If you’re joining scambaiting you might hear many people talk about VPNs and even suggest you use one. But what is a VPN in general?
VPN stands for “virtual private network” – a service that protects your internet connection and privacy online. It creates an encrypted tunnel for your data, protects your online identity by hiding your IP address, and allows you to use public Wi-Fi hotspots safely[1].
For scambaiters, we use it to disguise our real IP address with one borrowed from the VPN service provider. Since your internet traffic will be routed through that tunnel, any websites or internet services you’re using will only see the IP address of the VPN provider, not the real IP address which would give away your approximate location as well as the name of the internet provider you’re using. That is important for general privacy – you don’t want to give scammers information about your real-life such as your real name or your real location, but also for privacy regarding certain more dangerous scammers. It already happened at least twice that scammers seek legal action against scambaiters. An example of this is the lawsuit in 2017 by the infamous scam call center MyPhoneSupport and its parent company ConsumerSoft against several parties, among others the scambaiter and admin of the forum scammer.info[2]. Or another lawsuit in 2020 by American Automotive Solutions, Inc against our scambaiting platform BobRTC.tel as well as 50 individual scambaiters[3]. Luckily, none of these lawsuits were successful but that’s also because none of the scambaiters could be identified. That’s why using a VPN is crucial – at least when you do scambaiting on a more professional scale and also bait companies or industries that are known to retaliate. The drawback of a VPN is usually the reduced internet speed and increased latency, but that varies between free and paid VPNs with paid VPNs usually being significantly faster to the point where you can’t even see a difference in the speed you have without VPN enabled.
There are a lot of different VPN providers out there. You might have heard about many brands being advertised on several YouTube channels but you don’t know which one is the best? Let me give you a list of the best VPNs that I recommend using.
NordVPN
It is probably the most known VPN provider – and that’s for a reason. NordVPN is a very fast VPN, even faster since they have implemented the WireGuard protocol which increases the speed compared to OpenVPN protocol which most standard VPNs use. NordVPN calls their WireGuard implementation NordLynx[5]. Generally, you won’t notice even that you have the VPN enabled which I feel is a huge benefit in comparison to the free VPNs on the market which can be quite slow, to the point that you only enable them when needed and then forget to enable them when you need them. With NordVPN, it’s the exact opposite. You enable auto-connect in the settings which will automatically start and connect the VPN when you boot up the computer. Then you’re safe and can forget about it since you don’t even notice the difference in speed.
NordVPN was in the news in 2019 for an incident, where a 3rd party server used by NordVPN and two other VPN providers has been breached and the possibility had been there that the server could have been manipulated to log the internet traffic of the users[6]. Luckily, there have been no reports about the abuse. In response, NordVPN published their roadmap for increased security which includes security audits by known cybersecurity firms, bug bounty for 3rd party penetration testers, and diskless servers (RAM-only) which means no data is permanently stored and if the power is removed, there will be no data left[7]. That is in addition to the already promised No-Log-Policy which means that NordVPN does not track your internet behavior, like which websites you visit[8]. These measures make NordVPN one of the top VPN providers when it comes to proven security.
You can see all features of NordVPN on their website here.
As I’m sponsored by NordVPN, you can grab a special deal using my special link or coupon code “neep” and get over 70% off and 4 months for free (offer may change at any time).
External Sources:
[1] https://nordvpn.com/what-is-a-vpn
[2] https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/DocumentList?docketId=7x7SkYpv7Gf5Mj9cLC14GQ==&display=all
[3] https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/35916736/American_Automotive_Solutions,_Inc_v_Agruss_Law_Firm_et_al
[4] https://nordvpn.com/what-is-a-vpn/
[5] https://support.nordvpn.com/General-info/1438624372/What-is-NordLynx.htm
[6] https://nordvpn.com/blog/official-response-datacenter-breach/
[7] https://nordvpn.com/blog/security-plan/
[8] https://nordvpn.com/features/strict-no-logs-policy/