How Tailscale saved my bacon

I have a home server that's running 24/7. For my wife and me to access the services that are running on it when we are away from home, I have installed Tailscale on it and on our devices.

I have also enabled it so that the server may be used as an exit node in Tailscale. That comes in handy when I'm away, when I might want to either stay secure when using someone else's network or to be seen as browsing the net from my home network.

For instance, Reddit shows subreddits on the start page that are local to your country. So when you are abroad, you will suddenly see foreign subreddits on your start page. Using my home server as an exit node when I was in Italy during the summer, it made my Reddit start page look like I was still in Sweden with Swedish subreddits appearing. Google also tailors its results depending on where you are browsing from.

It also came in handy during my trip to Ukraine this summer, where Tailscale almost literally saved my bacon. My wife wanted to read a recipe on a Russian website when she was cooking, but Russian websites are blocked in Ukraine, so she turned on the Tailscale VPN on her phone and was then able to access the recipe without any issues.

I had similar issues with some sites not working correctly for whatever reason when browsing from a Ukrainian IP address. There was one domain registrar that wouldn't let me purchase a domain name unless I browsed through my server as an exit node. I also couldn't access the Kanban board in Microsoft Teams.

Having a computer at home that can be used as an exit node for when you are away from home can be really handy!