Does anyone else get sites breaking when you're using a VPN?

4 points

6 years ago

I use a VPN [1] for my own privacy and security reasons. I often find, however, sites either bouncing me to captcha sites (normally the Cloudflare captcha IIRC) or just refusing to load.

For example, I tried searching on Etsy, but when entering a search term and hitting return I just get a blank page. I turn off the VPN, try again, and hey, presto! It works.

Perhaps this is more of a rant than a question, but I would also be really curious as to how people are seeing this. I'm seeing it as a fundamental assault on the freedom of individuals to browse the internet, as well as on the decentralised nature of the internet as giants like Google (through AMP) and Cloudflare funnel all the traffic through them.

My view is that this is a really concerning development, beyond my own inconvenience. Does anyone have good strategies for dealing with this or suggestions for how we should resist? Or perhaps a different lens through which to view this?

[1]: https://www.mullvad.net

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