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Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

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Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#331

Post by photonios »

nextweek2 wrote: post #241
SCdF wrote: post #214

I apologise if this is unhelpful: but none. I trust the (more than not at all) regulated space of ISPs in my country more than I do the unregulated space of people running VPNs out of their basements. It's important to be clear: you're just moving trust from one entity (your ISP) to another (the company / human who runs the VPN). It's not clear to me why the VPN people are more trustworthy than ISPs.

> It's not clear to me why the VPN people are more trustworthy than ISPs. Surely it's because it is their business model. ISP's have been proven to snoop and inject into traffic. They sell your data to those that have money. This is a breach of your privacy. On the other hand if a VPN provider were caught doing that, it would be abandoned by it's customers overnight. It is the primary risk to the business. With VPN s…

Where I live, I've never heard of ISP's doing this. Actually, they have been nothing but good so far. It might help that 1Gbit is a commodity here. You can't really get anything slower than 500Mbit. There's also enough competition to force them to innovate.

I don't neccesarily trust them, but they haven't done anything "evil" or questionable yet.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#332

Post by dastx »

SCdF wrote: post #223
dastx wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in?

I have lived in the UK and NZ.

Bit late reply. And yes, UK and NZ are part of the five eyes. I'm a UK resident. My ISP is a small start up that has started less than a few years ago. One of the few companies that provide residential 1gbps. You'd expect such a company to at least act good and snoop etc. I still refuse to trust my ISP. All ISPs are legally required to retain all user activity for a while. As someone already mentioned, I can't be 100% sure my VPN isn't spying on me, but I can be 100% sure my ISP is. I'd rather risk the former.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#333

Post by muppetman »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #126
muppetman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. VPN marketing appears to have really gotten to people, everyone's always asking about it. Real reasons I can see to use a VPN service 1) You want your traffic to reliably egress in that country. i.e. I live in New Zealand but to access some Australian TV on demand, I need to "appear" in Australia. 2) Errr, I can't think of any others. If you are really trying to hide your traffic from your ISP: 1) Change I…

As an Australian: 1) Protect against logging and data retention laws 2) Avoid ISP legal universal blocking regimes 3) Shop for and compare cheaper prices: many places implement what we call the 'australia' tax, artificially inflate the prices when they see we're shopping from an Australian location. This is independent of actual tax collection issues. 4) Torrent: Australian's frequently access shows via torrenting st…

True, if you want to egress multiple countries a VPN provider that lets you do that is a good solution. It's too late to update my original post, sadly.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#334

Post by bronco21016 »

miki123211 wrote: post #154

Box in a basement. A friend in the states provided one for me and I'm happy. It does what it needs to do (AKA encrypts traffic on public networks and lets me get to the US only stuff). It's also undetectable compared to commercial VPNs, because the number of people using it is very small and services think it's just a household.

I offer my server to some friends and family in the military who want access to stuff from home. I often wonder how their activity shapes what the collection companies think of my household. Do they think 20 people live here? Do they think the household income is that of many adults?

Also, it would be really cool if there was a P2P exchange for services like this. With Netflix et al blocking IPs from VPNs and VPSs there must be a large market for VPNs egressing from residential IPs.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#335

Post by danpalmer »

Iaison wrote: post #329
danpalmer wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Nord from Private Internet Access because their apps looked nicer. I regret it entirely. NordVPN has been noticeably less stable, slower, and their apps aren't actually that nice to use, and can be slow and buggy. PIA looks a bit "programmer art" but it's far better.

What client were you using when you were using PIA? The UI was drastically improved with the release of the new client in January and you may like it a lot more.

This was about 18 months ago. The client looked awful (low DPI icons, etc) but worked fine.

I'm definitely switching back when my 2 year subscription to NordVPN runs out.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#337

Post by _bashskids »

muppetman wrote: post #48
hannob wrote: post #41

The first question you should ask is why you want a VPN. Because I believe many people newer ask this question and have some vague idea about "it somehow improves security and/or privacy". In most situations this likely isn't true. You add an additional attack vector and you centralize your communication to a single point.

100% this. VPN marketing appears to have really gotten to people, everyone's always asking about it. Real reasons I can see to use a VPN service 1) You want your traffic to reliably egress in that country. i.e. I live in New Zealand but to access some Australian TV on demand, I need to "appear" in Australia. 2) Errr, I can't think of any others. If you are really trying to hide your traffic from your ISP: 1) Change I…

*access blocked sites

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#338

Post by failedcoder »

dcbadacd wrote: post #221
peteretep wrote: post #32

I'm using Freedome, which requires special software (best I can tell). I'm using it because it's made by F-Secure, and I know the F-Secure people from a long time ago. They have a large commercial business that would get seriously Kaperskied if it turned out they were knowingly doing anything wrong, and I've decided that that's the kind of incentive I want in a VPN provider.

It's actually just OpenVPN in the background. I've successfully used it with Linux, Windows and Android without the official apps.

How did you get it set up with Linux? Last time I tried I found some obscure guide which didn't exactly help me.

Re: Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

#339

Post by mgalgs »

_bashskids wrote: post #336

For privacy host your own on digitalocean. (Don't ask me, haven't done it). I use VPN for torrenting, which is blocked in my country, use a leecher like seedr & get direct download link. for this proton is enough

This is what I do. $5/month. There's a great docker image that makes setup a snap:

https://hub.docker.com/r/kylemanna/openvpn

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