I know this is an outrageously bad idea, I don’t need convincing. I am just looking for some more information and discussion on what exactly the exposure and surveillance risk is.

I’m asking both for my own education (I am still very green to networking), and to better explain to people in my life if and why they should care.

  1. Is it true that traffic can be tracked and logged by ISP through DNS lookups, as these routers are preconfigured to use their internal dns service?

  2. If this is changed (like base.dns.mullvad.net), how much does this actually mitigate the risk here?

  3. What about when a VPN (mullvad) is also being used at all times? Would it then be “overly paranoid” to fear this untrusted box all the traffic goes through?

I personally take a conservative approach to things like this and assume it’s an unacceptable risk, but I don’t really understand what the truth is.

Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts.

EDIT: I’m asking about US and US adjacent areas

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
    2·
    4 months ago

    The DNS risk is not mitigated by a VPN, just shifted.Your VPN has full ability to log your connection if they wish. You have to decide who you trust more. Bear in mind that depending on your location, your ISP may be more legally restricted from snooping on you than a VPN hosted in another country (I know nothing about the US laws, further research would be required).

    Also, unless you are using one of the encrypted DNS variants, just changing your DNS provider does nothing, as the ISP or VPN can snoop the unencrypted traffic regardless of its destination.

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
        1·
        4 months ago

        Yeah, probably. Although if a US ISP does something illegal to you, you can take them to court, whereas you have no recourse against mullvad. But of course you may have 0% chance of winning anyway, so :shrug:.

  • Prison Mike@links.hackliberty.org
    1·
    4 months ago

    I’ve noticed most responses are talking about DNS. The other issue with more modern ISP-supplied routers is that they can typically look into your LAN — this is a nonstarter for me.

    I recently helped install such a router for a friend and they thought it was cool that from the ISP’s app they could approve/deny new devices joining their network. Sure the feature itself is cool, but there are routers on the market that do this without involving your ISP.

  • OneCardboardBox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    If you’re always using a VPN, that’s not necessarily a privacy threat on your VPN’d device, but any other device on the network that doesn’t have a VPN could be exposing itself to the ISP.

    Also, you’re at the mercy of whatever firmware updates your ISP issues for the router. Hopefully they remember to support your box when the next CVE is discovered…

    We are forced to keep an ISP router/gateway combo in our home because it has certificates necessary to authenticate our subscription. However, behind that router we have the “real” router with settings and firmware updates that we control. The ISP router is just a hop between our router and the outside world. Everything on our network only connects to the router we control.