Five Best VPN Service Providers

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by lotuseclat79, Mar 23, 2014.

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  1. taleblou

    taleblou Registered Member

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    Well been using VPNgate for a while now and all is well. I had not config or any issues and the server speeds are great. Specially those for korean and Japanese servers. I have been getting the highest VPN speed yet and I have tested many paid and free ones.

    Anyway I like it very much.
     
  2. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Yes, PIA is a decent choice.
    Cryptohippie is a great VPN, and one of the oldest. But they're expensive, and they cap throughput (usage). And so I recommend using them at the end of a nested VPN chain.

    For best anonymity, I recommend picking a new VPN to connect with directly, and then using Cryptohippie (a new anonymous account) through it. Good choices for a new direct-connect VPN are AirVPN and iVPN. They're both fast, and they both accept Bitcoins. Cryptohippie also accepts Bitcoins, according to this: "If you don't have a credit card please contact us for additional payment options (wire, cash, pecunix, bitcoin)."

    It's easy to anonymize Bitcoins by transferring them at least two times through mixing services. Even if you can only run one Whonix instance at a time, the VMs aren't very large, and so you can set up two instances. Each Whonix instance has a Multibit client, with 4-6 wallets each. Multibit clients are fast, because they don't download the Bitcoin blockchain. And they are secure, because they're not hosted by a third party.

    Basically, you buy enough Bitcoins for your VPNs, plus about 20% for transfer fees and buffer against changes in Bitcoin price. Buy however you can, with no particular concern about anonymity. The Bitcoins will be in some online wallet. Use BitLaundry < http://app.bitlaundry.com/ > for the first mixing transfer, and send the Bitcoins to the wallets in your first Multibit/Whonix client. Spread the Bitcoins randomly over the 4-6 wallets, and spread the transfers over about two days with about four payments per day.

    Once the Bitcoins have arrived in your first Multibit/Whonix client, use some of them to pay for your direct-connect VPN. Once that's done, deposit the rest in an account at Bitcoin Fog < http://fogcore5n3ov3tui.onion >. After they've arrived in your account, transfer them to the 4-6 wallets in your second Multibit/Whonix client. As with the first mixing, spread the Bitcoins randomly over the 4-6 wallets, and spread the transfers over about two days. If you like, you can do another mixing with a second Bitcoin Fog account, and wallets in a third Multibit/Whonix client.

    Use Bitcoins from the final Multibit/Whonix client to pay for your indirect-connect VPN. If you'll be using nested chains with three VPNs, you can use Bitcoins from the second Multibit/Whonix client to pay for the second VPN, and Bitcoins from the third Multibit/Whonix client to pay for the third VPN.
    I recommend just playing around. Firefox and Thunderbird are the same everywhere. In Ubuntu, gedit is very much like notepad. The biggest difference is using Network Manager or command line (terminal) for running VPNs. It's actually easier to use pfSense VMs for as VPN clients, and it's also more secure.
    Yes, congratulations :thumb:
     
  3. luciddream

    luciddream Registered Member

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    My 5 most trusted: Mullvad, iVPN, PRQ, Boleh, AirVPN
     
  4. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    I've had a few issues mainly when using it in Xp. Most of them disappeared when the new version of softether came out in January. The speed was better than Security Kiss--the paid version--a lot of the time. Since my Security Kiss subscription expired, I've been using VPNgate exclusively. I have no bitcoins and no easy access to purchasing them anonymously so not having to go through the complicated steps of an anonymous financial transaction online is a real plus.
     
  5. linp

    linp Registered Member

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    Yes , The quoted text is misleading indeed, Leaseweb is not an isp ; it is a datacenter.
    So in their own words "The data retention laws in the Netherlands require your ISP to track your web browsing" so this is only applicable to an ISP , a not a datacenter / hosting provider.
    The problem with Leaseweb is another one , it has partnered with a US entity ,so it might give you up due to the patriot act....
     
  6. justpeace

    justpeace Registered Member

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    The EU Data retention Directive has been ruled unlawful by the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the directive only applies to Internet Service Providers.

    It's therefore the prevailing view that a vpn service provider is under no duty to retain trafick data.

    It should also be remembered that the Netherlands even before the CJEU's ruling only imposed six months rather than one year.

    Now the directive is void, vpn and other service providers can simply cease any retention pursuant to the mandate.
     
  7. caspian

    caspian Registered Member

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    Thanks!
     
  8. Lyx

    Lyx Registered Member

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    PIA and IPVanish are certainly good vpn's provider. But BolehVPN and IVpn too, and maybe proxy.sh, and they are not in the Lifehacker's list. At least the site has not introduced HMA and VyprVPN as belonging to the best vpn providers of the universe. There is so much hype with these two....

    Moreover, one of the best (in my opinion) vpn provider is rarely cited: Perfect Privacy. Here are some of its characteristics:

    Speed: Not absolutely great but quite correct.

    Support: Good: Every email I have sent has received a detailed reply max 2 days after. But do not expect a quick answer to a question in the forum.

    Crypto: Top for OpenVPN: 4096bits RSA for key exchange, 256 bits AES CBC for encrypting datas, sha2 512 for data integrity check. Their key are changing every 24h.

    Crowding: Great: Each time you connect, you get a shared dynamic IP address. Moreover, every server is configured as Tor node too. This is in the same time a good thing ad a bad thing, but surely a good thing in an anonymity point of view

    Payment: Great: Anonymous payment are possible (cash, paysafecard). Bitcoin accepted. Only an email address is required (to which PP send your password ; you can change it after). Of course you can use a non anonymous payment procedure if you want.

    Logs: In short, no logging

    Servers/Countries: Great: 31 servers around the world in USA Lithuania Japan Israel Brazil Iceland Panama Russia Canada UK Ukraine China (HK) Egypt (the sole that doesn't work at this time) Australia Luxembourg Netherlands Germany Switzerland Romania. Uptime is very good (except on the Egyptian server).

    On each servers you have choice between Openvpn (TCP and UDP), PPTP, L2TP/IPsec (OpenVPN and L2TP/IPsec supporting PFS). Squid proxy (http/https/Gopher), Socks5, SSH2 tunnel. Most of their servers have multiple IPs, so that with a vpn connection you can optionally choose to have an exit IP different from your entry IP, rendering your traffic more difficult to trace. Of course, you can cascade proxies, SSH tunnel and vpn too.
    PP is to my knowledge the sole vpn provider providing such a large choice of anonymysing features.


    Connections: For openvpn, you can use the standard genuine opensouce openvpn client or choose to use the PP OpenvpnClient. This software protects you against DNS leak, against vpn disconnection and even against vpn crash. With the PP OpenVPN Client, you can moreover cascade Openvpn connections up to 4 nodes.


    P2P:
    1) Port Forwarding possible (3/5ports), the ports being randomly affected to you and changing every week.
    2) Very P2P frienfdly: P2P allowed on all severs except the US ones

    Price: One of the most expensive vpn if you buy 1 month (16.5€, and 20€ with PSC which is not really a low price ), but only 10.50€/month if you sign up for 2 years (ie 250€ for 24 months). So a bit expensive, but you get really what you pay for.
     
  9. Alexandru

    Alexandru Registered Member

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    I have tried many VPN provider but since two years I'm sticking with ovpn.to and AirVPN using them together. ovpn.to has a great flexibility and you can use SSH, stunnel, VLAN encryption between all server, VLAN randomizer exits, Socks5 proxys, http-proxys and they are providing usenet ports and connections to over 20 one-click-hoster subscriptions as well via pyload. The amount of services they are providing and the non-logging policy are the root cause for using them.
     
  10. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    IPVanish was caught CHEATING in voting for best VPN service.
    evidence in comments section:
    http://lifehacker.com/ipvanish-is-engaging-in-self-voting-the-order-should-1550347241

    Also, IPVanish say this about US DMCA copyright law
    "IPVanish respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects that you do the same. It is our policy to terminate in appropriate circumstances the accounts of subscribers who infringe the copyrights of others. You may not upload, download, post, publish, transmit, reproduce, or distribute in any way, files, material, information, software or other material obtained through the System that is protected by copyright or other proprietary right or derivative works with respect thereto, without obtaining permission of the copyright owner or other right holder."
     
  11. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    PIA say this about US DMCA Copyright law

    "PrivateInternetAccess.com does not condone the use of our service to facilitate copyright infringement. We respect and abide by U.S. copyright laws including the requirements of the DMCA and rely on our users to do the same.
    . . .
    Our service is fully automated and we do not log our user’s activities. We do not in any way select the recipients our users transmit to or the material our users access while using our service. We do not store, access, or modify any content that our users access while using our service.
    . . .
    That being said, PrivateInternetAccess.com will do its best to assist copyright owners and their agents that report copyright infringement by a user that is using our services to the extent we can."
     
  12. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    Perfect Privacy has received a lot of attentions from government autorities in Germany and Austria. They have been raided in the past.
    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/perfect-privacy-admin-raided.280120/
    You can get more info by search google for Perfect Privacy and Vienna / Wien and 2012.

    Even if they would have good vpn service, do you want that kind of attentions on your data?
     
  13. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    The LifeHacker article say this about AirVPN
    This is completely wrong. Of course, AirVPN know when you are connected. They can see your certificates and the IP address you are connecting to their servers from. Look at their status page. It shows how long some users have been logged in (names hidden from public).
     
  14. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    Also, looks like Boleh stopped accepting Bitcoin.
    Is this right? Not mentioned anymore on their website.
    Now they are trying something called Dogecoin.
     
  15. Lyx

    Lyx Registered Member

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    Yes, I know that some German Perfect-Privacy servers have been raided in the past. This had been announced immediately on their site. But I have not heard one of their vpn user was arrested after these servers have been raided (unlike what happened eg with HideMyAss and EarthVpn). So (unless proven otherwise) no user's data leaked. This tends to assert a substantial quality of this vpn concerning anonymity and privacy.

    By the way, I think all vpn providers receive attentions for autorities in a country or an other. PP has gained a good experience in being raided. Each servers of each vpn providers may potentially be raided. For some vpn providers (HMA, Earthvpn) you know that when they are raided, some of their user get arrested. For some others, you see that nothing happens. For others, you know nothing at all. I prefer a vpn provider of the second category.
     
  16. caspian

    caspian Registered Member

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    Unless you know how to lock in the connection with Comodo, or by some other method, it will leak your real IP like crazy. It has mine and it has a few other guys here.
     
  17. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    Proxy.sh?
    Another one that maybe should not be in 'the best' list.
    Ars Technica discuss about proxy.sh few months back after proxy.sh rep contact Ars Technica.

    According to Ars Technica, 'EFF lawyer says Proxy.sh has the “single worst policy I’ve seen.”'
    http://arstechnica.com/business/201...eyve-got-industrys-first-transparency-report/
     
  18. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Yes, the proxy.sh folks do seem more than a little wacky ;)

    But I do like their "who's on first?" approach to corporate structure :D
     
  19. Lyx

    Lyx Registered Member

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    I have not really mentioned Proxy.sh as one of the 5 best vpn for some reason. I said "maybe" it could be considered. I know they have wiresharked some of their user, although it was for a "humanitarian" reason. Since that they have changed their tos. This tos may remain of concern, but I think the proxy.sh team is honest.

    I think it it would be a bit naive to believe that a vpn provider would never cooperate even if requested by the juridiction he depends.

    In case of PIA they said they "will do their best". But if they (really) never keep logs, if they don't analyse traffic, if they never use DPI, etc, what will "their best" be ?

    Moreover, I would appreciate you find for me a vpn provider saying "when using our service, you are allowed to infringe every copyrights laws of every country, to DDOS who you want, to remotely manage your botnets, you are welcome and we promise we never will cooperate with any juridiction".


    Maybe such a vpn (if you find one) would be a subject of wonder for you... In my opinion, such a vpn would be very dangerous, as it would surely be a honeypot. Yet their TOS are very sexy!!

    In fact, I think every tos may be of concern in some sense. For example, consider the case of even a good vpn provider such as ivpn, often mentioned here. They are saying in their tos:
    More subtly they even write:
    Could you explain to me how they can do that? How they can "currently block P2P traffic" as soon as I use one of their US IPs? In preventing to opening ports? It is far from enough for blocking P2P. I can torrent without any port open. And how can they know I am doing some anonymous P2P such as Ants or Gnunet ? Or How can they detect I'm torrenting on I2P?
    The sad reality is that in order to really "currently block P2P" as they claim, they have to perform some kind of traffic analysis, maybe DPI (currently).

    So... You're right to be cautious. But then, why have you not reported that with a non zero probability, Ivpn was (currently) doing some DPI on their US nodes ?
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2014
  20. mantra

    mantra Registered Member

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    hi
    but did you find a fast vpn service?
    i have never found one in europe
     
  21. justpeace

    justpeace Registered Member

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    Sorry, but let me chime in.

    When a vpn provider states it blocks p2p I don't think it literally means blocking of all peer to peer trafick.

    Such a policy is impossible without blocking all inbound and outbound encrypted trafick.

    More likely I think it means that the vpn provider blocks well known public torrent trackers.

    I2P, FreeNet and Tor in client mode is hard to block and I see no reason why even a 'respectable' vpn provider would be concerned since there is (yet) no liability or DMCA notices for relaying encrypted trafick.

    In the EU, vpn services are not telco providers and aren't covered by the data retention mandate which usually only applies to providers of internet and telephony.

    And now that the EU Data Retention Directive has been ruled invalid by the CJEU, any country with no data retention can be a safe haven for entry or exit node trafick.

    A vpn can therefore rent out a tunnel to the internet assigning an IP address to 1000+ users and avoid retaining information necessary to trace any user.

    The only question is if the vpn provider is in a less advantageous legal position if it elects to write anything in its TOS.

    If you read the TOS of virtually all vpn providers, there is always a clause about copyright infringement, breaking the law or a catch-all exception wherein the service provider reserves the right to terminate service without notice.

    It does not say termination for any reason or if we have a bad day or don' like your opinions about xxx, but the only clause that really matters is the expectation that logs are not kept.

    A TOS is mostly symbolic boilerplate language.

    It is not realistic that any user would go to court over having his service terminated if his motive for subscribing to the vpn is something he wants to keep confidential.

    But it is however a measure of the service provider's reputation.

    It promises not to do x, and if it's later found out that it did it anyway its name and brand suffer.

    BTW, I can't understand why HideMyAss and StrongVPN are rated in the top 10 on the vpn review sites.

    HideMyAss now logs for two yerars.
     
  22. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Many VPN review sites sell ratings to the top bidder.
     
  23. Lyx

    Lyx Registered Member

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    If you only +think+ and have no evidence, it's rigorously more like some hope...

    It's maybe possible via DPI. This technical is allowing to differentiate vpn traffic from SSH traffic from Tor Traffic from https traffic, etc.

    In order to "block P2P" it's surely the the easiest but maybe one of the less effective way

    Hard to block but blokcable however.

    You would be right in a non mass-surveillance hysteric world. But what about +our+ world, in which, even in some civilized country, running tor has just been considered as criminal (I exaggerate a bit but not too much).
    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thr...or-prosecuted-in-austria.365628/#post-2387923


    You are right concerning this invalidation, and it was a happy news. But don't dream too much. A Data Detention Directive 2.0 will certainly soon come.


    I agree fully with that. And in fact, I don't really think that Ivpn is DPIing the traffic on their US servers. My post has mainly to be understood, not per se, but as a reply to Tipsy when he wrote a little harsh criticism concerning a particular point in PIA's TOS.

    At least it would be so in a "normal" world...


    I find it's really a pity every time I see HMA rated #1 in a vpn review online. Maybe these sites get paid by HMA, or something like that ?
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2014
  24. Tipsy

    Tipsy Registered Member

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    or she wrote :rolleyes:

    Why defending PIA? What so special about PIA?
    THIS is what PIA say to TorrentFreak survey last year:
    http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2013-edition/

    No, all companies world-wide do not must be in compliance with DMCA. DMCA is US law - it apply to US companies and to companies outside US that operate business in US.
    But if you choose a US-based company (PIA), you can expect that company ASSUME whole world is like US, even it is not.
     
  25. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Typically, VPN providers just block torrents on their US exits. If they don't do that, their US exits don't last very long. Some US-based providers may block on all of their exits. I haven't looked into the issue.
     
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