If I download a free VPN extension in Firefox and connect to their servers, is there a way to find out the IP address and port of the server I’m connected to? I want to use this information to connect to the same server on other devices, and check it on a site like checkerproxy.net
How can I see the proxy server details (IP and port) used by the VPN extension, or any VPN server I’m connecting to for that matter?
Depends on the implementation. For example, a typically full tunnel (vs. split tunnel) VPN is going to update your routing table so that the VPN server becomes the preferred route / gateway for all destination IPs, so you could look at the routing table to see the gateway.
It’s hard to tell for sure without knowing what extension you’re referring to, though.
I would hope that all of that kind of information would be shared by the provider.
Frankly I would be very wary of any extension that offers free VPN services. Services cost money to run, so how do they pay the bills if they don’t charge you anything?
As the saying goes, “if something is free, you are the product.” So is the service simply injecting ads into your browsing, or are they capturing data that they can sell, or is it an upsell (e.g. the first X megabytes are free and then you’re prompted to pay), or worse, is it a scam of some kind?
Don’t just blindly install “free” things if you don’t know how they work ahead of time.
Thanks, I’ll try it!