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So what’re the recommendations for alternatives? It seems like quite a lot of VPNs play their cards close to the vest - and at the end of the day, all I want is

So what’re the recommendations for alternatives? It seems like quite a lot of VPNs play their cards close to the vest - and at the end of the day, all I want is a modicum of privacy and to safely torrent a movie for my PLEX server instead of having to dig up my Blu-ray reader and rip it myself once in a while.

danShumway 7y ago
I can't give you a checklist for how you should determine who you trust -- that's one of the reasons why I don't advocate for or endorse any particular VPN, and one of the reasons why I don't disclose which VPN providers I use. The difficulty of determining which VPNs to trust is why I call them a "least-bad solution" rather than a "good solution." There are a few other people on this post who are recommending specific VPNs, and you can (and should) look through some of their justifications for why they like their providers. A couple of things you can look into if you want to know where to start: - What technologies are they using, contributing to, etc? Do they have a good rapport with Open Source communities? - Do they support OpenVPN/wireguard? I advocate against using a custom VPN client, I don't want my provider to ever touch my computer, only my traffic. - What's their privacy policy look like? Do they make public commitments to destroy logs? Are their claims on-their-face absurd? There's no such thing as a VPN that does zero logging at all, so if someone is claiming perfect anonymity, I distrust them from the get-go. - Have they had data breaches in the past (for example, NordVPN)? - Are there any high-profile cases of them refusing to provide logs to someone? - What country are they located in? Depending on the country, a foreign VPN can complicate collusion efforts. - Do they pay for ads, and how do they advertise? Do they make inaccurate guarantees about what a VPN can and can't do? A VPN isn't going to protect you from the police, and a VPN on its own will not make you private, so I distrust companies that make those claims. - Do they seem competent? Do they have instructions on how to deal with things like DNS leaks, or how to set up killswitches? That's not an exhaustive list. It is absolutely a pain to determine trust -- this is the biggest problem with 3rd-party VPNs. Don't go crazy with it; a VPN is just one layer in your privacy setup, so it's OK to have something imperfect. Don't aim for perfect privacy, aim for "better than what I currently have."
- dvosar34 7y ago
  You come off rather imperious in your comments here. Between the number of "I" self-references in your first post, to this saccharine checklist that is more show-off than informative. As usual, I think the reaction of PIA's corporate restructuring is a lot of hot air over nothing. Typical of most hot air, it is released to draw attention to the source and not convey any real concern.
jammygit 7y ago
The wirecutter did an article [1] on VPNs and recommended tunnelbear. I’m not sure who to trust but I’m going to at least give it a re-read [1] https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-vpn-service/ https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-vpn-service/
cookiecaper 7y ago
People should be really careful before they jump to a VPN provider. The amount of data transmitted over the connection and exposed to the VPN as an intermediary is grossly underestimated. The only real explanation for so many iffy VPN providers popping up over the last few years is that they're mining the data for something, whether its selling analytics, setting up a honeypot, manipulating traffic/piggybacking on VPN users as a botnet (cf. Hola), or whatever. That said, if you really need a third-party VPN, FoxyProxy's branded VPN service available through https://getfoxyproxy.org https://getfoxyproxy.org is probably pretty good odds. I've never used personally so I can't vouch all the way, but it's supporting an open-source project by someone who seems to really care about his users and has put more than a decade into supporting a great extension, so that puts it far ahead of most of 'em from the get-go.

danShumway 7y ago

I can't give you a checklist for how you should determine who you trust -- that's one of the reasons why I don't advocate for or endorse any particular VPN, and one of the reasons why I don't disclose which VPN providers I use. The difficulty of determining which VPNs to trust is why I call them a "least-bad solution" rather than a "good solution." There are a few other people on this post who are recommending specific VPNs, and you can (and should) look through some of their justifications for why they like their providers. A couple of things you can look into if you want to know where to start: - What technologies are they using, contributing to, etc? Do they have a good rapport with Open Source communities? - Do they support OpenVPN/wireguard? I advocate against using a custom VPN client, I don't want my provider to ever touch my computer, only my traffic. - What's their privacy policy look like? Do they make public commitments to destroy logs? Are their claims on-their-face absurd? There's no such thing as a VPN that does zero logging at all, so if someone is claiming perfect anonymity, I distrust them from the get-go. - Have they had data breaches in the past (for example, NordVPN)? - Are there any high-profile cases of them refusing to provide logs to someone? - What country are they located in? Depending on the country, a foreign VPN can complicate collusion efforts. - Do they pay for ads, and how do they advertise? Do they make inaccurate guarantees about what a VPN can and can't do? A VPN isn't going to protect you from the police, and a VPN on its own will not make you private, so I distrust companies that make those claims. - Do they seem competent? Do they have instructions on how to deal with things like DNS leaks, or how to set up killswitches? That's not an exhaustive list. It is absolutely a pain to determine trust -- this is the biggest problem with 3rd-party VPNs. Don't go crazy with it; a VPN is just one layer in your privacy setup, so it's OK to have something imperfect. Don't aim for perfect privacy, aim for "better than what I currently have."

dvosar34 7y ago
You come off rather imperious in your comments here. Between the number of "I" self-references in your first post, to this saccharine checklist that is more show-off than informative. As usual, I think the reaction of PIA's corporate restructuring is a lot of hot air over nothing. Typical of most hot air, it is released to draw attention to the source and not convey any real concern.

jammygit 7y ago

The wirecutter did an article [1] on VPNs and recommended tunnelbear. I’m not sure who to trust but I’m going to at least give it a re-read [1] https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-vpn-service/ https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-vpn-service/

cookiecaper 7y ago

People should be really careful before they jump to a VPN provider. The amount of data transmitted over the connection and exposed to the VPN as an intermediary is grossly underestimated. The only real explanation for so many iffy VPN providers popping up over the last few years is that they're mining the data for something, whether its selling analytics, setting up a honeypot, manipulating traffic/piggybacking on VPN users as a botnet (cf. Hola), or whatever. That said, if you really need a third-party VPN, FoxyProxy's branded VPN service available through https://getfoxyproxy.org https://getfoxyproxy.org is probably pretty good odds. I've never used personally so I can't vouch all the way, but it's supporting an open-source project by someone who seems to really care about his users and has put more than a decade into supporting a great extension, so that puts it far ahead of most of 'em from the get-go.