6 ms·

Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2017?

11 points by fraqed 10y ago

remx 10y ago
There's no way of proving a VPN provider is not logging[0] Also worth reading this guide which is much more comprehensive than that TorrentFreak article: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ [0] https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 [#] http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/ http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  Or worse - stealing your secrets or injecting malware. I think these are ok for specific use cases like p2p, but I would not use them for general browsing.
i336_ 10y ago
Thankfully HN is not a VPN discussion site, so I have the freedom to say this: The VPN market is completely artificial. You can completely sidestep all the inflation by getting your own VPS or server. I've found this is tons cheaper, and you have complete control over the hosting provider. I can recommend Feral or UrDN myself; I've heard very good things about both, they are worth your time checking out. I also have good but limited personal experience with Contabo; they generally have admirably high CPU and network load tolerance, but they are in Germany. For 100.00% assurance find somewhere in Switzerland. Configuring OpenVPN (or SoftEther if that floats your boat) yourself also lets you remove the server-sent default route stuff, which makes the process of configuring your own local routing setup a little more elegant. (It also teaches you a lot!) There's also the massive benefit that because the VPN machine itself is (presumably) just a Linux box, you can run Tor, Freenet, Tox, etc etc on the machine, and benefit from that connectivity everywhere - while completely moving those traffic profiles away from yourself. Win! Also: it's VERY easy to only run specific applications over the VPN link. I did this for a friend running FreeBSD a few months ago using two FIBs.
- _qbxp 10y ago
  If you host your own VPN on a CPA, couldn't the authorities simply link your VPN IP (the VPS IP) to you via billing? Or am I not understanding how it works?
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Unfortunately not sure what you mean by CPA, haven't heard that acronym before and Google only came up with "Cost Per Analysis" :P Theoretically speaking you're completely correct. The main mitigation in practice is to find providers in different countries which are unlikely to be cooperative given the context - for example most countries will look down heavily on picture sharing of certain kinds (if you get what I mean :( ), while different countries have different policies on torrenting. I've (solely anecdotally) heard good things about UrDN (used to be Ukraine, now Sweden); Feral Hosting runs in the Netherlands, a country often used for VPN type things (and if I understand correctly, you can get up to - big asterisks - 10Gbps-20Gbps with them, without bazillions of $/mo); and I understand Switzerland's laws are torrent-friendly, so getting hosting there is expensive but kind of the gold standard. As I said before, the VPN industry/scene is artificially inflated. Getting OpenVPN up and running is actually a lot easier than you might think, I had it on my todo list for months (getting a VPN running on a VPS for a friend) and I ended up getting OpenVPN itself AND per-application tunneling going on FreeBSD in about 2-3 days, with resilient client- and server-side autoconfiguration scripts stabilized after about a week. There aren't really any tutorials but it's all fairly easy to do. Unfortunately Windows doesn't do per-app tunneling that well, if at all, I don't think. I'd recommend playing with OpenVPN between for example two local machines/VMs, or ideally a local machine and a VPS somewhere (even one you're not planning on using for whatever the VPN would be for). This is because your LAN will always be more forgiving and responsive than the Internet, and also because "oookay, so now I can reach my laptop from 192.168.0.3 and 10.0.1.15" isn't as interesting (to me) as "my laptop is 10.0.1.15 and my VPS is 10.0.1.16!". If you're familar with VM networking or can accept the additional load of learning about that concurrently then go for it with VMs, but I wouldn't recommend it otherwise - your goal is to set up OpenVPN between a remote host and your local computer, not to specialize in networking two VMs together. There's also the possibility of tethering one computer to your phone for one end of the network (with your phone using its data), and using your existing internet for the other end of the network. That's if your cellular ISP allows VPN traffic. I wouldn't advise using your phone's VPN client for initial experimentation/setup, its debugging will not be nearly verbose enough to diagnose any issues.

11 points by fraqed 10y ago

remx 10y ago

There's no way of proving a VPN provider is not logging[0] Also worth reading this guide which is much more comprehensive than that TorrentFreak article: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/ [0] https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 [#] http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/ http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/

jpalomaki 10y ago
Or worse - stealing your secrets or injecting malware. I think these are ok for specific use cases like p2p, but I would not use them for general browsing.

i336_ 10y ago

Thankfully HN is not a VPN discussion site, so I have the freedom to say this: The VPN market is completely artificial. You can completely sidestep all the inflation by getting your own VPS or server. I've found this is tons cheaper, and you have complete control over the hosting provider. I can recommend Feral or UrDN myself; I've heard very good things about both, they are worth your time checking out. I also have good but limited personal experience with Contabo; they generally have admirably high CPU and network load tolerance, but they are in Germany. For 100.00% assurance find somewhere in Switzerland. Configuring OpenVPN (or SoftEther if that floats your boat) yourself also lets you remove the server-sent default route stuff, which makes the process of configuring your own local routing setup a little more elegant. (It also teaches you a lot!) There's also the massive benefit that because the VPN machine itself is (presumably) just a Linux box, you can run Tor, Freenet, Tox, etc etc on the machine, and benefit from that connectivity everywhere - while completely moving those traffic profiles away from yourself. Win! Also: it's VERY easy to only run specific applications over the VPN link. I did this for a friend running FreeBSD a few months ago using two FIBs.

_qbxp 10y ago
If you host your own VPN on a CPA, couldn't the authorities simply link your VPN IP (the VPS IP) to you via billing? Or am I not understanding how it works?
- i336_ 10y ago
  Unfortunately not sure what you mean by CPA, haven't heard that acronym before and Google only came up with "Cost Per Analysis" :P Theoretically speaking you're completely correct. The main mitigation in practice is to find providers in different countries which are unlikely to be cooperative given the context - for example most countries will look down heavily on picture sharing of certain kinds (if you get what I mean :( ), while different countries have different policies on torrenting. I've (solely anecdotally) heard good things about UrDN (used to be Ukraine, now Sweden); Feral Hosting runs in the Netherlands, a country often used for VPN type things (and if I understand correctly, you can get up to - big asterisks - 10Gbps-20Gbps with them, without bazillions of $/mo); and I understand Switzerland's laws are torrent-friendly, so getting hosting there is expensive but kind of the gold standard. As I said before, the VPN industry/scene is artificially inflated. Getting OpenVPN up and running is actually a lot easier than you might think, I had it on my todo list for months (getting a VPN running on a VPS for a friend) and I ended up getting OpenVPN itself AND per-application tunneling going on FreeBSD in about 2-3 days, with resilient client- and server-side autoconfiguration scripts stabilized after about a week. There aren't really any tutorials but it's all fairly easy to do. Unfortunately Windows doesn't do per-app tunneling that well, if at all, I don't think. I'd recommend playing with OpenVPN between for example two local machines/VMs, or ideally a local machine and a VPS somewhere (even one you're not planning on using for whatever the VPN would be for). This is because your LAN will always be more forgiving and responsive than the Internet, and also because "oookay, so now I can reach my laptop from 192.168.0.3 and 10.0.1.15" isn't as interesting (to me) as "my laptop is 10.0.1.15 and my VPS is 10.0.1.16!". If you're familar with VM networking or can accept the additional load of learning about that concurrently then go for it with VMs, but I wouldn't recommend it otherwise - your goal is to set up OpenVPN between a remote host and your local computer, not to specialize in networking two VMs together. There's also the possibility of tethering one computer to your phone for one end of the network (with your phone using its data), and using your existing internet for the other end of the network. That's if your cellular ISP allows VPN traffic. I wouldn't advise using your phone's VPN client for initial experimentation/setup, its debugging will not be nearly verbose enough to diagnose any issues.