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TorrentFreak maintains a list of providers that responded to a questionnaire about anonymity, including one about encryption used: https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-

TorrentFreak maintains a list of providers that responded to a questionnaire about anonymity, including one about encryption used: https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous-review-160220/ https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-anonymous-review-160220/ Personally, I prefer the "roll your own" approach mentioned above. A VPS from DigitalOcean or something beats most providers' pricing.

homulilly 10y ago
providers have the advantage of offering multiple geographic locations without having to spin up a new instance every time you switch which may be useful to some people though.
Freak_NL 10y ago
> A VPS from DigitalOcean or something beats most providers' pricing. Does it? A VPN subscription costs around $40 a year, DigitalOcean starts from $60 a year for the lowest level standard droplet. Am I overlooking something?
- SturgeonsLaw 10y ago
  You can get a VPS for far cheaper than DO's prices. https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendspirit.com/ http://lowendspirit.com/ I'm currently posting through a VPN running on a VPS I discovered through Low End Box, works just fine for browsing and downloading. 500GB transfer per month for $10 a year.
  - philliphaydon 10y ago
    You could setup a free instance on AWS for 1 year then create a new account the following year.
  - bostand 10y ago
    How much can you trust these lowend box providers? I talked to one guy who was utterly incompetent and another one who was really shady...
    - SturgeonsLaw 10y ago
      I trust them enough for my use case. Got one running as an OpenVPN server and another hosting a few small websites I've made for friends and family. Would I trust them as a production server for an income generating app? Nope. But for my light/trivial uses they've been perfectly suitable.
gog 10y ago
There is no anonymity if you roll your own. The whole idea of VPN providers is that a lot of users have a connection to the same server so it's hard to monitor who talks to who.
- nycatelos 10y ago
  You don't get anonymity with a VPN…
- throwanem 10y ago
  Perhaps you're confusing VPNs with Tor. The latter seeks to provide anonymity; the former protects traffic traveling over a potentially untrustworthy network. Sure, a lot of folks seem to use VPNs lately as just a proxy to bypass geoblocking or whatever, and that works if the upstream endpoint is in the right place - but that's no reason to get confused about what the tool under discussion actually is able to do.
  - gog 10y ago
    I am not confused there are just more cases. A lot of people are using VPN providers to download illegal content via torrents. And in case there are no logs on the servers (which most providers advertise) the copyright holder has no way of knowing who you are since they only see that the traffic is coming and going from the providers IP address.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Those people are in for a series of nasty surprises if copyright enforcement ever grows teeth, because whoever's providing such a VPN service with backhaul certainly has enough information to tie them to their activity.
      - gog 10y ago
        If they don't store logs they don't have enough information. That is the reason why a lot of companies that provide this service are incorporated in countries that don't require them to do so.

homulilly 10y ago

providers have the advantage of offering multiple geographic locations without having to spin up a new instance every time you switch which may be useful to some people though.

Freak_NL 10y ago

> A VPS from DigitalOcean or something beats most providers' pricing. Does it? A VPN subscription costs around $40 a year, DigitalOcean starts from $60 a year for the lowest level standard droplet. Am I overlooking something?

SturgeonsLaw 10y ago
You can get a VPS for far cheaper than DO's prices. https://lowendbox.com/ https://lowendbox.com/ http://lowendspirit.com/ http://lowendspirit.com/ I'm currently posting through a VPN running on a VPS I discovered through Low End Box, works just fine for browsing and downloading. 500GB transfer per month for $10 a year.
- philliphaydon 10y ago
  You could setup a free instance on AWS for 1 year then create a new account the following year.
- bostand 10y ago
  How much can you trust these lowend box providers? I talked to one guy who was utterly incompetent and another one who was really shady...
  - SturgeonsLaw 10y ago
    I trust them enough for my use case. Got one running as an OpenVPN server and another hosting a few small websites I've made for friends and family. Would I trust them as a production server for an income generating app? Nope. But for my light/trivial uses they've been perfectly suitable.

gog 10y ago

There is no anonymity if you roll your own. The whole idea of VPN providers is that a lot of users have a connection to the same server so it's hard to monitor who talks to who.

nycatelos 10y ago
You don't get anonymity with a VPN…
throwanem 10y ago
Perhaps you're confusing VPNs with Tor. The latter seeks to provide anonymity; the former protects traffic traveling over a potentially untrustworthy network. Sure, a lot of folks seem to use VPNs lately as just a proxy to bypass geoblocking or whatever, and that works if the upstream endpoint is in the right place - but that's no reason to get confused about what the tool under discussion actually is able to do.
- gog 10y ago
  I am not confused there are just more cases. A lot of people are using VPN providers to download illegal content via torrents. And in case there are no logs on the servers (which most providers advertise) the copyright holder has no way of knowing who you are since they only see that the traffic is coming and going from the providers IP address.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Those people are in for a series of nasty surprises if copyright enforcement ever grows teeth, because whoever's providing such a VPN service with backhaul certainly has enough information to tie them to their activity.
    - gog 10y ago
      If they don't store logs they don't have enough information. That is the reason why a lot of companies that provide this service are incorporated in countries that don't require them to do so.