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What VPN service do you use? Good or bad.

Berwhale

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Other than using iPlayer, another use for me is to access the Internet while I travel to China.

From what are suggested here, and from Internet reviews, I think the big and good ones are: Nordvpn, Express vpn, and PIA. Mullvad seems to be excellent too, but I think it is a smaller company. Nordvpn was hacked awhile ago. and PIA will soon be acquired by Kape Technology.

If Nordvpn has not been hacked, it seems to be a clear choice. There are many happy customers too.

Maybe it comes down to Express vpn vs Mullvad.

Express is rated best for China here: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/best-vpn-for-china-our-5-top-choices

I note that it may be illegal to use a VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, so you might want to look into that before committing to using one there.

BTW, My understanding is that Nord had one server, out of tens of thousands, hacked via an out of band management port and that the only people that could have been impacted were those connecting through this server in Finland. I think the press reporting of this has, in many cases, overstated the risk. Nord were certainly not the first VPN provider to be hacked and they are not the last one either. I have no intention of changing to another provider before my contract expires.

Note: I'm not a security professional, but I do design infrastructure for a multinational financial institution and I have had some security training and experience (e.g. Certified Penetration Test Specialist AKA Ethical Hacking). YMMV.
 
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mi-fu

mi-fu

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Express is rated best for China here: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/best-vpn-for-china-our-5-top-choices

I note that it may be illegal to use a VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, so you might want to look into that before committing to using one there.

BTW, My understanding is that Nord had one server, out of tens of thousands, hacked via an out of band management port and that the only people that could have been impacted were those connecting through this server in Finland. I think the press reporting of this has, in many cases, overstated the risk. Nord were certainly not the first VPN provider to be hacked and they are not the last one either. I have no intention of changing to another provider before my contract expires.

Note: I'm not a security professional, but I do design infrastructure for a multinational financial institution and I have had some security training and experience (e.g. Certified Penetration Test Specialist AKA Ethical Hacking). YMMV.

Thanks for the note on Nord, which is very helpful, esp. to a layman like myself.
 

JohnYang1997

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Use proxy to access forbidden sites from ISP and torrents, YES.
Use proxy to gain anonymity, privacy, NO.
Logout from all accounts then we may talk about privacy. And the privacy is merely the address you are accessing shown on ISP.
Basically the marketing benefits are what https is for.
Use vpn on the market for convenience. Build your own proxy using VPS with shadowsocks, v2ray is one whole layer safer than any vpn on the market.
 

ernestcarl

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I note that it may be illegal to use a VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, so you might want to look into that before committing to using one there.

Many still use one anyway. I have a cousin working there as a consultant, and she still uses a VPN. I would not be comfortable communicating with her any other way.
 
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mi-fu

mi-fu

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There is no way not to use vpn when working in China. Even gmail won't work without it.
 

stereo coffee

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Also do your research about free VPN's,they are not a real good idea and not that good

Even the Proton/and almost all free VPN's have speed restriction's etc.

Likewise do your research about paid VPN's. Try Opera selecting Ad blocker and VPN and report what you find, I think you will be very impressed
with just how good it is .
 

tomchr

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Now it is Black Friday. There are tons of VPN deals - which one is good? Or which one is to avoid?
Depends on what you want to do with it.

I recently bought an old Mac Pro "Cheese grater" 1,1 at a local eRecycler. I paid $65 (CAD) for it, added a HDD, and installed pfSense (free). I use OpenVPN (free package for pfSense) and a client called Viscosity ($14) to connect. This allows me to tunnel to my home internet connection, which is very handy for when I'm on the road and need to log into sensitive things (my online store, PayPal, etc.)

I also run snort, which is a deep packet inspector, on that pfSense box. Snort blocks malware, viruses, trojans, etc. from getting into my home network.

I know this may not be the answer you were looking for, but I thought I'd point out that there are other options than paid VPN providers.

Tom
 

Baphomet

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I used Mullvad and was very happy with them. Another great company is Windscribe and that's what I use now.
 

Cortes

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Now it is Black Friday. There are tons of VPN deals - which one is good? Or which one is to avoid?

There are too many fake reviews online. I rather hear the opinions here!

Begin with this in your search:
1. Get a payed one, never a free one.
2. Get a VPN out of the reach of your good government.
Basically, if you are in US get something from HK/Russia, if you are in China get something
from US and so. Something in Switzerland might be fine as well. The enemies
of your country are your friends.
3. A good place to look at is thatoneprivacysite.net
 

Cortes

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Use proxy to access forbidden sites from ISP and torrents, YES.
Use proxy to gain anonymity, privacy, NO.
Logout from all accounts then we may talk about privacy. And the privacy is merely the address you are accessing shown on ISP.
Basically the marketing benefits are what https is for.
Use vpn on the market for convenience. Build your own proxy using VPS with shadowsocks, v2ray is one whole layer safer than any vpn on the market.

No sure, a VPS is a bad idea in the sense that is your unique IP downloading torrents, a VPN have hundredths of people sharing the same IP.

Anyway, at the end your VPS or VPN provider knows you. So you have to decide what evil agent you give your ID, your ISP(=your government, probably the worst enemy), your VPS, or your VPN.
 

Trouble Maker

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We used NordVPN during overseas assignment, it was pretty good. My only grip was for Chrome OS there was only a plugin which had more limited functionality, you could not pick a specific server just a country. So if a streaming service got wise to the server we were assigned to, it was difficult to resolve. It seemed like if we turned it off then on it would pick the same server. But if we chose another country and then came back it sometimes chose another server... which may or not be blocked. But since you couldn't pick or see which one you were on it was impossible to 100% root cause it. IDK about Windows or Apple devices. Android phone you could pick specific server so it seemed easier to resolve blocked VPN server/IP issues.
 

Wes

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Express VPN here. Compared to a couple others I've tried has consistently higher speeds. My only compliant is setting this up on a Linux machine is not simple.

also Express VPN - seems a bit slower than none at all
 

valerianf

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Since many years I am using CactusVPN.
It is based in Moldavia (EU).
100% satisfied.
 

Blumlein 88

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also Express VPN - seems a bit slower than none at all
Express VPN is now offering a proprietary protocol they call Lightway. I just switched to it yesterday instead of Open VPN Protocol. It appears to be equal to native speed with no VPN in use. Previously I took about a 30% hit on speed versus no VPN. My connection speeds here are 250 mbps. So whatever speed the new protocol is capable of is more than 250 meg.

I'd expect more services to be switching to the Wire Guard protocol which also promises speeds near native.

https://www.expressvpn.com/lightway
 

muslhead

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Surfshark
Cheap, decent speed and lots of servers.
The speed has definitely improved since i originally paid for it. Increased more than 2x using the same, nearby server.
Since they give a trial, its worth a look. i had my doubts due to the price but i am suprisingly pleased
 

matt3421

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mullvad. and once my extra 2 months expires i will be switching to Mozilla VPN, which is the same thing, but mozilla gets a cut of the revenue.
 
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Phorize

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Proton vpn. Costs a bit more than some, decent Linux client support with a Debian repo, iOS client is ok, hopefully will get split tunnelling at some point, plenty of servers and locations, I like the use the secure core option, more audited than many. I liked the look of Mozilla but no Linux client yet so won’t change for now.
 
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