Comment on Does anyone use a VPN to subvert the Netflix household device fencing?
NotKyloRen@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
I’ve done this. I have a Google TV Stick. If Netflix starts preventing people from opening their app when it detects a VPN (in Android), then you can do what I did and run the VPN on the routers themselves. In my case it’s ASUS routers on both ends, and they support Wireguard natively.
The benefit to doing it this way is that neither Netflix nor the Google TV itself are aware they’re on a VPN. The ASUS routers I use have a feature called VPN Fusion, where you can put different clients on or off of different VPN connections.
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
If you have an Android phone you’ve probably noticed a prompt at some point asking for your permission to transmit precise location information and enable wifi scanning. Every Android phone sends wifi SSIDs and MAC addresses along with its GPS location back to Google. The combination of all that information is IMO as unique as a fingerprint. They can use that along with signal strength of each AP in the area to determine your TV’s location with precision. (Google used to allow apps like Maps to be used with wifi scanning turned off, but no more.)
Although your Google TV can’t tell it’s on a VPN directly, Google can still pinpoint your TV’s physical location using their database of SSIDs and MAC addresses, and if they want to they can determine you’re using a VPN by comparing that to the expected location of your IP address. There probably aren’t enough people doing this right now to make it worth the trouble to detect your VPN, but IMO it’s just a matter of time before they decide it is.
I also expect that Google sells that information to every company willing to pay for it, so almost every single wifi enabled device can be precisely located if it can transmit data to the Internet.
We live in a scary time.
Seefoo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Interesting info. I switched to grapheneos recently, which allows you to disable a lot of that stuff. Combining that with WG, should make a solid way to share