Now how to choose a VPN / anonymizer service ?

I have been searching the net for reviews, charts and users' opinions regarding VPN and SSH-bases anonymizers, but I could not find anything trustable.

I mainly want to surf the net anonymously with good response times, run Flash if I can, and I'm not exceedingly concerned by juridictions. I have not much to hide, but this does not mean anyone should be able to find out what I do.

As I said elsewhere, I have already read the "Anyone tried Xerobank" topic. If you are *not* working for them, feel free to give your opinion.

What about COTSE ? Steganos ? Secure-tunnel ? There are too many, and so few reviews !

 

not sure if it fits your needs but take a look at this: http://www.torproject.org/ its the ultimate solution...and dont judge by the looks (main core by US naval research). also in linux konqueror version.

 

I think that Tor is too slow to him. Secure-Tunnel looks quite good. You can use it with all programs and price isn't so high. After all I like XeroBank most but with Plus account you can't run whatever you want and Pro account is too expensive to me and gives too much bandwidth. So I want XeroBank Plus (SSH) with possibility to use it with all programs

 

u r right mike, xerobank is way too expencive, without pro u dont get ftp and p2p...practically useless.... and secure tunnel is 10$ a month... steganos because of the price rates related to traffic maybe is more convenient. tor is for free anyway...

 

That's right, Tor is too slow for all I know, and I am leery of all this trust-me-i-am-a-good-node jumping.
Secure-tunnel looks fair, but I don't know enough to make an opinion. I have googled a bit, but the name is just too generic

 

The problem your going to face with such a decision is that is hard to test a company for anonymous service provider. I mean you'll have a hard time finding a magazine or computer company that will go out an test a anonymous service, how are they going to test it, they are not going to do a whole article on due diligence of the company or how good the company will cover your tracks. They are going to if anything test the features and speed of the service full stop. The only reviews you'll fiind are from stegnos and anonymizer. You are going to have to dig hard into forums and groups.google.com go find good personal reviews of products, but you'll also find alot of conspiracy theories and half assed sales pitches from people.

As for good ones i've found then COSTE seem to have good reviews, steagnos and anoymizer are OK but they are all located in the US. The are other providers out their, (look in the other threads for them), you need to see whom you trust and not that of everyone elses option.

 

Well, I guess good techies could review the architecture of the solution and its features, test speed like you said, look for leaks, quality of service, support, price, etc. It's pretty much the same problem for AV (namely laymen don't know whether they are truly effective or not), yet there are more reviews. Isn't there some acid test for privacy issues, like, a special site trying everything possible to get info about you?

I have seen good opinion of COTSE, too, but it is hard to tell if this was just fanboys. I thought I could get some expert advice here on Wilders.

 

its funny that you say that, seems wilders are more interested in TOR or anonymizer, you'd be hard pressed to find anything. Maybe you'd be the first to review some VPN's out there =). Unfortunately there is no 'grand test' for anonymous services, due to peoples different requirements, some are more worried about privacy and their data, others wish to become invisable on the web.

 

I use XB Pro and I love it. I think Cotse is in the US. I play around with tor here and there but it is way too slow..

I have a MetroPipe Tunnel account. I only use it with Returnil on because it makes changes to my IE browser. This way I can restart my computer and everything is back to normal. I rarely use it though. It is slow.

I also have an IPhantom. It is also in the US but is pretty cool. It is a hardware device that you hook up that encrypts everything and send it to their servers. I had a few problems with it for a while. I could not log into Myspace with it. I had to disable it to log in.. And when I logged into my Yahoo email account, the smilies and graphics would not work. They were not even visible. But this all seems to have been resolved. They do not advertise it on their website anymore, but I think it is still available if you ask for it.

But I do not think that it compares to XeroBank Pro. It is very fast and I cannot even tell that I am using it.

 

http://privacy.li/

Looking quite secure and intresting. Price isn't so high too.

 

150 Euro = $234 US. I am leery of them because I have heard them referred to as scammers here on Wilders on several occasions.

 

The info at http://privacy.li/ looks quite similar to the info regarding Surfsolo (former Secursurf) on www.securstar.com. There seems to be some sort of connection there?

I've used Secursurf some time ago with a server in Malaysia. A tad slow but the main problem was that you could run emule only on tcp, not udp. Nevertheless it gave decent downloads even with the resulting low id.

Surfsolo with 1 server plus anon email is 79 Euro/year.

 

privacy.li has a very poor reputation. Caveat emptor.

 

Same product.

http://www.privacy.li/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=636

One server is enough to me but I still continue to seek "the best" solution.

 

MikeNAS,

I was talking with Kyle the other day about your comments on the limitations of Plus for $10/m. I saw a couple different solutions I would like your opinion on. The first is that there is a way to "VPN" that Plus account using certain software to capture all your traffic via VPN, and funnel it via the SSH connection. The other alternative is in the xb2.0 network, we allow unlimited connections to vpn. So that could essentially mean people start reselling account access, or a group of two or more could split the account, driving the cost down very far. So group purchases or reseller arrangements could work.

In addition to the latter idea, I was discussing an "unmetered" connection, whereby if you had an account and one of you wanted to use it for P2P and the other didn't, you could have the P2P guy connect to the unmetered connection and download all he wants without using up the monthly bandwidth balance.

I'm interested, what is your idea of "perfect" ?

 

Monthly bandwidth limitation is ok to me because I don't use much or at all P2P/FTP. I just want to use it with all possible programs. Of course with that price (10$) you can't get unlimited bandwidth. I say that Pro account with PLUS account bandwidth (200 Kbps) and your choise monthly limit sounds good to me. VPN sounds better to me (and maybe others too) because it's easier to setup and hassle free. I can even pay little bit more than 10$/month. Of course I pay whole year once

EDIT: I forgot to say that I'm really waiting what you can do because I wanna XeroBank Account which I trust and support is superb.

 

I spoke with the promotions guy, Scott, and I think the standard price will be something like $30/m for xB, and that all fees are going to be done monthly, you won't pay in advance. The idea, he told me, was $1/day for xerobank protection. When I asked what you get (normally we have a soft limit of around 25-30GB/month currently, @$35/m), he said it would be at _least_ double of that in bandwidth, so you could easily share accounts.

Tell me what you mean by "Pro and Plus"? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean a VPN connection, but at Plus speeds instead of 1-2Mbit (in order to drop the price??) ?

 

All of a sudden first names start popping up in Steve's XeroBank posts! Imagine! Right after I accused him of possibly being a one-man-shop! Slick.

Mike, Whatever you do, stay away from privacy.li (privacy.lie as they are affectionately known). There are better choices and (get ready for a shocker) it may even include Steve's XeroBank.

 

Yes I mean that.

 

That would be interesting indeed and I would love to try it when that comes available as unfortunately the cost of a Pro/xB 2.0 account is prohibitive, especially as those seem to have an additional soft limit of around 25-30GB/month.

I would very much prefer to have a VPN connection, but at Plus speeds instead of 1-2Mbit in order to drop the price rather than having to share it with my neighbours to reduce the cost.

 

good input. I assume that this inexpensive vpn service doesn't need to include frills like mail and storage, yes? just a vpn client? How much monthly data volume?

 

Indeed, no mail and storage are needed for such an offer. In the past I've used services like zero knowledge, anonymizer, relakks, secursurf etc. The latter having a problem with UDP for Emule and a tad slow from Malaysia (although they included the email) but that was OK. I have the impression from the discussion that your plus account is even somewhat faster (correct me if I'm wrong) although I've never tried it. The one time I did I just got a message that my trial account was not recognized or something like that. If I remember correctly you had a problem moving the servers at that time.

Regarding monthly data volume, sincerely I've no idea , I've never looked at my traffic in that way. It is quite variable but I would be surprised if, at a peak month, it would be more than the 25 -30 GB/month you mentioned, but as I said I really have no idea.

 

I like to see atleast one mail account (50MB storage is enough). No reason to add bigger storage. I don't have either any idea how big/small monthly data volume should be.

 

Have you tried FindNot? That seems to be based in your area (Singapore registered) so it may provide better performance.

A forum search should also turn up some relevant threads - some more general discussion can be found in threads like Could use some advice re: anonymous surfing and Proxy software and services.

One key issue to consider is from whom you wish to anonymize your traffic (in order of difficulty - nosey neighbours, your ISP, P2P monitoring organisations, government). In view of your initial post, most of the commercial services should be "good enough" in privacy terms.

 

maybe you should look at 'jamusvm', it basically something that acts as a virtual computer that you connect to as a vpn and then it tunnel all traffic over the TOR network could be reversed to do SSH.

I certainly would support a 'lite' option of 200-500kps vpn just for web surfing and email. have at least one email account and the ability to creat some aliases would be cool as well. don't really need any storage for such a plan and if they do they can just upgrade.