Chrome Remote Desktop through VPN

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1

I will be living abroad for a couple years and would like a way to connect to my home (in U.S.) computer. I have some ancient database and programming stuff on my home computer which will not easily be moved to another computer (i.e. my laptop). I actively use this stuff and need to have access to it while overseas.

  • I just signed up for NordVPN so that is the context, I would run this on my overseas laptop
  • Then connect through the VPN to my U.S. home PC with Chrome Remote Desktop

One of the applications on my home PC that I would run remotely is a financial app that connects to my various U.S. accounts. I assume anything I do remotely on the home PC would run as though there were no VPN on the home PC (which there is not). Am I understanding correctly? And does this idea make sense?

Thanks for any comments.

2

To reach home into your network, look into Tailscale and see if that is fast enough for you. It’s a type of VPN and shouldn’t cost you anything. Also pretty secure as they don’t get the crypto keys to your tunnel.

You don’t really need a traditional VPN like you see advertised, you want to host your own VPN server at home, that you then connect to.

I like to run these things on my Firewall (pfsense), so I can control the traffic. But having tailscale on your home PC would do what you want.

3

For the purposes of what you’re asking, the VPN doesn’t matter. You haven’t setup a VPN on your home computer. The connections from your home PC to anywhere else will appear to be from your home.

4

Thanks, there are other reasons I want the VPN overseas (e.g. Netflix, etc.). So I’ve already signed on with NordVPN. And I’m not much the techy kind of guy – so I’m comfortable it. Given this context, I’m wondering if my general approach makes sense.

5

I see, that makes sense. I guess I got on the VPN trip just thinking of security in general overseas. For that purpose, I probably would run it in any case on my overseas laptop. Sometimes I would be connecting directly to my U.S. bank accounts, etc. (no remote desktop).

6

I still roll my own VPN at home. With your own VPN at home, (be it tailscale, wireguard, openvpn) it will look like you are at home when overseas. That is actually better, as netflix may block very common NordVPN IP addresses, where your home IP won’t be on that list, as it isn’t flagged as a public VPN.

7

I read that some financial institutions block accounts that are accessed from foreign or VPN server IP addresses. So using CRD to home computer seems the way to go. Can you shre your experience thus far?