51–60 of 235 posts
Could use a breakdown of which criteria each provider supported, because just a colored circle doesn't show which of those criteria are supported or not.
To steal (and paraphrase) what is basically the perfect summary of this from @SwiftOnSecurity: Commercial VPNs: for when you want all the security of Ukrainian coffee-house wifi from the comfort of your own home. Taylor Swift isn't wrong about this. Use something like Algo to run your own VPN if you have to. If you must use a commercial VPN to get to Netflix or whatever, do it from inside a virtual machine that you u…
I use a commercial VPN primarily so that my IP is shared across hundreds of other users (as opposed to using it so that my data is safe being transmitted through coffeehouse WiFi), and thus would make it at least marginally more difficult for someone to track me.
Is this reasoning false?
Regardless of how you feel about _why_ PIA sponsor the organisations they do, it is surprising to see someone claiming they "perhaps put [their money] to better use" given their record of supporting foss and digital/online rights [1]. Additionally, the characterization as being extremely focused on the tech illiterate I feel isn't really the case either, they have lots of docs about how to use OpenVPN [2]. Thirdly, w…
PIA actually scores as one of the highest on the objective measures. The star count is just a subjective impression and experience with getting it set up. They connect over HTTP on startup instead of HTTPS (which is unacceptable for a privacy company). They then ping almost a hundred servers on startup (no other app does this, at least not to this extent).
Are they, as I suspect (as a PIA user), pinging their own servers worldwide, to find the fastest options available? Are they pinging third parties?
Your review basically says "pings are bad m'kay" without demonstrating any understanding of what the client is doing.
Furthermore, your questioning of the use of port 80 makes me wonder about your own security knowledge. You really don't understand why a commercial VPN product designed to be used by portable devices in unexpected environments might commence a connection on port 80?
These 'objections' you have make me sceptical of your attention to detail in general.
Both iOS and macOS (I don't know about windows, I havent used it recently) have built-in VPN clients so what would be the advantage to using a client from the VPN provider?
I'm (British) getting the impression that VPNs are becoming rather important to Americans (int al). Please bear in mind that us foreigners don't always get the memo about the current flavour of the day in all countries. I'm well aware that citizens of CN and many others really need privacy but it seems that there is a reasonably recent strange US fetish with VPNs. Could someone please explain?
Hope this helps explain the fetish!
Disclosure: I am a PIA employee.
... isn't the point of a VPN do just do its job and stay out of sight? Why is 'boring' even remotely relevant to the VPN equation?
> Extremely bland, stock-photo website. I felt uncomfortable giving them my email address, let alone my payment info. That's not valuable information. > A heavily marketed product lacking inspiration which I ultimately couldn't get to work properly. At this point you've given up even trying. It's not a useful comparison any longer.
With any VPN provider, there are certain crucial features where you have to trust them, "no logging" being the most prominent.
Since you're unable to get to the actual truth (until it's too late), you're left with trying to get a sense of the provider's character: are they supporting open source projects in the privacy space? Do they advocate for causes you believe in (by, for example, participating in the net neutrality blackout)? Do they take pride in their work ("show source" may be helpful here)? Do they have humour?
None of these are definitive. But in my experience, it's actually pretty hard for people who aren't members of a certain community to emulate it convincingly.
I'm (British) getting the impression that VPNs are becoming rather important to Americans (int al). Please bear in mind that us foreigners don't always get the memo about the current flavour of the day in all countries. I'm well aware that citizens of CN and many others really need privacy but it seems that there is a reasonably recent strange US fetish with VPNs. Could someone please explain?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like I said, I'm pretty sure anyone can understand red=bad and green=good.
If you use TOPS and simply choose the provider with the most green, you'll have made a terrible mistake.
Private Internet Access > A pretty boring company. Extremely transactional. You get in and get out. It delivers its experience the way a utility company would. Sometimes, that may be a good thing. But in this case, since I have choice, I'd rather give my money to a company who would appreciate it a little more — perhaps put it to better use. PIA might be very "transactional" but I like them and I've never had any iss…
Given that he rates Vyrpr above PIA, when Vypr have had clear incidents of doing enough logging to identify which user has done something [1][2], and PIA do no logging [3], I'm not particularly inclined to trust this analysis on the basis of which app is more "fun" to use. Disclaimer: I used to use Vyrpr, when I found out about the logging, I switched to PIA, which I use with Tunnelblick anyway instead of their app.…
Vyper: 8,2,0
PIA: 9,4,0
The stars are identified as being from his personal experience and he discusses the rationale behind them.