VPN services

I've decided that my family needs to get a VPN service. There have been more and more reports of people getting a hold of financial information lately, and my mother is somewhat weary of buying things online because she's afraid of that happening to her. There is also the threat of identity theft to consider. So, I've been looking into VPN services as a way to ease things.

I've been trialing a few; namely Mullvad, Hide My Ass!, and Overplay.net. There are things I liked about each of them, so I'm going to need a little user input here. How are each of these in terms of encryption? Mullvad uses OpenVPN using 2048-bit RSA and 128-bit Blowfish encryption. I cannot say much about the others.

Any opinions or thoughts on any of these services?

 

All those VPNs you name, they all use OpenVPN, the encryption strength will be about the same, that is not the kind of thing that would worry me.

I would look into these features:

1) Privacy policy (logs storage & how long for?)

2) Software usability (how easy is it to use/setup?)

3) Server speed and location (Can you watch movies online without buffering?)

4) Price (Reasonable price?)

5) Customer service (Do they reply to emails?)

I would then give a points to each one of those VPNs based on that, and the one with most points gets the deal.

 

I absolutely agree with box750 above. Those things are actually far more important than the strength of the encryption with a VPN.

Lately, I have been using AlwaysVPN. It is prepaid but you get a lot for your money. I purchased 10GB months ago and I'm still using it. This is for browsing, email, etc. Obviously, this isn't for torrents. You would be amazed how long just 5GB will last you when you're just using it for casual browsing and protection in hot spots, etc.

* 5GB - USD 8.50
* 10GB - USD 15.00
* 20GB - USD 26.00
* 40GB - USD 33.00
* 80GB - USD 47.00

I like it as there are no contracts, the bandwidth you purchase never expires and I've only had one issue and had a response within an hour! I'm at the point where I can highly recommend them.

Oh, I almost forgot and this is VERY important: AlwaysVPN uses OpenVPN.

 

Why did you ask this question when you're already working with the owner of a VPN service? https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1734617&postcount=7

 

Read this.

 

In other words he no longer needs help with his original question. Nate has gone from needing information on a VPN for his family on Wednesday and by Sunday at 4:00 in the morning he's posting about his "favorite" VPN service and says he is "working closely with the owner."

I'm not saying you're not telling the truth Nate, but it stretches credulity.

It makes me think of H.L. Mencken:

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."

 

Thank you very much for your help here LockBox. I wasn't aware that I wasn't allowed to have a favorite VPN service, so thank you very much for telling me. That is a load of my mind. I sure hope the police don't come and arrest me for having this preferred service. Seriously, where do you get off insulting my integrity that. That is extremely rude and uncalled for. I don't care if the timing is suspect for you, that is your perception and there's nothing I can do about that. Did you bother to ask me why this was my favorite service before attacking my integrity? No, you did not. If you had I would have told you that I prefer it because:

• It offer servers in many countries
• I can still enjoy Hulu, Pandora, and Netflix using their proxies (a feature not included with many other providers I've looked at)
• Reasonable price
• Live support
• NO logging
• Dynamic IPs

No, LockBox, that isn't a sales pitch I am in no way affiliated with the VPNSecure. I know, I know, I said "working closely with the owner..." That's true. It is possible that I just wanted to make the service better. After all there's always room for improvement. I did research other services to see what was feasible to implement here that could improve the service. Perhaps you perceive that as a mistake, I do not. I have worked with developers on many different projects in the past, and I will do so in the future, simply because I like doing it. LockBox, do not call my integrity into question again, especially not over something as insignificant as this. And if you are uncomfortable with me having favorites please do not read my signature.

N8

 

Nate, The last post in this thread was 12 days ago! I wish you knew how to just let things go. It's no big deal, just sit back and see how it looked, that's all. Move on -- life is too short.

 

Can you pay anonymously?

 

Hi Caspian, I use Simon Malls Visa Gift Cards. Register them at Simon (any name and address works) with the name and info you want and AlwaysVPN accepts it without question. Just register the card (so it passes the "address verification" if an online merchant you use uses that -- most do) and you're good.

 

Lifehacker's VPN poll results from last week: Five Best VPN Service Providers.

-- Tom

 

Based on these requirements a VPN only makes sense if your mother does online banking over unsecured wifi or a network she doesn't own and control (i.e. not her home network).
On a "secure" network (by that I mean one without local eavesdroppers) there are three ways to "get hold of financial information" or conduct identity theft. That would be client and server side compromises and classical MITM and phishing attacks from outside the LAN. A VPN solution doesn't solve a single one of these risks.

You should be looking at the security of the OS, browser configuration, security software and educate the users about how a basic TLS MITM can be detected.
Against server side compromises you can't do much other than using different random and "strong" passwords and usernames and change them whenever the next gawker or rootkit.com happens.

 

n8,

If you are concerned about ID theft of financial info, a VPN does not address that problem. Instead, have her go open a free account at Bank of America. Then register her online with their MBNA online banking. She can then login, generate balance-limited one-time-use virtual credit cards for online purchases. Problem solved, thread over.

 

Did you check out the link I put up?

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=285780

There's quite a bit of discussion going on there...