Hey Folks - I'm staying at a motel for a couple weeks. During this time I'll be using their wi-fi. The vpn i've normally used offers an anonymous proxy, and a full vpn. I've normally just used the anonymous proxy in the past since it's a few dollars cheaper. My question - would the anonymous proxy be sufficient to keep my private data such as website passwords etc secure over the motel's wi-fi? Or would I need the full vpn plan? If I had unlimited data on my phone, I could just tether, but my phone plan isn't unlimited. thoughts appreciated!
You could do with preparing several configurations of vpn before you go. ie different ports and servers to connect to. The one i setup for a hotel just refused to work so i was stuck. I expect the hotel was blocking it.
Just a thought. Many cell providers offer mobile hotspot for just a month or so during vacation, etc.... It might be beneficial to use mobile hotspot off your cell and then have the VPN client on the laptop, which would leave your cell provider in the dark regarding where you are going on the laptop. That is how I do it. My cell plan affords me 50 Gig of hotspot every month per phone, so if my spouse is with me that is 100 Gig. You might be able to buy a large block of mobile hotspot for a month even if your data limits are somewhat low. My data is unlimited but I don't feel as secure using a vpn on my Android as I do going "dark" on my laptop after connecting. The cell provides great bandwidth and my VPN client keeps it all tight and private. Just a thought for you! Further; this avoids the motel's wifi from blocking your VPN provider if the hotel admin is an A**.
With Proton vpn, they start you off with a free week trial of their basic plan. After the week is up, you change to the free plan if you don't continue the basic one. The free plan I think is quite adequate for many usage scenarios