Can anyone recommend some really privacy-focused VPNs?
You should really do some due diligence on finding the right VPN for your needs.
I recommend you read this https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you...
VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
211–220 of 236 posts
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#212Why would I need a VPN for browsing if all my traffic is https and I use HTTPS DNS?
> Why would I need a VPN for browsing if all my traffic is https and I use HTTPS DNS? Until TLS 1.4 is deployed, each HTTPS-protected site you visit will still reveal the domain name in its certificate, giving your ISP a pretty good idea of your browsing patterns, which it will in turn sell or turn over to authorities when asked.
TLS 1.3 already encrypts the full certificate. The only place where TLS 1.3 reveals the domain name is the SNI field, but there are ESNI proposals currently being worked on to fix this issue, although realistically, this will only work well with sites behind CDNs. If an IP hosts only a single site, and you connect to it, it will be possible to tell who you are connecting too.
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#213My research into VPNs led me to a strange thing: VPN Gate [0]. It is community run VPN servers, by University of Tsukuba, Japan (6953 Public VPN Relay Servers) with free public access, Username: 'vpn', Password: 'vpn'. Still trying to grasp what it is :) [0] https://www.vpngate.net/en/
The relation to the university seems pretty thin. I can find no mention of this on the official pages of that uni.
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#214ExpressVPN are on a podcast advertising spree, so I thought I’d give them a look. I tried to pay using Bitcoin and got a generic “There was an error” error. And when I say generic, I mean ‘I recognise the Semantic UI React default error block’ generic. I used their live chat support. “Is this normal,” I asked. “No,” I was told. I tried again a day later. Same. I tried them on Twitter. Nothing. So, it seems that Expre…
> So, it seems that ExpressVPN have a good marketing budget and little else. you don't happen to work for any one of the competition do you? anyhow I have been very happy with them, their servers tend to be pretty fast. So add that positive anecdote to his negative anecdote, how useless.
I do not.
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#215I’ll say what I’ve said before: making a VPN purchase is non-trivial. The best I’ve been able to do was use Mozilla as a proxy (because I trust ‘em), and thus bought ProtonVPN (which admittedly has been imperfect).
Imperfect how?
Well when the VPN disconnected on the old Mac version, apparently it continue to let traffic through. I think they’ve corrected that now.
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#216How safe is it to setup a VPN (via Wireguard or something) with AWS?
Safe? Against what? - Preventing websites from seeing your true IP? (you'll want to disable webrtc as well[1].) Mostly yes. - preventing your ISP from spying on your traffic? (allowing Amazon to spy on your traffic in exchange...) Yes. - Avoiding risk of legal threats if you engage in copyright infringement? Mostly no. They can subpoena Amazon instead of your ISP, and your lightsail/EC2 ip isn't shared. Routing throu…
This is why I always advise friends to use smaller VPN services, less chance of a site recognizing the VPN. In any case, if you're going to engage in illegal activity you're better off hooking a clean computer to a long-range antenna and connecting to the nearest McDonald's. Keep that computer off your home network entirely and only transfer files with a flash drive.
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#217Nearly as disturbing as the number of people who tell me they use free VPNs. It is a bit mind boggling that folks are concerned about something and use a VPN...but choose a free one...
A lot of people I know are using free VPNs to circumvent the state censorship. It has nothing to do with privacy, only with the fact that when you search for something, about 20-80% of links end with "connection timed out" (depends on what you're looking for, obviously). Most of those sites don't have any "ungood" information and are basically just collateral damage.
I wonder if with a free vpn ... would state pressure even be needed?
Maybe just a wad of cash?
Considering their costs / questionable ownership / ability to just roll out repeated new "free vpns" that nobody knows who is behind or took the money for the other one?
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#218Private Internet Access (PIA) doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article nor HN posts. I think that must be good then. I've been a happy PIA customer for about 5 years. They probably arn't the fastest (I get aprox 3.5mbit/sec on them) but so far none of the mud slung against them sticks. There's a lot of shady shit in the VPN industry, so glad they are above it.
I used PIA for a long time, but at some point it seemed like every single site I visited triggered that Cloudflare protection page that forces you to fill out Google Recaptcha before proceeding. Hopefully that's not the case now.
> at some point it seemed like every single site I visited triggered that Cloudflare protection page that forces you to fill out Google Recaptcha before proceeding
That's kind of par for the course on a public VPN -- your traffic is being aggregated with a lot of other users, some of whom will be behaving in unusual ways.
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mullvad is great! They don't require email, and they accept crypto for payment.
And together with AzireVPN one of the few working with WireGuard!
Also IVPN, and they posted about issues with using WireGuard in privacy-friendly ways: https://www.ivpn.net/knowledgebase/254/Using-WireGuard-for-P...
Re: VPN owners: 97 VPN products run by 23 companies
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know someone making tens of thousands a month from shilling VPNs. They have site where they "review" and "rate" VPNs. The reality is that the customers of those products barely understand them and are buying into the BS of "stay anonymous" and "be private online". It's an easy market, especially considering you don't even need to develop the VPN software, just run instances on some cloud/VPS provider and do a ton o…
Is it really easy market? I thought about running a VPN service, but how do I deal with abuses? People would use VPN for all kinds of things including bad ones. And investigators will come at me.
How do other companies deal with it?