topic Re: VPN in The Lounge

VPN

gpixel — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:03:14 GMT

What are the best VPN services and are any of them free?

Re: VPN

Luddite — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:27:03 GMT

@gpixel wrote:
What are the best VPN services and are any of them free?

Try Windscribe (10 gb/month free) or Tunnelbear (0.5 gb/month free). Both very easy to use.

Re: VPN

CFPartDeux — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:35:46 GMT

@Luddite wrote:
@gpixel wrote:
What are the best VPN services and are any of them free?
Try Windscribe (10 gb/month free) or Tunnelbear (0.5 gb/month free). Both very easy to use.

I don't know about that 1st one, but Tunnelbear is probably not a good choice.... I'd have to go looking for the info again, but they used to be a regular sponsor of the Linus Tech Tips Youtube channel, but they got dropped due to, IIRC, being bought out by some other company that has some shady privacy practices.

Personally, I use PIA (Private Internet Access), and have zero complaints. Although they're not free, they're actually pretty cheap, especially if you sign up for a longer period of time. I don't know if PIA does this, but some of the paid services (NordVPN is one, I THINK) have free trials that you can use for a few days, or up to a week.

Re: VPN

gpixel — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 19:12:38 GMT

@CFPartDeux Personally, I use PIA (Private Internet Access), and have zero complaints.

what is the cost for the subscription?I see a setting in my phone for vpn, can I set this up as a VPN profile on my phone?

Re: VPN

CFPartDeux — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:05:43 GMT

@gpixel wrote:
@CFPartDeux Personally, I use PIA (Private Internet Access), and have zero complaints.

what is the cost for the subscription?I see a setting in my phone for vpn, can I set this up as a VPN profile on my phone?

Check it out: PIA

Do some reading on their site - out of the several VPNs I checked out, they had the most servers, most locations, really good price, and they support a LOT, if not the most, different devices. As for using it with a phone, yes, for sure..... they have tutorials on their site to walk you through how to set up their VPN on various devices.

IF you decide to try them out, you can probably get a discount code via the Linus Tech Tips site.

Re: VPN

will13am — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:23:01 GMT

Commercial brands = privacy by policy. Roll your own = privacy by design.

Re: VPN

gpixel — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:44:01 GMT

@CFPartDeux nice, thanks for the suggestion. I'm downgrading my plan to the $25. so I just want a little more protection if I decide to connect to a wifi hotspot

Re: VPN

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 03:17:13 GMT

I'm with Ivacy. Maybe buck fifty - 2 bucks a month iirc. I think I prepaid for 2 or 3 years.

Yes. You set up the phone VPN connecting to your vpn of choice. baddabing...vpn.

Re: VPN

srlawren — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 16:42:59 GMT

@gpixel just remember that with most things, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. I'm not sure if that holds true for free VPN services as well, but they have to pay for the servers an bandwidth somehow, right? Free for a limited time trial is one thing, but ongoing free is another.

I haven't looked seriously at VPN services for a while, but I believe the free ones also tend to be slower than paid alternatives (on average), and offer less included traffic. I would say if you're in the market for a VPN, try to pick a paid one that suits your needs.

There's lots of round-ups out there that compare popular services. Here's some links you may find helpful:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-vpn-service/

https://www.androidcentral.com/best-vpn

https://www.androidcentral.com/best-vpn-apps-android

https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-vpn-apps-577594/

and many, many more.

Re: VPN

srlawren — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 16:46:18 GMT

@will13am wrote:
Commercial brands = privacy by policy. Roll your own = privacy by design.

@will13am If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like you are advocating setting up your own private VPN service? Have you done this? Curious for more info. I guess you'd have to have an always-on, always-connected PC available to host, and a quick home internet service with plenty of bandwidth? What are the pros and cons? I'm guessing one con is that since your host PC is in one country (probably Canada), you can't do things like mask your location to work around geofencing?

Re: VPN

will13am — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 17:21:49 GMT

@srlawren wrote:
@will13am wrote:
Commercial brands = privacy by policy. Roll your own = privacy by design.
@will13am If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like you are advocating setting up your own private VPN service? Have you done this? Curious for more info. I guess you'd have to have an always-on, always-connected PC available to host, and a quick home internet service with plenty of bandwidth? What are the pros and cons? I'm guessing one con is that since your host PC is in one country (probably Canada), you can't do things like mask your location to work around geofencing?

There are many hosting sites that sell capacity. Set up a VPN server and that's it. Since it is a DIY, you can trust yourself that there will be no privacy related concerns.

Re: VPN

TigerKing — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 18:03:37 GMT

if privacy is the main focus I would go with Mullvad VPN. It’s based in Sweden and requires no information at all. There’s no username or password, just a unique number that you input and you’re good to go. They also offer a variety of ways to pay to increase privacy, even allowing you to send cash is an envelope. I use it and it’s about $7 US per month.

Re: VPN

srlawren — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 19:06:55 GMT

@will13am wrote:
@srlawren wrote:
@will13am wrote:
Commercial brands = privacy by policy. Roll your own = privacy by design.
@will13am If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like you are advocating setting up your own private VPN service? Have you done this? Curious for more info. I guess you'd have to have an always-on, always-connected PC available to host, and a quick home internet service with plenty of bandwidth? What are the pros and cons? I'm guessing one con is that since your host PC is in one country (probably Canada), you can't do things like mask your location to work around geofencing?
There are many hosting sites that sell capacity. Set up a VPN server and that's it. Since it is a DIY, you can trust yourself that there will be no privacy related concerns.

@will13am so, yes, there's tons of cloud hosting options out there. However, aren't you then responsible for maintaining your VPN server in every way: OS patching, VPN service software patching, configuring the server securely, etc.? If you're paying a fee for a hosted VM to run your own VPN (PaaS), why not go full SaaS and use a trusted commercial VPN service? Then you can trust that they have staff dedicated to configuring and maintaining everything to remain secure, rather than having to do that all yourself.

Re: VPN

will13am — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 19:09:59 GMT

@srlawren wrote:
@will13am wrote:
@srlawren wrote:
@will13am wrote:
Commercial brands = privacy by policy. Roll your own = privacy by design.
@will13am If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like you are advocating setting up your own private VPN service? Have you done this? Curious for more info. I guess you'd have to have an always-on, always-connected PC available to host, and a quick home internet service with plenty of bandwidth? What are the pros and cons? I'm guessing one con is that since your host PC is in one country (probably Canada), you can't do things like mask your location to work around geofencing?
There are many hosting sites that sell capacity. Set up a VPN server and that's it. Since it is a DIY, you can trust yourself that there will be no privacy related concerns.
@will13am so, yes, there's tons of cloud hosting options out there. However, aren't you then responsible for maintaining your VPN server in every way: OS patching, VPN service software patching, configuring the server securely, etc.? If you're paying a fee for a hosted VM to run your own VPN (PaaS), why not go full SaaS and use a trusted commercial VPN service? Then you can trust that they have staff dedicated to configuring and maintaining everything to remain secure, rather than having to do that all yourself.

The key is trusted commercial VPN service. Which is trusted? I don't use a VPN much but when I do, it is hard to trust privacy by policy.

Re: VPN

srlawren — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 19:21:57 GMT

@will13am wrote:
The key is trusted commercial VPN service. Which is trusted? I don't use a VPN much but when I do, it is hard to trust privacy by policy.

@will13am your concern is valid of course, and boils down to how do you know who you can trust? Here's the thing: the big (popular) commercial VPN services are under a lot more scrutiny (from customers, reviewers, good- and bad-intentioned hackers, etc.) than your self-managed VPN server. This of course is a double-edged sword: if there's fewer people trying to exploit your server, it's less likely someone will be successful in doing so; however, if there's a problem with your configuration, you may never know. Do you know how to configure intrusion detection and monitoring? Do you know best practice (which is an ever-moving target) around hardening your configuration? Do you have the time and energy to spend keeping up with the latest exploits, the latest software updates, etc.? If you do, then all the power to you. Personally, I'd rather pay the professionals a few bucks a month to do that all for me.

Re: VPN

Korth — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 03:28:05 GMT

Free VPNs are bad news. You might actually have your online "privacy" protected from some entities ... but all the information these VPNs track and collect about you is instead sold to other entities (who often just end up selling the valuable bits to the entities you might wish to anonymize from anyhow). Competition is fierce so products basically price themselves and customers basically get exactly what they pay for.

You can subscribe to Nord for just $3.99 per month or $35 per year. Not free but you get a lot for a little.

TunnelBear, Surfshark, Proton, and ExpressVPN are utter garbage (in my opinion).

Just google "best VPN" or "best free VPN" to get a list of offerings.

Re: VPN

will13am — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 11:44:52 GMT

@srlawren wrote:
@will13am wrote:
The key is trusted commercial VPN service. Which is trusted? I don't use a VPN much but when I do, it is hard to trust privacy by policy.
@will13am your concern is valid of course, and boils down to how do you know who you can trust? Here's the thing: the big (popular) commercial VPN services are under a lot more scrutiny (from customers, reviewers, good- and bad-intentioned hackers, etc.) than your self-managed VPN server. This of course is a double-edged sword: if there's fewer people trying to exploit your server, it's less likely someone will be successful in doing so; however, if there's a problem with your configuration, you may never know. Do you know how to configure intrusion detection and monitoring? Do you know best practice (which is an ever-moving target) around hardening your configuration? Do you have the time and energy to spend keeping up with the latest exploits, the latest software updates, etc.? If you do, then all the power to you. Personally, I'd rather pay the professionals a few bucks a month to do that all for me.

Things have been going strong for years. It has been running wireguard for nearly a year while the popular brands are still stuck on old protocols and are just starting to change.

Re: VPN

CFPartDeux — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 05:51:01 GMT

Things have been going strong for years. It has been running wireguard for nearly a year while the popular brands are still stuck on old protocols and are just starting to change.

PIA runs Wireguard.

Re: VPN

srlawren — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 15:50:47 GMT

@CFPartDeux wrote:
Things have been going strong for years. It has been running wireguard for nearly a year while the popular brands are still stuck on old protocols and are just starting to change.
PIA runs Wireguard.

@CFPartDeux @will13am there are others, too, according to https://restoreprivacy.com/wireguard/. They list several. They also talk about some of the privacy issues inherent in Wireguard and how some providers work around that.

Re: VPN

Korth — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 22:55:41 GMT

Providers can always work around any VPN technology.

It doesn't take long for them to map all the server IPs, to figure out where all the entrance-points and exit-points for "their" data interface with the rest of the internet. And all commercial VPNs are required to abide by local laws, most countries require submission of logs and records as requested (by a court order). Many countries (including Canada) maintain various overlapping international legal agreements relating to internet privacy, internet crime, DMCA law, etc. So the reality is that if "they" really, really want to track your activities then known VPNs are not going to offer much legal or technical protection.

The real value of a VPN is that it causes the provider to work if they want to track you. If you're not an interesting offender on somebody's list then it's just not worth their time to batter through all the extra legal barriers, phone calls, emails, etc.

And, of course, a VPN can translate your browsing experience into one entering the internet from a different country, so you can access region-specific content which might be inaccessible from wherever you are physically located.