171–180 of 235 posts
I'm disappointed that Mo flat out disregards options "due to their website experience being poorly designed." A slick website means that money was spent on the website. I've been using EarthVPN[1], one of his unreviewed options, for several years, and am very happy. It's cheap and cheerful, but yes, the website isn't great. The company is registered in Cyprus, and at USD40/year with three concurrent connections (from…
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TunnelBear - 5 stars, because "it's just so much fun to use." I hate being a cynical ass (I really do) but this guy has no business at all running this website. I'll not preach the long form of my usual VPN rant (briefly: they introduce another man-in-the-middle - who is probably anonymous to you, one who is very likely not subject to and utterly unaware of data protection laws, which makes you less safe rather than…
Also: Unreviewed VPNs The following VPNs were not reviewed due to their website experience being poorly designed. This can mean heavy use of stock photos, utter disregard for detail, difficult navigation, excessive and hard to follow text, non-defaulting to HTTPS, and overall poor usability. At least he understands what's important in a VPN. Kudos for excluding services that use stock photos in their website design.
I chose it b/c the organization behind it seems trustworthy. I don't know what the author has in mind when he labels the billing practice "shady".
The scene guys know their stuff.
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Hi mobitar. Thanks for the highest score in regard to the objective measures. Regarding the subjective impression and experience, I'd like to let you know what's going on. If you feel that this changes your impression, it would be great to update accordingly! The HTTP connection upon startup is for the region data request which is signed and verified upon receipt. It's tamper proof, but you can read it. It's somethin…
Sorry mobitar, I forgot to address the pings. This is to find the best (closest by network latency) path to you. We're really focused on providing the best possible experience, and that experience is simply providing what we do best, in the most unobtrusive way possible. And to that extent, when it comes to your privacy and fighting for your internet civil liberties, we'll be second to none. Cheers, Andrew
There's just one thing that's kind of a deal breaker. I recently switched to Mac and the Mac PIA Client is quite far behind the Windows, Android and iOS versions.
I'll list all my issues together here:
Major issues
- slow to start
- slow to connect (often tries forever). This is my biggest issue. On other platforms (or connecting directly with the built in Mac vpn function) it takes like 2-3 seconds. With the Mac client it takes many times longer. There's also no feedback about what stage the connection is in, unlike on every other OS.
- doesn't reconnect if network changes, so internet just stops working
Minor issues
- can't see pings for servers
- not as sexy as Windows client
I switched to using the built in Mac VPN feature to connect which is much faster, but occasionally stops working altogether for 20-30 minutes. So right now I don't have a good reliable VPN solution.
Hope this feedback helps!
Thanks again, andai
What's the intended audience for this? As a tech-savvy person, reading his commentary on TunnelBear completely discredited his site in my eyes. He talks about things that are completely irrelevant and are incredibly silly to even remotely care about from a VPN provider. Despite his listed criteria at the top, the star ratings and rank order seem to be based on how the provider made him feel , and has nothing to do wi…
Garbage like this is why I wish there was no affiliate business on the internet. You can never assume good faith if someone tries to earn money from you.
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Also: Unreviewed VPNs The following VPNs were not reviewed due to their website experience being poorly designed. This can mean heavy use of stock photos, utter disregard for detail, difficult navigation, excessive and hard to follow text, non-defaulting to HTTPS, and overall poor usability. At least he understands what's important in a VPN. Kudos for excluding services that use stock photos in their website design.
of course there is no causal relation between website quality and VPN quality. but there is definitely a statistical relationship. setting up a secure and fast VPN is very complex and it's hard to see why somebody would then neglect the entry point to that service. actually I'd assume that this negligence would be likely when the VPN is actually only supposed to serve as a malicious MIM. hence I accept this as a vali…
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?
US Congress passed a law earlier this year that dismantled FCC internet privacy protections which prevented peoples' internet service providers from fully capitalizing on peoples' internet history. VPN use is a way to encrypt your internet traffic, use not-your-ISP's-DNS, and protecting private information from being siphoned and ultimately sold. Hope this helps explain the fetish! Disclosure: I am a PIA employee.