I should probably try what the O.P. did as I also have an ASUS router with Merlin. However, in my case, I have a Synology NAS and I set up VPN on that and use that server as my VPN. I have a certificate-based sign-in through a single port on the router.

I use a Public VPN service when I’m out and about and then connect to my VPN when I need to do stuff on my network, Like syncing my Joplin notes.

If you’re paying them, why do they need to know your location to accept it? We’re in a capitalist system. Money is money.

Always on although my Phone VPN recently has failed to start up automatically or has shut down randomly lately and I got to get that fixed.

My reasons are just privacy. I’m not using it to get around regional restrictions. Additionally, it helps when I want to use a public Wi-Fi, especially if it doesn’t have any passports on it.

I will not connect to public wifi without VPN.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody.

Sheep will always be sheep.

Citizen enforces his own right to the Fourth Amendment and is prosecuted by the government for not letting them try to find incriminating evidence on him. For something. Maybe. Because he looks suspicious.

I hope that lawyer gets it thrown out. I’m not holding my breath. We’ve gone so far into fascism I’m not sure it’ll take anything less than violence to end it.

they generally give you the option to avoid tracking. now, whether they actually follow your desire is another issue.

Consider getting a Dell 2 in 1 and putting Linux on it. I have one and it works quite well as a tablet With gnome and the keyboard is attached. you can switch to touch pad for any wonky touch screen behavior.

It was awesome, so awesome that I later upgraded to the Amiga when that came out. Amiga OS CLI was similar to Unix. So I had Linux before Linux, with a multitasking OS, stereo sound, and 4096 color game console.

I actually lived near the Commodore United States headquarters and I did a brief internship in high school there.

Well, I thought the thing on Commodore OS I saw just today was pretty cool. So I guess I can’t pan this too much.

Yeah, I was wrong. It was available free early on when it was pre-release.

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Please do not feed the trolls.

That’s like being surprised adults play with legos. Same thing except it’s digital.

Bite your tongue, it’s Tux Cart! 😁

Yes. This is a classic case of a large company buying an open source product that was specifically designed to get children to be creative and build their own worlds and then deciding that such usage is illegal unless you pay loads of money.

A perfect snapshot of enshitification.

No, do your own work. I will give you a hint though. Look up session attacks and certificate hijacking.

It is not peer to peer. You are connecting to somebody else’s Wi-Fi router to get to the internet and you go through their ISP.

So, a very simple man in the middle of attack would to be put up other Wi-Fi connections that look legitimate but are in fact somebody’s laptop hanging out in your location and now your communication is entirely visible, unless you’re using a vpn.

Hackers are quite skilled at finding ways to get around TLS, and it is only a site specific interaction that is protected. Everything else is transparent.

https://www.cyberly.org/en/how-do-vpns-work-over-public-networks/index.html

I know almost all that is true. The ISP cannot see your traffic know where it’s coming from or it’s going to nor act as a man in the middle.

On public, unsecured networks, vpns block man in the middle attacks.

Basically vpns are not silver bullets. They cover a category of privacy and security. And one can do research to find out if they trust that VPN, while usually here in America we don’t have much choice on our isp, and Verizon is one of the worst offenders along with Cox, Comcast, Charter… Well, basically everybody.

How do you think they block bittorrent or send you copyright notices?

I personally do a whole bunch of other things on my side to deal with the problems that VPN doesn’t: ad blockers, browser obfuscaters, Leak Detectors, Etc…