VPN Explanation and Privacy Concerns

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What networkingMy isVPN aDoes

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• Allow complexyour areadevice(s) to connect to my services.
• Allow my services to connect to your device(s).

What My VPN Doesn't

• Allow other users of study. While athe VPN itself is simple to explain,see thator assumes you already have a fundamental understanding of several computer networking concepts. This page assumes you do not have these fundamental understandings. With this in mind, this page is purposefully incorrect and over-simplisticinteract with itsyour explanationsdevice(s).
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• Route theany interestinternet-bound oftraffic.
  
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understanding. Do not use this page as a factual/educational resource. For further reading, visit Wikipedia's article on VPNs.

Understanding a virtual private network is actually fairly simple, but by better understanding the technology you may begin to ask questions about privacy and security implications.

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ZeroTier

I utilize software called ZeroTier isto acreate companymy thatVPN. producesZeroTier peer-to-peerprovides several advantages over more traditional VPN software whichand, wemost useimportantly, is arguably the easiest for connectingyou to ourset services.up Whileon Iyour willdevice. oftenAll referyou have to thedo softwareis as ZeroTier,install the softwareprogram, itselfenter ismy technicallynetwork calledID, ZeroTierand One.done. ZeroTierNo providesscary menus, no fifty-step setup process. Just a web-basedfew controlclicks/taps paneland foryou're mydone.

ZeroTier, like most other VPN networksolutions, whereencrypts Iall can configure access to the network and customize firewall rules.

ZeroTier One

The VPN client itself is what you will interact with and it comestraffic in twotransit. parts:This ameans user-interfacethat (UI)even program and the actual VPN connection service. Whenever you interact with ZeroTier,if you are actuallyon interactingan withinsecure thatnetwork, UIall programtraffic andgoing to my services will be encrypted.

While ZeroTier has the capability to route all of your internet traffic through the VPN, my network is not theset up to do this since I have no interest in seeing your internet-bound traffic or having it go through my IP address. My VPN itself.only Theroutes VPNtraffic going to my services. Your internet-bound traffic is rununtouched. by a background program (service in Windows). From the UI program, you can connect/disconnect from the network which essentially enables/disables the background program, but it is important to understand that these are two separate things.

Firewall

My VPN has a fairly strict firewall configuration. The actual, raw firewall configuration can be found on the wiki, but a summarized version is provided below. For any given piece of data sent on the VPN, its details are matched with the rules below in order from top to bottom. The moment a successful match is made, the rule is processed and no further rules are considered. For example, if a piece of data is web traffic and its headed to my wiki then it will be allowed. If it's web traffic but its trying to go to another client on the network then it will be dropped.

Rule	Protocol	From	To
Allow	ARP	Everyone	Everyone
Allow	Anything	My Servers	Everyone
Allow	ICMP	Everyone	My Servers
Allow	Various Ports	Everyone	My Various Servers
Drop	Anything	Everyone	Everyone

Privacy Concerns