Private VPN & Network Privacy
Your personal VPN server with Unbound DNS and Pi-hole ad blocking. Complete privacy and security under your control.
Unbound Security & Privacy
In today's world of constant connectivity, privacy and secure access are paramount. That's why LocalLockdownLV sets up a personal VPN (Virtual Private Network) server for you as part of our solution, combined with advanced DNS-based protections for truly unbound privacy. Unlike commercial VPN services, which bounce your data through company-owned servers, your personal VPN lives on your own LocalLockdownLV device in your home. This means you are the only one in charge of it – no third-party can spy on or restrict your traffic. We configure either WireGuard or OpenVPN, two leading VPN protocols, to give you an encrypted "tunnel" into your home network from anywhere in the world.
Secure Remote Access via VPN
With your private VPN, whenever you're on the go (say, using public Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or traveling abroad), you can connect through an app on your phone or laptop straight into your home network. All your internet traffic will be encrypted with strong modern encryption and sent to your home first, then out to the websites or services you're using. This accomplishes a few important things:
Protects You on Public Networks
On untrusted networks like airport or café Wi-Fi, a lot of your data (DNS queries, web traffic, etc.) could be intercepted by attackers or snoops. But if you enable your VPN, all your data is scrambled (encrypted) inside the tunnel, so anyone trying to listen in will see nothing useful. It's as if you're virtually sitting at home on your secure network, even when you're not. This guards your passwords, financial info, and browsing activity from prying eyes.
Home-from-Anywhere
Through the VPN, you can securely access devices and services at home. For example, you can view your security cameras live, play videos from your Jellyfin server, or fetch a file from your NAS, exactly as if you were on your home Wi-Fi. This is huge for convenience – it's like carrying your home network in your pocket. All of the LocalLockdownLV features (cameras, storage, etc.) are reachable through the VPN with no need to open insecure ports to the internet.
Bypass Geo-Blocks & VPN Restrictions
Because your traffic exits to the internet via your home ISP, you will appear to websites as just a regular residential user. Streaming services that often block known VPN servers won't flag your connection, since your home's IP address is unique to you and not associated with a VPN provider. This means you're less likely to encounter "VPN blocked" errors on sites like Netflix – effectively, your connection looks "normal" to the outside world. It also means websites cannot easily identify or throttle you as a VPN user. In sum, you get the privacy of a VPN without the usual inconveniences.
No Third-Party Logs or Fees
Many commercial VPNs (especially free ones) have questionable privacy practices – some log your activities or inject ads, and you have to implicitly trust their operators. With our self-hosted VPN, no one is in the middle. The server is on hardware you control, and we don't log any of your traffic. There's also no subscription cost for using your own VPN – it's all included in your one-time setup. You can run as many devices through it as you want without extra charges, limited only by the bandwidth of your home internet.
WireGuard vs. OpenVPN
We typically recommend WireGuard for most users due to its superior performance and modern security design. WireGuard is a newer VPN protocol that was built to be fast, efficient, and highly secure, using state-of-the-art cryptography and a lightweight codebase. It connects almost instantly and can deliver very high speeds, often you won't even notice you're on a VPN.
OpenVPN is an older industry-standard that's extremely reliable and more broadly supported on some legacy devices. We can set up whichever (or both) suits your needs. Both are open-source and strong; WireGuard is just the cutting-edge option that many prefer for its speed (it has a smaller attack surface due to fewer lines of code, making it easier to audit for security issues). Regardless of protocol, we configure the VPN with robust encryption (e.g. 256-bit ciphers) and secure authentication, so your connection remains airtight against eavesdropping. When we hand over the system, you'll get simple apps on your phone/PC – one tap to connect, and you're routed securely through home.
Network-Wide Ad Blocking and Tracker Protection
Beyond encrypting your connection, LocalLockdownLV fortifies your entire network with Pi-hole – a powerful network-wide ad blocker and tracker stopper. Pi-hole runs as a local DNS service that filters queries from any device on your network. In practice, this means that whenever any device (your phone, laptop, smart TV, etc.) tries to contact a known ad server or malicious tracking domain, Pi-hole will block that request automatically, so the connection never completes.
The result is a cleaner, faster, and safer internet experience: webpages load without the dozens of ads and spyware scripts, apps on your phone won't be able to send your data to tracking companies, and even smart appliances calling out to analytics platforms can be silenced. Pi-hole operates at the DNS level, which means it works for every device and every app – you don't need separate browser extensions or ad-block apps on each device. The moment you connect a new device to your network (or through the VPN), it benefits from the same protection automatically.
Privacy Benefits
By eliminating tracking domains, Pi-hole significantly reduces the amount of data about your online activities that leaves your network. Those pervasive web trackers and ad networks are blocked from phoning home, giving you a more private browsing experience by default. It's not just about annoyance; it prevents a lot of behind-the-scenes profiling. Pi-hole also stops many malware and phishing domains if they're on blocklists, adding a layer of security (devices can't even reach known bad servers).
Bandwidth and Speed Improvements
Without loading ad images or video, pages load faster and you use less data – which is noticeable on mobile connections. We configure Pi-hole with reputable blocklists (and can customize based on your tolerance level). It has a web dashboard where you can see stats – like how many ads/tracking queries were blocked – and you can whitelist sites if needed. But in general, it runs quietly in the background, making your whole network faster and quieter.
Mobile Protection on the Go
And remember, this benefit extends to you even when you're outside your home, if you connect through the VPN. All your phone's data can be routed through Pi-hole as well, meaning ads and trackers are stripped out on the go just as if you were at home. This is great for reducing mobile data usage and speeding up browsing on cellular networks too.
Private DNS (Unbound Resolver) – No More Snooping
To cap it all off, we deploy Unbound DNS in conjunction with Pi-hole, creating a completely private and "unbound" DNS resolution system for your network. Normally, even with a VPN, your DNS lookups (the service that translates website names to IP addresses) might go to a public server (like your ISP's DNS, or Google's 8.8.8.8). Those DNS providers can log what domains you're querying – effectively keeping a list of sites you visit.
Unbound solves this by acting as a recursive DNS resolver on your own device. In simple terms, Unbound will directly query the authoritative servers on the internet to resolve a domain name, rather than asking a big third-party resolver. It's like cutting out the middleman. As a result, no external DNS service sees your queries – queries are either handled from cache or go out to the decentralized root DNS system, which cannot easily associate them with you in the way a single provider could.
This greatly boosts privacy for your browsing: even your ISP will just see encrypted VPN traffic (when you're remote) or see your DNS requests going to a variety of root servers, not to their own resolvers. We configure Pi-hole to work hand-in-hand with Unbound, so that any DNS query from your devices first checks Pi-hole's block lists, and if it's not an ad or tracker, Unbound then resolves it. This combination gives you complete DNS autonomy. According to security experts, using Pi-hole with a self-hosted VPN and Unbound provides a highly private, ad-free network experience.
Complete DNS Privacy
Practically, what this means is that your internet traffic is not just encrypted, but also anonymized at the DNS layer. Nobody can easily tell what websites or services you are looking up, because you're not relying on the usual suspects (your ISP's DNS which might log, or a public DNS which definitely logs). It also guards against certain attacks like DNS poisoning at the local network level when you're traveling, because you'll be using your own trusted resolver.
Enhanced Performance & Security
Unbound additionally caches answers to speed up repeat lookups and can validate DNS responses for correctness (DNSSEC), adding security. In the end, you get faster, more private, and authenticated name resolution.
Comprehensive Privacy Shield
Finally, all these components – VPN, Pi-hole, Unbound – integrate to give you a truly comprehensive privacy shield. From the moment a data packet leaves your device, it is encrypted via VPN, it goes through Pi-hole's filter to strip tracking, and its DNS needs are handled by Unbound with no outside observers. This is the same kind of setup privacy enthusiasts build for themselves, now made turnkey by LocalLockdownLV.
We will take care of the complex configuration and testing: setting up the VPN server (and user profiles on your devices), installing Pi-hole with optimal block lists, and configuring Unbound as the DNS backend. We'll also show you how to connect and use it – but rest assured, it's designed to be easy. Once it's running, you won't even notice the behind-the-scenes work – except that you'll see fewer ads, and you'll have the confidence that your data is shielded.
With an unbound VPN solution in place, you can roam freely online, knowing your information and internet usage stay safe, private, and in your hands.
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