I have tailscale setup at my home computer so when I’m at work I can use their WiFi but still be able to stream video. My question is people always say to use a vpn on public WiFi to make your data secure. Is using my home computer through tailscale as safe as a PIA VPN on a public WiFi network? Thank you!
Only if you route all your traffic through your Tailscale exit node.
If you used tailscale as an exit node then all your traffic would be sent to your home and it would exit the internet there.
By doing this, all the network you are on will not have any idea what you are doing on the internet other than connecting to a VPN.
If you are doing something you don’t want traced back to you ( downloads for example) this would not help as all the traffic will show up as coming from your house.
I would suggest you do some research as to what benefits a VPN really provides. If your computer is vulnerable and you put it on a VPN it’s still vulnerable, just from a different IP address.
If I connect to my bank over HTTPS, and neither my bank or my computer are compromised then the traffic is secure no matter what. Someone can run a packet sniffer and watch every packet and it won’t do them any good.
When you look at all the people who say to use VPN, you will notice that they all get paid to tell you this.
Check out this video to get some idea what I’m talking about:
https://youtu.be/FMScV1Mkaok?si=r8ZNjTv89QWP-GJM
“people” don’t always say that, the advertisements for VPN providers say that.
The safety benifits advertised by VPN companies are viturally zero. Sure, they can allow for foreign Netflix access, which might be worth doing, but if you are doing your banking on a public WiFi, you are not significanly more “at risk” than doing the same thing from your home internet connection - modern web brower security is pretty bullet-proof in each case.
If you are worried that your ISP is tracking your online activities, how confident can you be that your VPN provider is not doing the same?
With that said, Tailscale provides the same or better level of security as other VPN providers.
I’m using Tailscale on my network and have my Apple TV act as my exit node. I was traveling in Europe recently and wanted to access Spectrum via their app. But when I would launch the app from my iPad or iPhone it would block me telling me that this app cannot be used with VPN, I’m curious to how they defect Tailscale.
If you are trying to punch through a work firewall by using a VPN, you best be careful. Most businesses have policies against use of personal VPNs on their internal network and IT can easily identify attempts to use one. Obviously on cellular data or public wifi, this wouldn’t be an issue.
I would say its for different use.
You would not use tailscale for masking your location to a random country. (Unless you use the Mulvad addon as exit node)
You would not use an commersial vpn like Nord to access your plex.
The technology is the same tho.
Yes that is how I have it set up thank you for the confirmation!!
Is there anything else to do (in Windows) besides selecting the Exit Node in the tray application?
I am planning to use this when abroad, to watch certain series in a local streaming service which is not available in all countries.
That will work, right?
Can you please explain in more detail? What will become the exit node? His NAS? But it’s still inside his local network which is not really improving the privacy. In what sense is adding an exit node improving the anonymity actually?
But if your exit node is just your home network it is still not good.
Thank you I will check out the video later when I get home but that does make sense. If downloading items I don’t want found I still use PIA I just ideally don’t want my work to see what I do on my phone.
Try disabling location services before launching the app. It seems likely the Spectrum app is using your devices gps location data as another factor to determine location along with your Apple TV’s IP. Googletv also does this.
You are the second person I’ve heard of using AppleTV as exit node. How do you do that? Does it work with Samsung TV? Is there a config in tailscale that lets you specify ANY device on your home LAN as exit node or does it need a tailscale client?
It’s completely fine to use it for either of those reasons, and the best thing is, you can have both of these cases into one VPN connection.
I want to mask my IP at all times and keep a connection to my home network at all times. With Tailscale I can achive both. I have access to all devices at home and mask my IP via ProtonVPN because of the exit node feature Tailscale provides.
Add DNS so it goes through the exit node too. Or am I confusing plain wireguard?
He’s not asked for anonymity, he’s asked for security on an open WiFi network.
If you read the OP, it still fulfills the need.
If your goal is to limit what work sees you doing, then I would agree that this is a good use case. My frustration is everyone shilling 29.95 a month VPN services and claiming you can use them to find cheaper airline tickets ( you can’t) and that your windows XP computer will now be safe to put on the internet (it won’t be)
There are valid use cases for VPN, but it’s not a need for all traffic.
Most web traffic is through https so they can see what IP (site) you’re visiting, but not the information itself. If you don’t even want them to have any idea what you’re doing, TS or another VPN, configured correctly, will prevent them from seeing any packet data or routing.