a thread to discuss VPNs

what's good out there?

I tried to install one a couple of weeks back (to watch something on RTE player) and it didn't work and I accidentally installed some accompanying spyware shit. I would definitely be interested in hearing about the good options as well.

There was some talk on the Snowden thread about this yesterday (link

good call, thanks

is there any way to bake a VPN directly into your router? i vaguely recall that being an option at some point

i started using Private Internet Access a few months ago, based off of a recommendation here: http://lifehacker.com/5935863/five-best-vpn-service-providers

i did about 7.5 minutes of research before making the decision, but so far it has worked well (i think).

there's also this article http://thewirecutter.com/blog/vpns-are-for-most-people/

also are there VPNs for yr phone when yr not on wifi

i guess this article, posted earlier today, would be a better link:

http://lifehacker.com/why-is-everyone-talking-about-vpns-1793768312

xpost

some routers will support it natively, but i don't think most do. some security minded friends have this https://store.pfsense.org/SG-1000.aspx which sits in between your router and the net and allows you to configure VPNs among other things.

another thing to keep in mind is that some sites will block any VPN users coming from certain providers, which can become annoying if you have it on all the time

i've used private internet access to avoid location restrictions, for which it has worked fine. i can't speak to its security

iirc there are routers with baked-in vpn but they aren't cheap

unless you're running it yourself, no VPN is 100% trustworthy. you're pretty much taking their word that they're not logging/harvesting your data/doing something horrendous like letting someone piggyback off your real connection - that's part of the risk you're running with free vpns.

I don't trust any vpn 100% but I inherently distrust free ones - who knows what they're doing with your data to pay the bills? see hola for example: http://www.techradar.com/news/networking/-hola-if-your-vpn-was-busted-selling-your-bandwidth-for-botnets-1295421

also worth checking to see if they replace your root certificate like cyberghost does/did as you definitely don't want that - https://www.bestvpn.com/what-the-hell-is-cyberghost-up-to/

basically, read as much as you can, and determine the risk that's acceptable to you.

I use PIA but not for personal things like banking. server speeds are great and there's a big range of locations.

fyi, if you are American and thinking about getting a vpn in light of the ISPs selling your data - while obviously a disgrace, the policy isn't new and in fact they have been able to do it for years now. still creepy af, obviously, but it's not as though the law was previously in force to prevent it happening.

here we gooooo

https://github.com/jlund/streisand

Caught a two year deal on NordVPN. We'll see how this goes...

I was doubting between NordVPN and AirVPN, but also decided to go for the former yesterday. It seemed best to me in this useful comparison chart, because it doesn't store logs and - while in the US - has plenty of exit servers elsewhere.