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Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

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Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#41

Post by seibelj »

criddell wrote: post #36

With Verizon becoming an ad company and AT&T showing signs of the same thing, I was wondering what would be involved in having my home's router automatically and permanently connect to a VPN service to keep my data from my ISP? I understand the performance hit would be huge (I have a gigabit fiber connection), but as long as I can still stream MLB and Netflix, I'd be happy.

I am launching a new product (VPN router permanently connected to anonymous VPN) within a month, I don't want to link to the website yet because it's a WIP. Send me an email (in profile) if you are interested.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#42

Post by bendiksolheim »

jjnoakes wrote: post #28
bendiksolheim wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unattended-upgrades is enabled by default, so security updates are handled automatically. You can also just destroy and recreate the box once in a while, without any extra cost. But it is of course completely up to you. If you trust your VPN provider when they say they don't log anything, I guess you are fine.

If you want a VPN so that your activity is not logged, how will hosting your own under your own digital ocean account help you? Sure, your activities may no longer be logged, but does that matter when 100% if the traffic coming from your droplet IP must be yours?

This is definitely a valid point. In my case, I share my VPN with friends and family, and also use it from a number of different devices (several laptops, and mobile devices). Anyway, the point is not necessarily to make it impossible for anyone to connect my internet traffic to me, but rather make it harder to monitor me.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#43

Post by dx034 »

I use hide.me I tested several providers over the years but this one has given me the best speed and lowest latency when I choose servers close to me. Works well to have it running 24/7 on the phone. Of course it's more expensive than just hosting a droplet, but very helpful to get IPs of various countries. Unlimited traffic also comes in handy..

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#44

Post by MightySCollins »

msh wrote: post #16
bendiksolheim wrote: post #6

Roll your own! Setting up your own, private VPN can be done quite easily with https://github.com/jlund/streisand and a DigitalOcean account. Costs $5 per month. It doesn't require a whole lot of technical competence either, as the Streisand project configures just about everything for you.

But then you are responsible for the security of the server which you probably don't have a lot of time for.

And in some ways it reduces the chance of a security problem because VPN's with alot of users is a bigger target than one with just you.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#45

Post by deanclatworthy »

jay-saint wrote: post #37
darkblackcorner wrote: post #11

I use https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ on recommendation from a colleague, and I'm pretty happy. No logs, plenty servers, no real issues, and they recently shut down their Russian server due to imminent privacy concerns. So I feel that they have their priorities straight. I used https://www.frootvpn.com/ briefly when it was free - seemed ok too, but not many servers back then. Depends really what you want to us…

+1 for PIA UK exit nodes work for watching BBC. Plus as a bonus they have recently implemented an option that block ads and malware on a DNS level. There are apps for iOS, macOS and Windows. It can also work without the app and be setup on a router level to protect the entire network.

PIA has said they actively won't be circumventing geoblocks anymore. Last time I tried BBC was blocked on both London & Southampton (in the last 24hrs).

EDIT: It seems iPlayer is now working again, although if you check their forums from when they began this change in policy, they specifically stated they would not actively circumvent the blocks.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#46

Post by deanclatworthy »

prophet_ wrote: post #12
darkblackcorner wrote: post #11

I use https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ on recommendation from a colleague, and I'm pretty happy. No logs, plenty servers, no real issues, and they recently shut down their Russian server due to imminent privacy concerns. So I feel that they have their priorities straight. I used https://www.frootvpn.com/ briefly when it was free - seemed ok too, but not many servers back then. Depends really what you want to us…

I use PIA and I can't complain. One issue I noticed that may affect others as well is that they are being blocked more and more around the internet. I don't think this is only a PIA problem though.

It definitely is a problem with PIA. And furthermore, they have said they won't be circumventing the geoblocks, as they have done before.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#47

Post by wineisfine »

Privateinternetaccess.com besides their somewhat uncatchy name and dated looking website is cheap and reliable. You can even pay with Amazon gift cards, in case you want to anonymise your payment and don't want to dive into Bitcoin

I had PIA for a year and when the subscription ran out, though being a happy customer, I got tempted by iVpn.net, which was 3x the price, and had a pretty website. It also got many recommendations here on HN, but think they were not 100% honest. I regret moving away and will go back to PIA asap.

Takeaways: also important is which device you will be using to surf. Many vpn providers have a flawed or no iPad app, and refer to the standard openvpn app. It's very cumbersome to use (you can not copy paste your username and password, just to name one thing).

And setting up your own, doesn't make much sense to me as you will always have the same public ip then.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#48

Post by rando444 »

criddell wrote: post #36

With Verizon becoming an ad company and AT&T showing signs of the same thing, I was wondering what would be involved in having my home's router automatically and permanently connect to a VPN service to keep my data from my ISP? I understand the performance hit would be huge (I have a gigabit fiber connection), but as long as I can still stream MLB and Netflix, I'd be happy.

Your VPN provider would be the bottleneck, not the VPN itself, in which case if you take a performance hit you should explore other VPN providers.

But to tunnel all of your home traffic you can either (1) buy a router that supports VPN tunneling or (2) try and save some money by buying a generic router and flashing it with something like DD-WRT, which would give you an OpenVPN client which would allow you to do the same thing, just with cheaper hardware.

Once set up, whenever your router boots it will connect the VPN and all of your traffic will go over that connection.

Re: Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?

#49

Post by furyg3 »

criddell wrote: post #36

With Verizon becoming an ad company and AT&T showing signs of the same thing, I was wondering what would be involved in having my home's router automatically and permanently connect to a VPN service to keep my data from my ISP? I understand the performance hit would be huge (I have a gigabit fiber connection), but as long as I can still stream MLB and Netflix, I'd be happy.

Hasn't shipped yet, but Keezel may be interesting: http://keezel.co

It's a hardware product and they broker the VPN provider... so the VPN provider doesn't know who you are, and the Keezel device can use the best-performing VPN provider / nodes.

For launch they're partnering with PureVPN, LeVPN and ProXPN.

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