Anyone using a VPN?

i've looked around a bit and gotten some recommends from someone who's used a VPN for years.  the internet seems to point at NordVPN or ExpressVPN.  Mulvad seems interesting. very politically motivated. 

I downloaded the app for FreeDOME from f-secure. they have a super easy free trial. I tried various server connections. some were pretty slow. some pretty fast. 

NordVPN gets lot's of internet cred for their policies. F-secure seems more corporate as VPN is only a slice of what they do but they more or less have same policies as most other VPNs.  some differences. 

Mostly i've read that none of these services have ever gotten a court order from their local gov't to share user data of any kind. most of them have no logs and keep no data so it wouldn't matter. 

anyway.. just curious if anyone has bothered to go the VPN route and how the experience was/is. 

they're quite affordable these days. 

Fairly recently start using ExpressVPN. Only bit of warning is to not install extensions for your browser, because those can fuck with your settings. Which is particularly relevant when you have a network at home with various devices on your network. By default you stop being able to connect with those, but there's a setting to bypass that. After playing with the browser-extension I had to reinstall because that bypass stopped working.

Besides that, it's mostly about what money you're willing to spend on a monthly/yearly basis.

No experience with other options btw. First one was ExpressVPN. Don't see a reason why I should switch. But that's what this thread is for ;)

how can you trust a 3rd party VPN service? you cannot.

im using a VPN on my own server. took a bit to set up but it was mostly just following a step by step guide.

Is goode? yes

But then traffic from your own server onwards isn't trustworthy either.

The best advice is probably to get a VPN service or server that falls under the jurisdiction of a government of which it doesn't bother you that they're snooping on you.

So if you're Russian or Chinese, get an American VPN. If you're American, get a Russian one.

Personally I don't bother with a VPN, by the way. Either what I'm doing isn't interesting to anyone so I won't get snooped on, or what I'm doing is very interesting so people will find a way.

eff has a nice primer on this matter

https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/choosing-vpn-thats-right-you

phlings way might be the proper way to setup things, but not everyone has access to his/a server..

www.airvpn.org

been using for almost five years now

I use ExpressVPN, they’re great. I wouldn’t go with NordVPN, they don’t have per-user credentials - makes it more likely their encryption is compromised 

built in opera vpn

I like to ride bareback 

  On 5/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Crossword Enthusiast said:

I like to ride bareback 

thanks for the thoughts. I'm only thinking about it for streaming and torrents. a touch paranoid perhaps. it would only be on my media box and nowhere else really. i'm not up to anything nefarious. 

I didn't know Opera has a built in VPN. interesting. I'll have to read up on that part of their browser and see if they collect anything etc. 

I use windscribe. Pay the $60 a year or whatever it is for the pro version. Might switch to opera for that though once this subscription is up. 

using Mullvad since a year or two ago. mainly on recommendation from a friend rather than political motivation. got nothing to compare it with, but i'm happily spending 50 SEK (≈€4.5-5) a month.

they've been very supportive with issues that turned out to be on my end. haven't had any trouble with the service apart from the aforementioned and a hiccup caused by me not keeping their client up to date. works like a charm these days.

re: advantages using a VPN not falling under the jurisdiction of your own country, is that really a thing? am swedish, using a swedish VPN

come to think of it, it's annoying how it sometimes it doesn't let me open the dropdown menu from my toolbar (on mac) so i can't turn it off without restarting my computer. since i'm using a laptop, it has to reconnect every time i open it up, which takes a few too many seconds for my taste. probably cause of my wifi rather than the VPN itself, though. i suppose i need to work on my mindfulness anyway

When I started using a VPN back in 2016, I did a bunch of poking around and even though it's in the USA, Priate Internet Access seemed to be the most well balanced at the time in terms of having good data retention policies but also performing well.  NordVPN was my second choice but back then a lot of people seemed to think it was pretty slow.

When this year's subscription runs out I'll probably switch though, if only because I've had two many random instances in the last few months where PIA will either not start automatically on bootup like it's set to, or will mysteriously disconnect without notifying me.  Hasn't happened since the latest update but still makes me skeptical.

Probably go with Nord, because Big Money Salvia wouldn't lie to us.

  On 5/10/2019 at 9:08 AM, diatoms said:

www.airvpn.org

been using for almost five years now

airvpn

been using it for at least three years. you can't be safer. it works great too

  On 5/11/2019 at 11:58 AM, splbt said:

 

re: advantages using a VPN not falling under the jurisdiction of your own country, is that really a thing? am swedish, using a swedish VPN

 

If any of the intelligence agencies really want your traffic, they’ll get it. VPN or no, whatever jurisdiction you’re in. 

thought as much

on a related note: anyone know of any reasonably priced antivirus program? been using malwarebytes under the conviction that mac users don't need any proper AV, but am starting to rethink it.

ps. if it has popups ima kill somebody ds.

i'm not worried about intelligence agencies unless they some how get put into action by HBO to stop torrents of GoT but i don't think we're there yet

i don't care about being tracked here and there during normal browsing.  ad blocker cuts out a lot of that shit. sooner or later, once i no longer need facebook for work and finally give up on all social media.. then perhaps i'll use VPN 100% of the time just to be a little more annoying or to get used to it as nation states crumble and we go full snowcrash but i'll be dead by then i'm sure... 

i'm going to do some free trials and perhaps a money back guarantee offer and see how it goes. 

yesterday i heard this comedian say VPNs are only necessary for hiring hitmen or buying filipino CP

So NordVPN is doing a sale right now:

https://nordvpn.com/special/?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_term=BBVPN&utm_content=Tor-for-torrents&utm_campaign=off15&utm_source=aff840

Sounds like a good deal. I guess for my personal torrent desires it will do

I use these kind of VPNs mostly when I'm traveling. ExpressVPN and NordVPN seem to be working fine for most in places like Middle-East, but China has started some kind of protocol level detection and even NordVPNs scrambling system struggles with it and it works only occasionally. So, if anyone knows a VPN that works in China it would be much appreciated. I'm not even doing anything politically motivated or illegal, just want to access my fucking Gmail while in China. Luckily Protonmail still seems to work.

I heard that you can possibly get cheaper plane tickets when you buy tickets from certain locations such as Bulgaria. Can you confirm that @zkom? Judging from your posts you seem to be travelling a lot. So setting your VPN to a different location could change the price of your plane ticket. But I'm not sure if that's true

  On 7/26/2020 at 12:02 AM, dingformung said:

I heard that you can possibly get cheaper plane tickets when you buy tickets from certain locations such as Bulgaria. Can you confirm that @zkom? Judging from your posts you seem to be travelling a lot. So setting your VPN to a different location could change the price of your plane ticket. But I'm not sure if that's true

Possibly. But I mostly just use the Skyscanner and it generally just gives the lowest price no matter where I am, excluding the cheapest possible options that are sometimes missing in places like in Africa. On the other hand you might not want to get on those flights..

But using Pornhub from different countries gives you a different front page, I tell you what.

I got a bargain on FastestVPN - $14.95 lifetime 2 devices.

seems good so far (2 months)

I feel less lonely when my data is being monitored