN proxy. That’s a plug-in or add-on that works with either Chrome or Firefox, and maybe some of their clones. Both the Epic browser and the Hoxx plug-in are free. Neither appreciably slows my browser speed.

At the time that I wrote my first comment to Neo’s post, I was using Epic. Clicking on the link to the Wall Street Journal article resulted in a page displaying a message that a subscription is required. Usually a Google or Bing search, done in Epic, includes a cached option in the search result. This feature allows me to read the article I’ve sought. More recently, cached results aren’t included, and this was one of those times. Epic’s proxy server routes their internet traffic through Digital Ocean servers in New York. Despite being in New York, I expect that Google can recognize the traffic as coming from a proxy server.

The Hoxx VPN proxy plug-in permits the user to choose from a variety of servers scattered around the world. In this case, I happened to be using a Swedish server when I tried to connect to the article cited by Neo. Oddly enough, it displayed just fine. No blocking. No need to look for a cached version.

I have a little bit of experience on the margins of IT, but I have no formal training in the field; and, as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. At any rate, I don’t have enough of it to fully explain what happened.

By proxy, I wonder if you are talking about Virtual Private Networks. They may have that problem if the server you are routing from is considered in a different country or language.

That’s a good one. Keep poking them in the eye with that one, they need that pain to remember what they sold their souls for.

That’s something I throw in the face of the enviroMarxists every chance I get, where it produces predictable gnashing of teeth and howls of outrage.

DDT was banned by a Republican, William Ruckelshaus, head of Nixon’s brand new EPA, in a purely political move, overruling the EPA’s own judge, and despite DDT’s spectacular success in nearly wiping out mosquito-born malaria and lack of any evidence that it was dangerous.

Here’s a good recounting of the whole sordid story:
MALARIA VICTIMS: HOW ENVIRONMENTALIST BAN ON DDT CAUSED 50 MILLION DEATHS

Thanks for the update on linking to the Wall Street Journal article.

It turns out I need to turn off my proxy server or Google won’t show me the article. A tricky way for them to enforce their regime of user tracking.

Oh well. I do what I can to defeat their totalitarian goals, but I’m not a purist, so I read the article. Towards the end, it also mentions the trial program in Brazil. Apologies for the repetition.

I don’t have a WSJ subscription, but I got to the article by Googling the title.