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Ask HN: Which VPN would you recommend?
- herbst 10y agoI always liked mullvad, but they don't offer multiple countries and stuff. It really comes down for what you need it actually.
- mtmail 10y agoDidn't you ask the same question two days ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12290362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12290362
- pizza234 10y agoLooks like the difference is free (previous post) and not free (current one).
- pizza234 10y agoI think that a analyzing VPNs is quite impractical, but here we go: After trying a couple, I'm now with Private Internet Access; the reasons are: - the support actually replies and helps (this doesn't hold true for all the companies); although I think VPN typical problems are very technical (in fact, I didn't really solve the issue at the time) and may not be solved by them, it shows that the company is actually striving to provide a good service - they don't keep logs - the quality is stable and fast; my network is permanently connected to it - they have many servers around the world - they do provided their service with integrity; they've pulled their Russian servers because the Russian authorities imposed them to keep logs Some of these statements can't be proved, but as far as I can possibly examine and experience, it's a really good service.
- bendiksolheim 10y agoRoll your own! Setting up your own, private VPN can be done quite easily with https://github.com/jlund/streisand https://github.com/jlund/streisand and a DigitalOcean account. Costs $5 per month. It doesn't require a whole lot of technical competence either, as the Streisand project configures just about everything for you.
- spetron 10y agoIf you're a student you can get the GitHub Student Pack (https://education.github.com/pack https://education.github.com/pack) with 50$ platform credit on DigitalOcean. I'm using this with streisand, very very easy to set up.
- throwanem 10y agoThat's great! Until something breaks.
- andrenotgiant 10y agoDestroy the broken droplet and spin up a new one. I bet someone has written a cloud-init script so you never even have to login to the droplet.
- msh 10y agoBut then you are responsible for the security of the server which you probably don't have a lot of time for.
- bendiksolheim 10y agoA firewall is configured as part of this setup. unnattended-upgrades is also enabled, so security updates are automatically installed (which of course might be a security problem itself). If you are really paranoid, you can destroy and recreate the box every so often, as the whole process takes about 10 minutes.
- MightySCollins 10y agoAnd in some ways it reduces the chance of a security problem because VPN's with alot of users is a bigger target than one with just you.
- znpy 10y agoOpenVPN, on a host you do control. Everything else is not trustworthy.
- dblooman 10y agoAlso, there are lots of third party plugins that work nicely with OpenVPN. I use OneLogin with OpenVPN via RADIUS for example.
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- darkblackcorner 10y agoI use https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ on recommendation from a colleague, and I'm pretty happy. No logs, plenty servers, no real issues, and they recently shut down their Russian server due to imminent privacy concerns. So I feel that they have their priorities straight. I used https://www.frootvpn.com/ https://www.frootvpn.com/ briefly when it was free - seemed ok too, but not many servers back then. Depends really what you want to use it for, but you could look into something like https://www.zerotier.com/ https://www.zerotier.com/ or even hosting your own. This might be useful for more in depth comparisons: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/
- prophet_ 10y agoI use PIA and I can't complain. One issue I noticed that may affect others as well is that they are being blocked more and more around the internet. I don't think this is only a PIA problem though.
- Klathmon 10y agoYeah I love PIA, but i've found several sites that outright block you in very "opaque" ways (my favorite is one that says the site is down for emergency maintenance when you connect from a PIA VPN IP). It sucks, but I think PIA (and others) are going to need to start using different IPs and getting around these blocks if they want to stay competitive.
- deanclatworthy 10y agoIt definitely is a problem with PIA. And furthermore, they have said they won't be circumventing the geoblocks, as they have done before.
- jay-saint 10y ago+1 for PIA UK exit nodes work for watching BBC. Plus as a bonus they have recently implemented an option that block ads and malware on a DNS level. There are apps for iOS, macOS and Windows. It can also work without the app and be setup on a router level to protect the entire network.
- Technologix 10y agoYou can use this VPN Comparator to choose the right VPN for you: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/simple-vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/simple-vpn-comparison-chart/ Personally, I've been using ExpressVPN for the last 6 months. Absolutely great service and speed with a large choice of locations/servers. You can get 30 days free trial using my referral link: http://bit.ly/2bKHXgO http://bit.ly/2bKHXgO
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- rakic 10y agoIf you need it only for web browsing, than I highly recommend the free VPN that’s now integrated in developer release of Opera. https://www.opera.com/computer/beta https://www.opera.com/computer/beta On iOS, all traffic goes through it. http://www.opera.com/apps/vpn http://www.opera.com/apps/vpn
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- walterbell 10y agoOpera has been acquired by a Chinese consortium, https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/operas-shareholders-greenlight-1-2b-sale-to-chinese-consortium/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/operas-shareholders-greenl...
- pedro2 10y agoAirVPN. It allows to setup a stable port-forward, unlike PIA which (by design, I suppose, due to being safer) changes the port forward every connection. Also, AirVPN allows 3 or 5 port forwards, whereas PIA allows 1.
- baeschtl 10y agoTorrentfreak has a quite excessive comparison list of different providers: https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous-review-160220/ https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous-review-160220/ I'm also not a big fan of rolling my own VPN, don't have the time to keep it updated.
- yardie 10y agoI use NordVPN. Pay annually and it can be as low as $40. Allows up to 5 devices and they have servers all over the planet. I primarily use it for streaming; Netflix US/UK/CA/FR, i-player, and checking how advertising looks in different countries. And popcorntime, occassionally.
- tatoalo 10y agoI've been using Tunnelbear(https://www.tunnelbear.com/ https://www.tunnelbear.com/) for a couple of years now and my experience has been fantastic: • It doesn't keep activity logs. • Their tunnel network has been recently improved and it counts something like 20 countries at the moment. • It's really fast and it keeps your device safe even in the possibility of a connection issue, it will block all unsecured traffic until it's possible to properly gain access again. • Something not directly related as a VPN feature but since I have to pay for it I'm more than happily going to underline this, the UI is really really nice, the design is clean, smooth and is one great experience on every device I've been using it on(Android, iOS and Windows).
- walterbell 10y agoOn iOS, it's free up to 500MB/mo, $4/mo after. Their app has VPN auto-reconnect on iOS, which is useful because iOS does not seem to support always-on VPNs (except for "enterprise").
- tatoalo 10y agoYeah, it's 500MB/month shared across all devices since it's linked to the account you login with. Depending on what mobile device you're using there are different offers since it's possible to go with an Android/iOS-only subscription. I usually end up picking the $7.99/mo offer which is the most logic one if you have multiple devices with different OS enviroments.
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- saji13 10y agoI've found F-secure Freedome quite suitable for me. Works on phone also (sometimes there's some issues though) and blocks tracking attemps.
- zacharycohn 10y agoHuge fan of getcloak.com. Osx/ios only, but Android coming soon. Been a paid customer for four or five years.
- criddell 10y agoWith Verizon becoming an ad company and AT&T showing signs of the same thing, I was wondering what would be involved in having my home's router automatically and permanently connect to a VPN service to keep my data from my ISP? I understand the performance hit would be huge (I have a gigabit fiber connection), but as long as I can still stream MLB and Netflix, I'd be happy.
- seibelj 10y agoI am launching a new product (VPN router permanently connected to anonymous VPN) within a month, I don't want to link to the website yet because it's a WIP. Send me an email (in profile) if you are interested.
- rando444 10y agoYour VPN provider would be the bottleneck, not the VPN itself, in which case if you take a performance hit you should explore other VPN providers. But to tunnel all of your home traffic you can either (1) buy a router that supports VPN tunneling or (2) try and save some money by buying a generic router and flashing it with something like DD-WRT, which would give you an OpenVPN client which would allow you to do the same thing, just with cheaper hardware. Once set up, whenever your router boots it will connect the VPN and all of your traffic will go over that connection.
- furyg3 10y agoHasn't shipped yet, but Keezel may be interesting: http://keezel.co http://keezel.co It's a hardware product and they broker the VPN provider... so the VPN provider doesn't know who you are, and the Keezel device can use the best-performing VPN provider / nodes. For launch they're partnering with PureVPN, LeVPN and ProXPN.
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- dx034 10y agoI use hide.me I tested several providers over the years but this one has given me the best speed and lowest latency when I choose servers close to me. Works well to have it running 24/7 on the phone. Of course it's more expensive than just hosting a droplet, but very helpful to get IPs of various countries. Unlimited traffic also comes in handy..
- wineisfine 10y agoPrivateinternetaccess.com besides their somewhat uncatchy name and dated looking website is cheap and reliable. You can even pay with Amazon gift cards, in case you want to anonymise your payment and don't want to dive into Bitcoin I had PIA for a year and when the subscription ran out, though being a happy customer, I got tempted by iVpn.net, which was 3x the price, and had a pretty website. It also got many recommendations here on HN, but think they were not 100% honest. I regret moving away and will go back to PIA asap. Takeaways: also important is which device you will be using to surf. Many vpn providers have a flawed or no iPad app, and refer to the standard openvpn app. It's very cumbersome to use (you can not copy paste your username and password, just to name one thing). And setting up your own, doesn't make much sense to me as you will always have the same public ip then.
- Learn2win 10y agoairvpn, privateinternetaccess It's easy to set up your own VPN as well. Just get a VPS and then install OpenVPN server on it. https://vpntips.com/how-to-setup-a-vpn-server/ https://vpntips.com/how-to-setup-a-vpn-server/
- samblr 10y agoHola chrome extension VPN - works for couple of websites I dont have access to.
- proftimfanning 10y agoI prefer http://BlackHoleCloud.com http://BlackHoleCloud.com . You get your own VPN server(s) in the cities that you choose so there is no fighting for bandwidth, and no other vpn subscriber will try to hack into your computer. It also comes with your choice of tiny hardware firewalls. The smallest one fits on a keychain. You can put up to 64 devices on the VPN at no extra cost. Oh, and it has Tor built in if you want it and the firewall blocks ads like a PiHole.
- ecaroth 10y agoMany good recommendations in here, but I use froot and am pretty happy with it.
- phideauxrocks 10y agoI'm in Sydney and a very satisfied user of AirVPN. I mostly use it to get around geo-blocking. They have more than enough servers and I've never had an issue with the reliability of their service. Speeds in Europe are reasonable, but I'm on crappy ADSL anyway. You should check out this very extensive comparison sheet as well: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/
- misbah143 10y agoDOT VPN is one of the best i have ever used.
- dbroberson 10y agoI've done "VPNs" using sshuttle https://www.unixmen.com/sshuttle-poor-mans-vpn-ssh/ https://www.unixmen.com/sshuttle-poor-mans-vpn-ssh/ Basically, if you have SSH access to a machine and Python is installed on the endpoint, you can set up a "VPN" over SSH. To me, this is much easier to set up. You can get by most of the time by having a vanilla Linux installation on a cheap VPS without any additional work.
- nitai 10y agoI used to be a customer of PIA but the speed wasn't good anymore and I got blocked. I switched to ExpressVPN and they are very reliable. Especially if you travel in Asia. In addition, they have dedicated router firmwares so you can secure your whole network.
- AnnaGrin 10y agoI always read about the latest updates and the best vpn services at https://myipservices.com/vpnrating https://myipservices.com/vpnrating. There are lots of information and services that relate to the internet anonymity. I think that nowadays it is easy to find open, free and paid vpn. As for me, I prefer paid vpn 'cos it's more reliable. I use ExpressVPN.
- johny85 10y agoI'm using Overplay vpn service.I chose it from this rating https://myipservices.com/vpnrating https://myipservices.com/vpnrating . I chose a paid service as they say that it works much better and faster. And to be honest, their security is much better.
- adelinegray72 10y agoI am also looking into vpn options and these are the ones I have found https://www.purevpn.com/ https://www.purevpn.com/ https://www.ivacy.com/ https://www.ivacy.com/ https://www.privateinternetacces.com/ https://www.privateinternetacces.com/ What are other people using? I am on tablet Thanks