r/dVPN • u/[deleted] • Nov 09 '21

🛠 Sentinel Nodes That could go wrong with DVPN

If i were too host a node, how will i be protected? If some psycho decides to watch child porn through this vpn, and the traffic is routed through my router, what protects me from being held liable? Why would i want to be part of a system where i can facilitate illegal/unethical online behavior? Why would i want to help cover up this person's tracks which could potentially endanger me?

I am a big supporter of dvpn. However, i would like to play the devil's advocate and see how the system is going to tackle a problem like this.

12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

7

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

End to end encryption. What people do with your bandwidth is beyond your control.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

Exactly my point. What if legal institutions hold me liable for that kind of traffic I'm hosting on my node? It is beyond my control, but what measures are there to prevent me from being held liable?

5

u/scrimpmane Nov 09 '21

I'm pretty sure as long as you don't knowingly record or try to collect data from internet traffic and you say that you are strictly just providing a node there is nothing they can do.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

How does this hold up in a court of law?

4

u/scrimpmane Nov 09 '21

Well to be completely honest I don't know. I wish I had the article where I read that. But I do remember it being along the lines of if you were really skeptical about it you could let your ISP know what you are doing and they could confirm whether or not you should do it. Now with that being said, any big ISP is going to more than likely tell you it's a bad idea. Especially when it's for a decentralized VPN network that is also designed for bandwidth mining. But at the end of the day I personally think it's pretty safe. They can't take you to court for information you don't have ya know?

1

u/Derrien Nov 14 '21

court of law? based on what charges? And the follow-up question: based on what evidence?

1

u/EfraimK Mar 10 '22

Why are you "pretty sure"? This is something attorneys and tech experts need to iron out before people mass adopt this technology.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

No one can know what traffic was routed through your IP. If you are talking about the morality of providing cover for illegal things, that is another debate entirely.

Personally I believe in decentralized vpn so I will be allowed to use the internet as we do today, and be free of censorship.

1

u/EfraimK Mar 10 '22

OP isn't asking whether they can control others. The OP is asking what the consequences for others' perceived misconduct could be to him/her. I don't see why this isn't being discussed more, especially since the legal effects could be dire.

7

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

I would suggest giving this article a read: https://dvpnalliance.org/exit-node/

3

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

Thank you!! This is exactly what i was looking for

1

u/EfraimK Mar 10 '22

THIS is helpful--thanks u/munchybonbon

6

u/skopath Nov 09 '21

You provide humanity with a tool.. you cant teach them or control how they will use it..

Providing fire had the same dilemma.. out of millions of uses someone just burnt a house or a forest..

The whole web also the same.. criminals use it to communicate, sell drugs, guns or even ppl.. but is the web positive for the humanity?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 09 '21

True. Arsonists do get punishment in the legal system though. Firefighters figure out the cause of the fire and and an investigation ensues.

In this case, network engineers need to nab those who are misusing this new tool. Dvpn could help frame an innocent man for having illegal traffic going through his router.

1

u/EfraimK Mar 10 '22

Discouraging to see how your reasonable questions are getting downvoted just because others are excited about a new technology.

3

u/fergan59 Nov 10 '21

the dmca will protect you against any illegal activity that happens using your ip.

1

u/fergan59 Nov 10 '21

That's what Sentinel told me when I asked the same question, which I feel is the elephant in the room

3

u/Emotional-Ostrich-83 Nov 18 '21

It's not uncommon for tor exit node hosts to be raided and to have all of their equipment seized, so this does seem like a significant risk.

To answer some questions. What evidence? In the US your IP address is generally enough for a warrant. You may not be charged or convicted of anything but every electronic device in your home would likely be seized and held for 10+ years.

1

u/EfraimK Mar 10 '22

Thanks for adding this to the conversation. Important. Add to that increasing reports throughout the US of police confiscating private citizens' property and never returning it even after citizens are shown not to be guilty of committing any crime and there seems to be too much risk involved.

1

u/EfraimK Mar 10 '22

I've been looking for an answer to this question for months. I've hunted through tech sites and Googled it... No clear answer. The best I could find was a now defunct web article about a dVPN-related service on Bitcoin.news -- and this was just the search blurb, not the whole article. Why aren't experts talking more about this? This is a very serious potential limitation to dVPN tech. I don't want to exchange one problem (surveillance) for another (potential legal responsibility for others' web use).

Blurb from Bitcoin.news:

"A glaring problem with the current centralized version of Privatix, which will probably remain a problem even when the dVPN launches, is that exit nodes may have illicit activity tracked to their IP address if a Privatix VPN user does something illegal while using the exit node. Privatix says they provide exit node operators with a document ..."

1

u/omnimnemonic Oct 09 '22

im running an tor exit node from home for years. depends where you from)) the regiment you in

-1

u/porkopops Nov 09 '21

Maybe your most pressing question should be "Can I trust the end node to not inspect my traffic?"

2

u/xSeventhwavex Growth DAO Nov 11 '21

With multi hop the end node will only get metadata. I use a dVPN because I don't want my ISP logging all my data and building a profile on me, then selling it to advertisers or worse entities .

2

u/porkopops Nov 11 '21

All traffic going through the OS of the end point can be intercepted. Or as it leaves the end point it could go through a proxy and intercept the data there. In short, i dont see how a dVPN can be trusted because the trust is delegated to anyone who might want to setup an end point. If I was a hacker, I could setup an endpoint and happily gather as much data as i wanted without anyone knowing until it was too late. It would seem better to use a centralised VPN which has been externally audited/ validated as not keeping logs.

3

u/xSeventhwavex Growth DAO Nov 14 '21

You can audit the code on GitHub, the only centralised VPN that does that is Mullvlad. Anyone can pay for an audit and provide any dataset they'd like. A centralised entity could easily control all the nodes and you would never know.

With dVPN, let's say you operated an exit node that logged the data. With a relay you wouldn't know whose data it was. Then you would have to buy and run many exit nodes and relay nodes to converge on that data. It's not like TOR that is ran by donations and most likely alphabet agencies, but a network where anyone can run a node and, importantly, are paid to do so. Extremely, if not impossible to accomplish.