Interested to hear opinions about various VPNs.

In My Humble Opinion
21

About a year ago I replaced my routers and such with Eero devices–a slick home mesh network with decent security features.
I originally scoffed at their “Eero Plus” filtering service, figuring it wasn’t worth ten bucks a month–then they sweetened the pot by including some additional neat features such as router-based ad blocking…and free licenses to Malware Bytes, 1Password, and Encrypt.me.

It is Encrypt.me that is relevant here.

I had never felt I needed a VPN, figuring I wasn’t the target customer for these services. Nevertheless, when provided as part of a security suite, as Eero have done, it makes absolute sense.

When my iPad is connected to a trusted network, such as my home network, the VPN software recognizes this and turns off. As soon as I connect to any other random network, such as at a hotel or public space, the VPN automatically kicks in, protecting my traffic. A few weeks ago I saw my wife about to do some online banking while connected to a public wifi, and I quickly set her device up with the service.

They do provide options for choosing country, but I leave it on “fastest connection”.

22

I wasn’t offended, sorry if that came across as abrasive.

I was motivated to get a VPN after getting a false positive suspected piracy notice (which is also a scam), and didn’t want that happening again, though I removed the share just in case. Extra privacy is an added bonus.

23

It seems Engineer_comp_geek is wrong about why consumers get VPNs; it’s not about illegal file sharing or getting around country restrictions:

I was amazed that 29% of users use a VPN–I thought it was much more a niche product.

24

I’m currently using PIA for secure public browsing and pi-hole for ad/tracking site blacklisting. But I think I’m going to give Eero a good look.
btw: I totally recommend pi-hole for anyone looking for a good network-wide ad blocking appliance. According to the logs about 20% of my DNS requests are to ad and tracking sites. I’ve also notices a marked increase in speed when browsing.

25

Re: Legit uses for VPN.

Slashdot just ran a story earlier about Firefox starting their own VPN (for a fee) service.* In particular, they will want people to use it when accessing some types of WiFi points. Many of those are definitely not trustable and a VPN is a must.

I treat VPN discussion like SCotUS treated vcrs in the Betamax decision. Just because there’s an infringing use doesn’t mean a total ban.

Keep in mind, people use web browser quite a bit to infringe copyrights. Try suggesting banning the discussion of web browsers because of that!

Just like TPTB wouldn’t want a thread here on duplicating and selling the new Halloween movie, someone asking questions about time-shifting a TV show or some such seem okay.

VPNs: “Let’s be careful out there.”

  • Not the first one.
26

Getting a static IP might be your best bet at getting fast reliable access to the US Netflix. Most of the VPNs have been playing cat and mouse with Netflix, with Netflix constantly improving its VPN detection. As mentioned above, they have a vested interest in making sure its viewers do not violate the terms of service.

27

Thank you for posting this, as I was going to point this out - since we’ve all been sold out by Benedict Pai, it is 100% legitimate to use a VPN at all times, so your ISP doesn’t sniff all your internet traffic and A) sell the info to whomever they want, and B) use that info to decide what internet service to blackmail for more $$$ because enough of their customer base uses it.

After the net neutrality repeal, I started using a VPN most of the time for just those reasons (tho the Dope is one of the worst sites for blocking you from even reading if you’re on one).

28

I’m not convinced.

I have no problem believing that the readers of PC magazine overwhelmingly use VPNs for legitimate reasons. I also have no problem believing that the SDMB members here also use VPNs for primarily legitimate reasons.

But the VPN services themselves are very telling. Almost every single VPN service mentioned here so far has their feature list geared towards illegal file sharing. The VPN service posted by minor7flat5 is the only exception so far posted to this entire thread. That VPN service is clearly geared towards folks with security concerns. Every single other VPN in this entire thread has their feature list geared towards illegal file sharing (P2P, no logging, etc).

When your feature list is geared towards file sharing, it’s pretty obvious who your primary customers are.

The VPN service in minor7flat5’s post is what we are looking for in VPN threads. Every other VPN service mentioned is why VPN discussions are generally forbidden here. I personally would like to allow folks with security concerns to discuss VPNs, but to continue to do so, we need a lot more of the former and a lot less of the latter.

29

Certainly not the door of reasoning was closed.

this is such a weird reading of the services proposed by the entities like the nord vpn …

It of course thoroughly ignores the prevalence of the utilization of the VPN in the case of the businesses - indeed in my firm where we are working across many geographical areas including many where there is the strong suspicion of the security issues from the sources both official and non official, it is a requirement to use the VPN service subscribed by the company for us, for all work and the strong recommendation even for the private usage to use on the phones and on the personal devices - recognizing the after work exchanges.

And of course this is in addition to the strong recommendation to use the VPN in the traveling situation wherever the public wifi is for these similar reasons.

The idée fixe you have on the VPNs… it is one informed by a strong prejudice, the dated attitudes, and not by a factual evaluation.

30

I suspect that features like no traffic/session/IP address logging, network neutrality, strong encryption, and unlimited bandwidth are actually sine quibus non features offered by commercial VPN service providers to business and to private customers. While I don’t doubt the sporadic existence of some shady fly-by-night operators, economies of scale suggest that they would not last long in the market. With companies like Deutsche Telekom and other huge telecommunications concerns offering VPN services, I don’t think they are marketing special subscriptions for data pirates. Rather, like internet access in general, a pirate could potentially benefit from the resource, but this type of flexible network technology is too general and has too many use cases to regard it other than neutrally.

31

Nord VPN feature list, in the order that they are presented on their web site (comments after each feature are mine):

No logs policy - Logs can generally only be accessed via court order, so there’s no valid concern for security here. This is aimed squarely at file sharing.

P2P allowed - Illegal file sharing. Very little other use for P2P.

Onion Over VPN - This one is arguable. Onion routing is designed to prevent anyone from tracing back to the source, which is of use to both illegal file sharing hosts and also to those who have concerns about security.

Blazing speeds - Useful for everyone. Nothing to do with file sharing.

Easy to use - Useful for everyone. Nothing to do with file sharing.

Pay in crypto - Useful for both file sharing and those who are concerned about securty.

Global network - This feature is aimed mostly at spammers or those who otherwise want to get around country bans and restrictions (like the great firewall of China).

Cancel anytime - Useful for everyone. Nothing to do with file sharing.

Friendly support - Useful for everyone. Nothing to do with file sharing.

Kill Switch - of interest to both illegal file sharing hosts and those concerned about security

Unlimited bandwidth - Useful for everyone. Nothing to do with file sharing.

Double encryption - of interest to both illegal file sharing hosts and those concerned about security

There are a lot of security concerns listed among their features, no doubt about that, but the top two on their list are both aimed squarely at illegal file sharing. Onion routing definitely has a valid application for those who are interested in security, but it is a highly prized feature for those who engage in illegal file sharing.

Compare that feature list with the one provided by Encrypt.me (the one that minor7flat5 listed).

No mention of logging or P2P.

See the difference?

PIA VPN’s feature list:

Secure VPN Account
Encrypted WiFi
P2P Support
PPTP, OpenVPN and L2TP/IPSec
5 devices simultaneously
Block ads, trackers, and malware
Multiple VPN Gateways
Unlimited Bandwidth
SOCKS5 Proxy Included
No traffic logs
Instant Setup
Easy to use

This seems to emphasize security over file sharing, but P2P and no logging are both mentioned. Multiple VPN Gateways and SOCKS5 Proxy are both aimed at those wishing to hide their geographical location.

Still, better than Nord VPN since it does at least stress security over file sharing.

I try to keep an open mind about just about everything, and I’m willing to change my opinion if you can show me that I am wrong, but trying to convince me that VPN services aren’t primarily used for file sharing by mentioning a VPN service whose feature list seems to be primarily aimed at file sharing definitely isn’t going to change my mind.

32

the security department of one of our affiliates that has exposure to difficult countries disagrees with your analysis…

Well it is a boring thing to bother with.

The changing of the minds of the moderators and the administration here is not something that is a profitable or useful in the time value of the money view.

So now I will use my corporate VPN which has the global network for us, which you have wisely stated is used mostly by spammers, to return to the work.

obviously this global financial institution is a spammer.

33

“P2P support” is, I agree, an odd thing to advertise. A legitimate VPN service will support any and all protocols equally (net neutrality), especially since they should not be examining your data and therefore have no idea what it is a part of (P2P, browsing, email, whatever). “No logs” does not stand out to me either way, but legitimate providers have no need to record your session data and definitely not the traffic itself (that kind of thing is the purview of the Chinese government, NSA, Saudis, Google, and so forth, which will all get the information anyway if the provider is crap regardless of whether it itself “keeps logs” or not).

Legitimate communications providers also make it crystal clear who owns their infrastructure (is anything outsourced?), where the servers are located, etc. and not try to dazzle the customer with buzzwords involving “military-grade encryption”, “onions”, “global network of servers”, “no logs policy”, “fastest speeds”, as opposed to specific and pertinent information.

34

What do you mean there’s no security concern. First of all, for privacy reasons I wouldn’t want anyone to keep logs of my browsing history, there’s no legitimate reason for them to. Secondly, if they do keep a log they can be hacked, at which point my browsing history is open to anyone who wants it.

Not logging data is pretty much the standard now on any decent paid VPN, I think it’s a bit arrogant to rule that it’s only for illegal purposes just because you personally don’t use it.

Is it a new rule that legal services cannot be discussed on the SDMB, or is it just your personal opinion?

35

I can also reccomend NordVPN. Easy to use, even on mobile devices, and doesn’t noticably slow my connection. I haven’t tried connecting to servers in other countries, but there’s plenty list worldwide if that’s what you’re looking for. I believe they have a 3 day trial if you want to test it out.

36

This is the appropriate section of the rules:

From here:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=864546

Historically, discussions of anything even remotely related to P2P have been forbidden here. While there are legal uses for torrenting software, discussions of torrents are strictly forbidden on the SDMB. These are not my rules. They pre-date my tenure as a moderator by quite a bit.

If you go back 10 or 15 years, VPN discussions were generally about things like what I use a VPN for, accessing my work network. Those types of VPN discussions were always allowed.

VPN for the purposes of hiding your IP, whether it is for security reasons or otherwise, were strictly forbidden. In fact, if you go back 15 or 20 years, just accessing the SDMB from a VPN was grounds for being banned.

See this post from 2002 for example:

Technically, the term “IP spoofing” refers to a very specific technique used to hide your IP address, but moderators back then tended to use the term to refer to any type of IP hiding. The use of a foreign proxy server, for example, was commonly referred to as IP spoofing, even though someone with a lot of technical knowledge about internet protocols would never call it that.

Obviously, we don’t ban everyone who accesses the SDMB from a VPN or from a proxy server these days. Our current policy (or at least the way we have been enforcing this recently) is to not allow the mention of any specific VPN service that is used for P2P. If I were properly following those rules, only one of the VPN services mentioned so far would have been allowed. Instead of being the unreasonable hard-ass that you seem to think I’m being, it’s actually the opposite. I’m bending our rules a bit since I believe the OP is sincere in trying to keep everything legal. According to our rules, I should have deleted every VPN mentioned that has P2P on their web site. Instead, I only deleted the one that was posted by someone who was blatantly violating the SDMB terms of service (and I didn’t even issue a warning for that).

So no, it’s not a new rule, and no, this isn’t just my personal opinion.

37

The rule is clearly talking about p2p/torrents, not VPN’s. You are aware of the difference I assume? Your quote from the rules states that the issue is illegal file sharing, it appears to be your own interpretation that that includes VPN’s despite the many legal uses for them. In this day and age online privacy is important for everyone, so surely we should be able to discuss the primary tool for ensuring our web history is kept private. I assume you’re aware of how many business use VPN services, as you admitted using one yourself for work.

You seem to have decided that because VPN’s are useful for file sharing that therefore that’s the only reason someone would want to use them. This is your opinion, not fact. If we’re only allowed to discuss VPN’s that don’t allow file sharing we might as well not discuss them at all, i’d imagine there’s few if any that ban p2p completely.

So I’ll ask again, are you implementing a new rule that discussion of VPN’s is banned, in which case it should be announced in ATMB & added to the rules, or are you making this up yourself, and it’s actually fine for us to continue our discussion?

38

Nope, that’s a straw man. As I said here, the main reason I think SDMB users use them is for legitimate purposes:

Once again, there is no new rule.

You’ve hijacked this thread enough. If you want to continue discussing this, open a thread in ATMB.

39

I do wish media companies anxious to protect their revenues would not try to proscribe discussion of tools that are benefit to both the individual and business to preserve confidentiality when using an insecure medium like the Internet. The internet was never designed to be secure and tools like VPNs are essential to protect against all the data harvesting and snooping that goes on these days.

I am surprised by the overbearing and sanctimonious tone displayed in this thread. Conflating VPN use with copyright violations does not wash these days. Privacy is a major concern and secure communication across the Internet is actively encouraged in many quarters. The more people know about VPNs and other secure technologies the better. The suggestion that anyone breaking this VPN taboo has dishonest motives is rude and seems a crude over reaction.

However, if the owners of the site have this rule and it has been accurately represented here, that is their privilege and I will look elsewhere for a discussion that fights ignorance on this subject.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a website where VPNs and other privacy technologies can be discussed without the heavy hand of censorship bearing down on behalf of media companies?

I deal with a lot of creative people who originate their own material in pre-production and we need a secure way to exchange the media files.

40

Except that twice I have explicitly stated that the main reason I think SDMB users use VPNs is for legitimate purposes. Twice apparently wasn’t enough for you. Maybe three times is a charm?

And for the second time, take the discussion about the moderation to ATMB if anyone want to discuss it further.

The OP is specifically looking for legal and legitimate VPN service recommendations. Let’s focus on that, please.