35
votes
Anyone Use A VPN? If So, Which One?
Here is a comparison chart: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/
I use mullvad: mullvad.net
Here is a comparison chart: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/
I use mullvad: mullvad.net
I use Private Internet Access. I got a year free through snoonet, and I just continue with them after it finished. Pretty speedy and pretty cheap too
FYI they are based in the US so it's not good if you are concerned about the 14 eyes mass surveillance. Plus they just hired the guy responsible for the hack at Mt. Gox to be their CTO. The real reason I left though was their servers drop connections and every once in a while you get an IP that is blacklisted or has a ping time over 1000ms. I just switched to mullvad today and will see how consistent the performance is.
Actually in the US we have something called "national security letters" which can force you to hand over all data and you are unable to disclose this to the target or anyone else. These cases go to the secret FISA court which it seems just rubber stamps whatever the NSA/FBI asks for. It's definitely not public courts and a charade of due process. Lavabit famously opted to close their business rather than comply with these security letters. I don't have anything to hid but whistleblowers should have better protection. I think the government should be more transparent and the current systems don't give sufficient oversight. Until that happens more people should opt out of US-based surveillance.
Good point. Just going to nitpick here for a bit. Nothing personal, just many years of frustration bubbling up ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument#For_privacy
Also:
https://www.politico.eu/article/privacy-is-power-opinion-data-gdpr/
They don't (in theory) collect any information, so if the government asked them for something, they would have nothing to give.
https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-providers-no-logging-claims-tested-in-fbi-case-160312/
TL;DR PIA is - by my knowledge - the only VPN provider of which there's proof that they don't - or didn't used to - log user activity.
I too use PIA. Mainly to get around the 'The content you want to view is not available in your country' messages that is common here in Australia. Even on some Youtube videos, believe it or not. Just link surfing and go to view some random 'Best of the worst drivers for April 2018' or some such and BAM. Up it pops.
I'm in Australia too. I used an extension called Tube Unblock that gets around that before I had my VPN
I have accidentally let it run while playing games and was surprised by how low the ping ended up being.
There's tons of shady VPNs out there and the review sites are often sponsored. "That One Privacy Site" is a really good review site and he ranks 100s of VPNs by privacy, jurisdiction, logging, and more. Here is his guide to choosing the best VPN for you https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you/. You can also see his detailed comparison table here https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/
Thank you so much, I totally forgot to link that.
I use TorGuard. If you use promo code 1984 it’s $30/year.
However, tin foil hat time: something I’ve been thinking about lately is that if I ran a foreign intelligence agency that had a habit of gathering kompromat on high level professionals, I would probably start an anonymously owned VPN service. Now I don’t know what to think. I think Viking VPN makes their ownership public, have been thinking about switching.
Note: a few years ago I looked up PIA and got bad feelings on the ownership.
I’ll bite: what were the bad feelings you had about PIA? I use PIA or ProtonVPN (came with the protonmail subscription). I did as much research on VPNs as I could at the time and PIA consistently had high marks from resources I trust more than others.
Was it the use of stock graphics on their site showing happy and approachable people/families? That was off-putting to me. Is it something you read, or maybe a gut feeling?
Ok, so being from an ex-commie country I have been aware of Russia way before trump. And I am honestly super paranoid about it, maybe irrationally in this case. This was a few years ago, and when I looked up PIA’s website the whole biz was different than now. The first thing was maybe dumb on my part, their photos at the time had clearly ethnic Russian peolple. I reverse image searched, found no results, and they did not seem stock.
Next, they used to be out of Finland I believe, Finland has a long history with Russia.
That was enough for me to find a VPN based from another country at least. Germany seemed ideal at the time, so TorGuard. Honestly at this point, given what my personal reasons are for using a VPN service, I would like to know who owns the vpn service.
I often use my own OpenVPN server on an AWS server these days for actually sensitive things. And just TorGuard for personal geo-related things.
Tangent: I got super paranoid after I started getting insanely well crafted phishing emails that the sender must have done significant research on me to write. I also deleted my FB at that point, because the names of friends in the emails, the from address being my GF’s gmail address with a extra letter at then end.. it all must have come from FB. I think I’m a target because of work.
Man, no wonder. Now I’m thinking it might be time to let my PIA subscription lapse and just stick with Proton.
Most of Finnish history with Russia is probably less positive then your country's is, they fought very hard in WWII for their independence, and today they have some very good internet privacy laws. Although truth be told, I wouldn't pick anywhere in the EU if security is maximally important; Switzerland would be my pick.
I am from Poland. :) I made that Finland judgement based on very little information. I just assumed there were still lots of business ties based Finland’s neutral position during the Cold War.
What are the speeds like on TorGuard and does it allow torrenting?
I have gotten up to 8+ mbps with no issues. I think it’s just been my connection slowing it down, as it’s not great. And yes, no issues with any type of traffic.
Edit: sometimes certain endpoints do slow down, then I switch and it’s fine.
I think the correct answer to concerns about 3rd party providers is to run your own VPN. The barrier to entry is fairly low (similar cost, slight extra knowledge needed).
There's a few guides out there around OpenVPN & Amazon's AWS service for example.
At times I use ProtonVPN. Good stuff.
Proton mail is great. I've been de-googling myself and it's a brilliant alternative to Gmail!
I run my own on a VPS host I trust (small local business-class ISP). I'm running Outline from Alphabet Labs. No log, uses Docker, and super easy to manage users. Way faster than anything else I've used. I like that it hides all traffic in shadowsocks protocol, so it doesn't look like VPN traffic.
Other than that I've tried ProtonVPN (trustworthy, but free tier is slowish), Windscribe (free tier is good if you get a promo code, but I had weird drops and restarts sometimes), and Hotspot Free (skeez, don't use, they sell your data). I've also tried I2P (not user friendly), and Torbot VPN mode (nice, but I was slowly driven insane by little weird issues. Cloudflare is a dick and needs to stop blocking TOR across the board).
I use BlackVPN (review) - AES-256 by default, not in 14 eyes territory, accepts cryptocurrency payments, no logging, OpenVPN support, good speeds (esp. considering the encryption level)... but expensive.
Glad to see nobody using TunnelBear after the McAfee takeover
I use NordVPN.com, they have some good and fast obfuscating and double vpn servers, meaning you can use them with sites that filter out VPN.
One note: the obfuscated ones are not available through manual OpenVPN, only through apps. If you need to use manual/CLI setups I recommend the double servers - they're pretty fast in spite of the double routing.
I use Nord as well. I actually built a small Python program today to find the servers with the lowest load in a given country. Link
Another Nord user reporting in. I run a small platoon of bots in VM on a private World of Warcraft server and needed a way to prevent the operators from pinpointing who I am and what I'm doing.
Not much to say really. Nord does the job and worked well so far. Been running my setup for several months.
I’m using ExpressVPN. It has pretty solid speeds, is based in the British Virgin Islands, and keeps no logs. It’s a tad expensive though
2nd for ExpressVPN. Been very good so far speed wise. Helps get around Netflix VPN blocks and I appreciate their mobile and different OS support.
IPVanish. They have an app for multiple devices or you can download all the certs and set up connections for servers for Linux VPN programs too.
I also use IPVanish. No complaints here. I only use it when running uTorrent though.
I've just got a scaleway vps that I'm using for some projects and I plonked an openvpn thing on it and boosh, away I was.
Probably not the safest setup or the most robust one since i've only got a few ip's in 2 countries, but it works well enough for me and my friends to use it. Never have to worry about caps when you're shovelling your entire network speed through your own vpn
I don't use one regularly these days, but when I'm away from my home network(s) I use the one my university provides as part of being an employee/student. Not really a privacy concern so much as a safety concern, however. I used to use mullvad and enjoyed it for the most part!
I use ProtonVPN’s free tier.
you know what they say. if its free you are the product. When i was doing my research for VPN's everyone was saying not to use free ones as they were likely honeypots. just be careful what you are doing on it.
I had hoped that you were wrong but...
https://old.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/8xnvxc/remove_protonvpn_from_privacytoolsio/
AirVPN
Since some years now and the performance has been quite good. Many servers around the world, no need for personal data, can be paid with Bitcoins - and usually I take their black Friday offer to extend my subscription
I am using NordVPN. It's alright. It's relatively cheap but I do get caught a lot by Cloudflare captchas. But I guess, this is the problem of all VPNs unless you are buying one with Dedicated IP.
I use Encrypt.me (formerly Cloak). I like it because they give you an iOS and macOS app that automatically blocks outgoing connections unless you are on a "trusted" network. This prevents you from accidentally connecting to cellular or Wifi without the VPN activated. If you are on a "trusted" network (e.g., your home Wifi) it will automatically turn off.
Perfect Privacy here - it's actually really good and the software let's create a chain into different VPN locations amongst other things. The only downsides are that it's more expensive than others (although worth it imo), but also, I've heard unsubstantiated rumours that it's run by neo-nazis.
I use trust.zone but don't actually recommend it: slow, bad customer support, feels like a cash grab.
Is there a VPN client I can use that will let me whitelist/blacklist IPs or ports from using the VPN? It would be nice to be able to filter all of my traffic through the VPN except for multiplayer games.
NordVPN is a solid choice. I got a 2 year plan from them about a year ago.
Come on, tells me why I should drop PureVPN.
It has good speed (honestly with the bad lines in UK, it just use it all everytime), the support is great and as far as I remember they don't keep logs (but I could be mistaken).
Holy mackarel! Thank you for that. I asked several time on reddit to have some info on this but as often happens, zero replies.
I'll consider switching as the subscription is due to expiring soon anyway.
I'm running algo on a digitalocean vps.