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tanker27
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Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Dec 11, 2017 12:33 pm

I'm looking for a good if not great VPN service. Some things I'm looking for is:

-Low monthly cost
-multiple connections (3-10)
-Top notch download speeds
-Configurable
-No caps
-available for Mobile

I don't torrent. So there's that. Call it my agent orange acting up, I just want to anonymize my traffic. 8) So opinions, suggestions, etc. What do y'all use?
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wizardz
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Dec 11, 2017 12:52 pm

depending on your anonymisation needs, you can check that site. https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/

i've in the past had good experience with TunnelBear. not extremely fast, but fast enough for me to not notice while browsing.
 
Eigen22
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:38 am

Hi tanker27,

this is a forum newbie reply but take it for what it's worth :wink:

have you considered looking into OpenVPN by any chance?
 
SuperSpy
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Jan 22, 2018 2:56 pm

If I were you, I'd get a $5/mo Linode instance and install OpenVPN on it. It's a sledgehammer where a flyswatter would do approach, but it's a pretty neat bang for the buck.
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FlamingSpaceJunk
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Jan 22, 2018 5:42 pm

Private Tunnel (https://www.privatetunnel.com/pricing/) is a VPN service run by OpenVPN Inc., and it helps fund OpenVPN development.

SuperSpy wrote:
If I were you, I'd get a $5/mo Linode instance and install OpenVPN on it. It's a sledgehammer where a flyswatter would do approach, but it's a pretty neat bang for the buck.


Indeed. The best VPN service is the one under your control.

Though, Linode will come with a set amount of data per month. There are a lot alternatives out there. Vultr, Digital Ocean, VMHaus to name a few. Lowendbox.com runs specials, so there might be a good deal there.

StrongSwan is good alternative to OpenVPN, if you're in the market for an IPSEC solution.

There is OpenVPN AS from OpenVPN Inc. OpenVPN AS has a GUI, and it's licensed per device at $15 per year with a minimum of 10. OpenVPN AS might only make sense if you're really serious about connecting 10 devices at the same time or need this for a business.
 
bthylafh
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:19 pm

I'm using ProtonVPN and am pretty happy with it. IIRC the subscription gets you 5 devices.
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MOSFET
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:30 pm

I parsed the list at ThatOnePrivacySite recently and it looked to me like Mullvad ticked almost every tickable box. I was reviewing it for a friend, though - I don't use a VPN (yet anyway).
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just brew it!
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:35 am

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:
Indeed. The best VPN service is the one under your control.

Though, Linode will come with a set amount of data per month.

Even their cheapest ($5/month) plan comes with 1TB of data transfer. Unless you're torrenting or streaming a lot of HD video over the VPN, that ought to be enough. Inbound traffic to the VPS isn't metered, so VPN traffic won't count towards your transfer quota twice.
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krishnaroskin
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:53 am

I've been using AzireVPN for like 5 months on my laptop and phone. I'm pretty happy with them. They aren't in the US so that gives some extra piece of mind. They hit a lot of nice boxes on thatoneprivacysite.net.
 
chµck
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:29 am

I have used Torguard (yes it's an affiliate link) for over a year and I highly recommend them.

Here's why:
-Low monthly cost

Use coupon code "TGLifeTime50" for a recurring 50% off discount. That gets you a year of service for <$30 (<$2.50/mo). They have a 7 day money back guarantee and rapid customer service responses.
And I believe they are currently running a promotion where you can get 2 years of service for $50 and they send you a mobile VPN router (amazon link). You need to contact their customer service about this though.

-multiple connections (3-10)

Up to 5 simultaneous devices. You can purchase more concurrent slots. Each additional slot is $6 for the year with the above coupon code.

-Top notch download speeds

While it should be noted that VPN speeds depends on both your maximum network speed and CPU power (for encryption), I have never had complaints about TG's speeds.
I just ran a speedtest:
Image
I pay for 120 down/12up. This is over wifi using AES-128 encryption.
If you need over 1Gbps, you can upgrade to their 10Gbps network.

-Configurable

The apps for windows/iOS/android are very configurable. You can select which server you want to use, encryption type, DNS servers, set kill switches to both kills apps or disable network adapters, run scripts before/after connection, etc. They also support generating OpenVPN configs if you want to run it on a router.

-No caps

No caps!

-available for Mobile

apps available for windows/ios/android

My primary use is to bypass the work firewall and just to browse the web anonymously. Occasionally I will use it to access geolocked content.
As an additional note, many streaming services range-ban known VPN exits. TG does offer dedicated residential and streaming IPs for $4 monthly with the above coupon code.
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cheesyking
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 11:02 am

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:
Indeed. The best VPN service is the one under your control.

For a super simple setup of your own Swiss army penknife VPN server have a look at this:
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand

L2TP/IPSEC
SSH
OpenConnect
OpenVPN
Shadowsocks
sslh
Stunnel
tor
WireGuard

It's designed to remote setup VPN servers on VPS providers (Amazon, Azure, Google, Linode, Digital Ocean and Rackspace)but you can run a "local" install on a server you can ssh on to (you have to do this if you run windows as remote deployment is only supported on Linux and Mac desktops).

It even sets up ssl certificates through Let's Encrypt for the web control panel if you're using a domain to access it. The control panel provides customised instructions (so you just copy and paste and don't have to worry about changing IP addresses or passwords), QR codes to setup mobile devices and mirrors for any client software you might need.
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lex-ington
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:41 pm

I used to use StrongVPN - it was great at the time, but now I use a VPN service that is part of my sister's internet package.
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bthylafh
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:35 pm

cheesyking wrote:
FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:
Indeed. The best VPN service is the one under your control.

For a super simple setup of your own Swiss army penknife VPN server have a look at this:
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand


AIUI Streisand is intended more for getting past censorship, like the Great Firewall, hence the scattershot approach. It's not really meant for security, so depending on your threat model it might not be the right thing.
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tanker27
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 6:30 pm

Thanks all I will look into all of these.
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DancinJack
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 7:18 pm

tanker27 wrote:
Thanks all I will look into all of these.

I just want to say, rolling your own VPN on something like DO or Linode is kinda like the argument for build+FreeNAS vs a Synology system. More flexibility and different hardware choices, with a fair bit more work VS a prebuilt solution that will work "just fine" but doesn't necessarily give you every option in the world. Just gotta decide what you want. There are a number of current VPN companies that will be fine.
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:42 pm

DancinJack wrote:
I just want to say, rolling your own VPN on something like DO or Linode is kinda like the argument for build+FreeNAS vs a Synology system. More flexibility and different hardware choices, with a fair bit more work VS a prebuilt solution that will work "just fine" but doesn't necessarily give you every option in the world.

Very good analogy, IMO.
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cheesyking
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Wed Jan 24, 2018 9:30 am

bthylafh wrote:
cheesyking wrote:
FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:
Indeed. The best VPN service is the one under your control.

For a super simple setup of your own Swiss army penknife VPN server have a look at this:
https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand


AIUI Streisand is intended more for getting past censorship, like the Great Firewall, hence the scattershot approach. It's not really meant for security, so depending on your threat model it might not be the right thing.


Anything in particular that worries you about it? Must admit I haven't looked very closely at how it configures those services.

Having all those services running at once might be considered bad from a security point of view (especially if you're actually only using one of them) but you can pick and choose what you want at install time.
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FlamingSpaceJunk
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Jan 25, 2018 12:29 am

DancinJack wrote:
I just want to say, rolling your own VPN on something like DO or Linode is kinda like the argument for build+FreeNAS vs a Synology system.


Sort of. IPs used by VPN providers get blocked due to abuse at times by various services, and it really is the best way to know how much, or how little, gets logged.

I understand the convenience, but I get a little uneasy when other people have access to my packets.

I've heard good things about NordVPN.
 
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Jan 25, 2018 8:56 am

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:
DancinJack wrote:
I just want to say, rolling your own VPN on something like DO or Linode is kinda like the argument for build+FreeNAS vs a Synology system.

Sort of. IPs used by VPN providers get blocked due to abuse at times by various services, and it really is the best way to know how much, or how little, gets logged.

Yeah, I've noticed this occasionally with my Linode proxy. Sometimes I'll get a CAPTCHA from a site that doesn't normally use them, or get blocked from accessing Yelp. It's pretty rare that stuff like this happens though.

Strangely, a more common issue seems to be mis-identification of my geographic location. Instead of identifying my traffic as coming from the location of the Linode datacenter, some sites (e.g. Google) will suddenly decide I'm somewhere in South America or the Middle East. WTF? Pretty annoying, since suddenly I'll be getting Google in Arabic or Portuguese instead of English. :-?

FlamingSpaceJunk wrote:
I understand the convenience, but I get a little uneasy when other people have access to my packets.

Other people will have access to your packets regardless of what you do. The question is, who do you trust the least? For mobile use I'd say top of the list is the operator of the random WiFi hotspot you're using to get on the 'net, so anything that wraps all traffic on the local network with strong encryption is an improvement.

This is becoming less of a concern as more sites move to HTTPS by default...
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ludi
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Jan 25, 2018 12:19 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Strangely, a more common issue seems to be mis-identification of my geographic location. Instead of identifying my traffic as coming from the location of the Linode datacenter, some sites (e.g. Google) will suddenly decide I'm somewhere in South America or the Middle East. WTF? Pretty annoying, since suddenly I'll be getting Google in Arabic or Portuguese instead of English. :-?

Sounds like a feature to me. You've completely defeated Google's ability to track your whereabouts.
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DancinJack
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:05 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Yeah, I've noticed this occasionally with my Linode proxy. Sometimes I'll get a CAPTCHA from a site that doesn't normally use them, or get blocked from accessing Yelp. It's pretty rare that stuff like this happens though.

Strangely, a more common issue seems to be mis-identification of my geographic location. Instead of identifying my traffic as coming from the location of the Linode datacenter, some sites (e.g. Google) will suddenly decide I'm somewhere in South America or the Middle East. WTF? Pretty annoying, since suddenly I'll be getting Google in Arabic or Portuguese instead of English. :-?


It does happen from time to time, but it's very rare (for me). Just hop on another server if that's the case. It's not a big deal most of the time. Good VPN providers will grab another IP/server most of the time if that's the case anyway.

The location thing is because there are a number of VPN providers that use virtual servers that route through other places to give the appearance of physical servers in those locations. Hopefully whatever provider you choose (OP) actually tells you which is which. The good guys do.

I personally use ExpressVPN and they are wonderful in all these regards. Based outside the US, the only logs they keep are date connected, which server, and MB transferred (no caps). ExpressVPN does have a few virtual VPN locations, but they tell you which ones they are too so whatever. They have apps for every system/device you need. Their support has also been top notch IME. Happy to refer you so we can both get some free time if you'd like OP (or anyone here).
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FlamingSpaceJunk
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:09 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Other people will have access to your packets regardless of what you do. The question is, who do you trust the least? For mobile use I'd say top of the list is the operator of the random WiFi hotspot you're using to get on the 'net, so anything that wraps all traffic on the local network with strong encryption is an improvement.


Probably most ISPs, to be honest. They have the capabilities and motivation to mess with packets the most.

Yeah, wireless security could be better. We have the technology, but randomwidget(tm) only implements the bare minimum.

This is becoming less of a concern as more sites move to HTTPS by default...


TLS is nice, but it's not designed to be heavyweight security. You really do have to trust all of your infrastructure, which is a hard, uncomfortable question for consumers.
 
Ricefields
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon Apr 30, 2018 5:51 am

I've been using NordVPN for a month now and have almost none complaints. Well, maybe they should have a native Linux app, but they make up for speed and having many servers. I used GIFT75 code (just entered into https://nordvpn.com/) and for 3 dollars a month it is one of the cheaper ones: always do some research for good deals before buying.
 
Ricefields
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Mon May 14, 2018 8:29 am

Just remembered this thread and wanted to share with a promising looking VPN, called Surfshark VPN (https://surfshark.com). I think it is really cool that it supports unlimited devices and seems really easy to set up. Read that it is fast too.
 
oliv88
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:16 am

If you are looking for a VPN where you can compromise on the price, There is nothing best than NordVPN. I have been using it for the past 6 months now and I believe it is amazing. You can access Netflix Libraries with it, Torrent or access BBC iPlayer or any other blocked streaming content. It is also the fastest VPN according to the recent speed test conducted on 15 of the most prominent paid VPN services.
But as you mentioned you want something at a lower price, PureVPN is the recommended option for you. The reason, currently it is offering a deal at $2.48 per month if you purchase their 2-year subscription, works on multiple devices, is the 2nd fastest to Nord VPN, also comes with a mobile app and chrome extension for convenient usability. If you need to learn more about the VPN recommended you can read the PureVPN Review.

But choose wisely as to what is your actual need.
 
Robotics
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Aug 16, 2018 4:27 pm

Proton VPN and Windscribe are good for me. Connection speed is good both of them. IIRC Windscribe serves 50GB free for free users but check it in their site.
 
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Wed Nov 28, 2018 10:53 am

I just noticed the Synology now has a VPN package built into their NAS'. Has anyone used it (or maybe a drobo/qnap alternative). Obviously for media consumption, the upload speed might be an issue, but for general use it should be fine.
 
Robotics
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:26 am

Proton VPN is good and it has discount now.
 
ante9383
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Thu Nov 29, 2018 5:40 am

I highly recommend Private Internet Access (PIA): https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/
It's quite cheap, superfast, offers 5 concurrent connections, offers servers in many different countries, and its app is very user friendly.
The only con I can think of is that apparently it's actually a little bit too popular; that has the effect that Netflix mostly knows all the IPs associated with PIA,
so for me as a European it's difficult to find a server among its many, many US servers that allows me to watch US content.
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Kougar
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Re: Best VPN, Your Opnion

Fri Nov 30, 2018 2:34 am

Heard good things about WireGuard VPN https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08 ... to-happen/

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