Proton VPN and Portmaster breaking each other?
Proton VPN and Portmaster breaking each other?
Sometimes they work, and sometimes I have to close one or the other, or every connection gets blocked. I haven't blocked anything from Proton VPN on Portmaster - just some Windows services and domains that don't break the internet when Proton VPN is off.
Do you have any idea what may be happening or how I can discover what's going on?
- both on the free plan.
Edit: I might have figured it out. It seems like they are fighting over DNS resolving. When I removed the DNS settings from Portmaster (it's already set in the browser anyway), it started working again :)
I don't use Proton VPN, but Portmaster, which apart is FLOSS, only it's SPN is paid OpenSource. Well, Portmaster is the best Firewall and traffic monitoring app out there, but depending of which filtering you use, it can be even very brutal, and enough to block some server conections which Proton use. I saw it blocking big corporations, with the result that I can't even access none of their services, even without VPN. I think that you must see which site is blocked from Proton and except it from the filtering, or pay some bucks and use the SPN, which is anyway better, with it you can use multiple tunnels depending on the sites you want to visit. Or using an proxy extension, like VPNLY or CyberGhost, which are free, without limits, no logs and private. The Portmaster anyway avoid that web pages can sneak any tracking crap in your PC.
Every site was breaking, looking like they were fighting over DNS resolving, and I guess that was the problem. Once I removed Portmaster's DNS settings, they started working together. Well, I have DNS set in the browser anyway, and I'm using Portmaster just to monitor those non-browser connections. Using Windows, it's crazy that on startup you already have like 9 pages of random Windows processes trying to call home and tell them what you're doing lol
A lot of those call-home processes can be blocked with your .host file. Additionally, PrivacySexy, WPD, and or O&OShutUp can help strip out all the crap. I hear a lot of people saying that updates to Windows revert the changes. I'm not sure if that is relevant to whether you are using Home or Pro. I use W10Pro and I have not seen any of my updates revert any of my changes. I believe Enterprise also doesn't revert the changes upon updates. It might also be that major feature updates (like the 22H2 upgrade), may revert the changes, however, it's fairly trivial to run PrivacySexy after the update.
Yes, Windows currently is a stable, usefull and good OS, exept that it is by default full of bloatware, spyware, unnecesary telemetries, services "to improve the user experience" which nobody needs....all not easy to gut, but possible. They say that Windows is easy to handle, but only seens so at the first look, to convert it in a good OS it needs an advanced user. In Linux is way easier, there is nothing hidden, but also has his drawbacks. In my new Laptop with W11, the first impression was that it was the worst UI I've ever seen, impossible the startmenu and the taskbar, not even customizable in a bad copy of an Mac desktop, apart of all other from the mencioned crap, which I culd strip out, to get rid of the UI, turning it back of the good customizable one from W10, I used a nice FOSS app, Windhawk, something like an userscript manager which permits to do almost everything with the UI. Settings are instantanly, no restart needed. Now I use an snappy fast and reasonable private W11 which use less than 1GB RAM, to my like, with an small Taskbar on the top of the screen, an Startmenu as it should be and some more tweaks.
I spent about a week and a half with Portmaster just to see what the hype was. I'll have to say I was underwhelmed. I realize it has a big fan base, so if it works for you, awesome. Git Sum! It does have a lot of bells and whistles, and combines a lot of things into one package, but I've been so long with my stand alone pFsense instance, it'd almost have to give me a blowie to get me to switch.
Well, to anyones preferences. Every defense is valid and has it's + and -. It's irrelevant if you use Portmaster, PiHole, pFsense or anything else, important if it works to show the middlefinger to the big brother corporations, what all these do.