How's the speed on AirVPN? Mullvad? iVPN?

That was base on circumstances of 2010. Why think they will limit only to business VPNs 3 years later?
They target foreign governments and businesses, but also terrorists. Do they think terrorists do not use VPN privacy services?

 

OK, then don't use VPN privacy services

But Tor's also toast

So

 

On the topic of countries and privacy, what do people think about Malaysia? I know a lot of people like BolehVPN. But I don't know what to make of the fact that they're located in Malaysia. I just don't know much about Malaysian politics, it's democracy, it's privacy laws, the actual relative autonomy of its citizens. Any thoughts?

Similarly, I'm not really sure what to make of the fact that iVPN is located in Malta.

 

does it not beg the question then that jondo vpn must be the best even though it is expensive ?

 

JonDo is not a VPN provider. It is a proxy cascade similar to TOR.

I like their JonDoFox Firefox profile. It is much more thorough than just using a VPN.

They have a very informative help section.
-https://anonymous-proxy-servers.net/en/help/otherServices.html-

I worry that they stop supporting JonDoFox in favor of JonDoBrower which then will not function without JAP/JonDo. I see that they try to entice customers to use their premium service.

 

Maybe this give some bit informations.

Also, remember that Malaysia is in backyard of China.

 

Thanks for the link.

 

...or that EarthVPN is registered in Northern Cyprus.

 

It's simple, anywhere out of US/UK. Your VPN host provider gets forewarning 99% of the time and will take the servers offline. VPN hosts gain nothing from complying with authority and it just damages their reputation and business model. So for the most part any country outside the US/UK where the owner physically live outside these two places is very safe. BolehVPN is great FYI, and Malaysia is fine.

 

Why should I assume this at all? Other governments in other countries could also have secret court orders or who knows what. Some governemnts cooperate with the U.S. and might spy on someone (or whole populations) on their behalf. Lot's of countries are totally not democratic and might just seize servers and do what they want with them. Or a country might have mandatory logging laws and a VPN service could lie about it.

I'm just making those scenarios up off the top of my head. But I think a country needs to have a powerful tradition of respect for privacy, a functional democracy, and a robust legal system to protect privacy and businesses, otherwise there's plenty of room for abuse. I see absolutely no reason why I should assume that only the U.S. and U.K. are problematic and just trust everyone else.

Also, it only damages the reputation of a VPN to comply with authority if you know that's what they're doing. Especially in a country with a weak or no democracy and no robust legal protections, as well as no strong tradition of free speech, it would be easy for a VPN to hide collusion with authorities.

Besides, every day right now we're learning how huge U.S. companies, including businesses selling VPN and other privacy services, colluded with the government. They got away with it for a long time, without being found out. Why should I assume that's not possible elsewhere?

I mean, just as extreme examples, should I trust a VPN in China? North Korea? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Belarus? It's easy to think of places where who knows what the government might make a business do secretly. Yes I realize there probably are no VPN services marketing themselves from any of those locations. My point is just the obviousness of how those would be bad locations. And hence my caution about locations whose politics, governments, and legal systems I know little about and do not understand well.

Anywhere outside the U.S. and U.K. seems like a way to general and simple assumption to me.

 

that sounds like a more realistic approach than that of taliscicero's to me.

 

Clearly you guys should not use the internet. You know, because its a great risk to you and the Russian and American secret black-ops are going to bring you down for your love of Miley Cyrus videos. Just don't trust anyone and talk about crazy scenarios all you want. I won't use any VPN service or Tor because the aliens are watching and they have a vested interest in tracking my activities, also Bigfoot was hired as CIA contractor has xray eyes and can read minds.

 

Consider anything to be breakable now. Confidence in encryption is a all time low if you ask me, the NSA has it's paws in many honeypots and your VPN could be one.

It's sad to have come to this, but you can't trust anyone now.

 

I heard EarthVPN gave up a guys details to the police the other day...

https://webcache.googleusercontent....cussion/11348/problems-with-my-life-situation

https://webcache.googleusercontent....sion/11348/problems-with-my-life-situation/p2


Just read a bit more about it seems one of the servers in netherlands got raided and the data center contained the ip address, they have now stopped using them.

Its horrible listening to that poor guy who got caught, he is worried to death about his career and job prospects and life, I think he said his mate used his earthvpn server and mentioned a terrorist word during chat....


Guess you cant trust anyone apart from yourself.... perhaps !

 

If you're going to use just one VPN, it's best to pick one that operates from a relatively neutral country, which is fiercely independent and/or has convoluted bureaucracy and legal system. I believe that BolehVPN (Malaysia), Cryptohippie (Panama), iVPN (Malta) and Mullvad (Sweden) all qualify in that sense. Panama did cooperate to take Liberty Reserve down, but they were a huge target, and it took a few years. AirVPN (Italy) is not so good, given Italy's history of cooperating with the US.

If you're going to use nested VPN chains, the first and last are most crucial. For the last VPN, it's best to pick one that operates from a country that's highly unlikely to cooperate with your country. For the US and allies, the best that I know is Insorg (Russia). Although I'm sure that Russian government intercepts everything, I doubt that there's routine data sharing with the US and allies.

 

That's one reason why "we don't keep logs" may be an empty promise.

 

I don't get the fear a lot of the time. I am not doing anything wrong behind a VPN so even if my VPN server does get raided, who cares? Its rare but even so there is nothing bad I'm doing so its not really an issue. I mean, if your not using a VPN to commit crimes it should not be a big issue. I use the best of my knowledge not to have the scenario happen but even if it did it would not effect me negatively.

 

thanks for the insight, was considering going back to airvpn but not so much now, maybe I may try Mulvad and boleh for a while see if there any good?

 

@Taliscicero

I'm not very worried about my online activity. I write about virtually everything in public. But what interests me is learning and documenting workable approaches for those who do have a lot at stake.

@TheCatMan

Either of those should be fine.

I mean no disrespect to AirVPN here, by the way. Even though they're operating from Italy, they seem very technical, and it may well be that all user data and traffic information is secure. It may well be that the worst-case scenario is loss of service. That's apparently what happened in 2010, when their servers in France were taken. Overall, I trust them. But it's hard to know what's being logged by their ISP(s). That's a concern for all VPN services, however.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful response to my question.

I agree that a VPN in a country that is neutral and independent is good, as well as countries that do not feel compelled to cooperate with one's home country. I do also think, as I said above, that a country internally needs to also have a committment to principles of privacy and a robust democracy and legal system. Without the genuine rule of law there is no reason to think that businesses behind the scenes aren't doing whatever an autocratic government tells them to do. That's why I brought up above the extreme, somewhat absurd, examples of a VPN in China or Belarus; there is no way a VPN in those countries could reasonably claim to an outsider that they are not logging activity, because businesses are not sufficienty outside the authority of the government to claim any true independence in any matter. So I think not just neutrality is important, but also democracy and the rule of law. It's on this last point that my lack of knowledge about the politics, governance, and judicial systems of places like Malaysia and Malta make me hesitate. (Of couse, they may be fine, they're just not places I understand well.) I suppose I feel more comfortable with Italy in this respect, although as you point out they have a history of cooperating with the U.S.

*

That aside, I am not really concerned ultimately about the scenario in which some entity like the NSA targets me in particular, first because I have no reason to believe I would ever be such a target and second because if that were to happen I'm sure they'd get what they want. But as a pure principled matter of privacy I would like to not have all of my internet surfing activity sucked up in a blanket data collection scheme (like Prism) and kept in a database somewhere forever. And I think finding a country where one can have some reasonable expectation that this is not the case can be tricky (obviously it also depends on the technical expertise and trustworthiness of the VPN provider themselves).

In addition, if people think that having all of the internet surfing they ever did (and all of their emails for that matter) forever stored somewhere can't potentially come back to haunt them some day in some completely unexpected way, I think they are being very shortsighted and ignorant of history. Sooner or later these kind of databases or files on individuals are always abused. Not necessarily by the people who created them, but by some future governement, president, NSA director, who is more corrupt, capable of who knows what.

And the data will be used retrospectively and selectively to paint someone in whatever light serves the purpose of that entity at the time, regardless of whether it truly supports that purpose or not. In fact, that is the essential purpose of these sorts of databases. Not that they will reveal illegalities as they are collected, but because they may come in handy later when someone becomes a target. But how and why people become targets is a problem. There may be one set or reasons now that we all more or less agree with (although how effective they are currently at making us safer is a matter of debate), but the reasons for selecting targets can change in the future and the database will still be there to serve those new purposes that we may not feel so good about. It may never happen, of course, or it may be a couple decades from now, and it may never happen to you, but if people don't think these database are a trove sitting there waiting for abuse, and if people don't think that it could happen to them even when they're being perfectly law abiding, then I think they're being foolish.

 

From what I understand they will be doing away with the JonDoFox browser before to long. If you want to use JonDoBrowser without the JonDo service you'll have to click on the little JonDo globe icon that's located to the left of the URL bar and go into preferences. From there I believe you click advanced or extended view (something like that) and then once you save the settings no proxy, custom, Tor and Jondo options should be displayed like in JonDoFox.

 

EarthVPN vs Private Internet Access

EarthVPN is probably best to be avoided. Is Private Internet Access any better?

-http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/528675

 

Yeah I think its safe to say to avoid earthvpn and even hidemyass vpn services.

Anything that is usually US or setup in an english speaking country always has that xfactor of unreliability.

Not sure about privateinternet access but some chat regarding them on here:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=352754

I think these 3 are best:

AirVPN, BolehVPN, Mullvad

Have not tried bolehvpn but hear there top rated also.

just noticed privateinternet are us based corporation! and also respond to DMCA notices:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/dmca-policy

Think the other 3 are best for now

 

As I've said in other threads, I also recommend Insorg and iVPN. They both offer multi-hop connections, and they are both more expensive. Both accept Bitcoins. Insorg is 190 USD per year, and iVPN is 100 USD per year. But their pricing per exit IP is comparable. iVPN currently seems faster and more reliable than Insorg. Given increasing censorship in Russia, I suspect that Insorg is gaining new customers faster than it can build out for them.