It is not truthful to say no logging - if there is some logging. Their privacy policy should say that yes they log the amount of data transmitted. Then no problem. If only thing their servers check when user makes access attempt is if the account is still active subscription, no problem.
Governments and large corporations are the main surveillance problem. If no surveillance from them, most of this would not be necessary!
This completely compromise the principle of anonymity/pseudonymity. It is like Torguard who advertise they are anonymous service but then require you to provide your real IP address and your mailing address when you buy subscription, even you use bitcoin. How is that anonymous when your account number is tied direct to a real IP address? The VPN should only need an email address and just the bitcoin. No other informations necessary.
So you think you are doing something that threatens a government or large corporation so much that they would target you?? Do you live in a totalitarian surveillance state?? The US may be a surveillance state but it is not totalitarian. This thread is about picking a 1st vpn service. Mostly that should deal with lesser threats like censorship for those that live in censorship states such as China, Iran and the UK among many others. Less noble in purpose but equally valid for the basic business of VPNs are such things as evading invasive internet tracking and avoiding the traps put out there by copyright trolls and others who could profit from and abuse your identity. The totally paranoid need more than just a VPN.
Who is doing the monitoring if it is not governments and large corporations (MPAA, RIAA, ISPs, Google and friends)? If you think they are only surveilling criminals, you have not been paying attention. They are surveilling everyone. Each internet user is a new customer who they can sell stuff to. If you use the internet and have money, or can get money, they are interested in surveilling you.
You are right that the discussion has gone past the original topic, for just 1st VPN. But we do not have any recent good summary thread for discussing VPN options these days. That is why some of these topics that maybe is more for more advanced uses, like chaining VPNs, being discussed here. (If you planning to use the VPN only from your real IP and no chaining, it does not matter if they know your real IP when you buy subscription, because you will be connecting to their servers from your real IP anyway. However, it does matter if you are chaining VPNs and want better anonymity.)
Originally I was only interest in these security stuffs to keep computer from get lock up by malware and to avoid become victim of identity theft from hackers. But then I learn more and realize the teen hackers and little id theft criminals are not the real problem.
Thanks I have not used google authenticator, I found it highly dubious and strange bitcoin sites and other virtual cash sites are using it if not forcing one to use it I am glad I have not opted for 2 way verification and will not use the app! Its a bit of a shame though since some sites are now clocking onto proxys/vpns and blocking the ability to use their services making google authenticator the only way they can allow you to verify and then use the sites but then who wishes to give google your information ! Yeah far too pricey but always hear they are the top service around. Heaven forbid large corporations and the governments are the real criminals in this world ! I agree I found it bit strange many VPN providers asking for email addresses or some worse asking for name and address or real IP. I guess overall like you say you have to make that first connection to the VPN provider so technically they already know who and where you are anyhow. Perhaps VPN chaining and then picking your last VPN in your chain and paying via bitcoins and using a privacy based email company or fake temp email may be the key to getting better privacy ?
Surveillance via server software is cheap for government and corporations. From the corporate point of view--ie Google--it is mostly for marketing purposes. It is fairly easy to defeat via a combination of VPNs, adblockers, TOR, domain blacklists, script blocking and a few more techniques. NSA surveillance is much more serious but they are not going to throw everything they've got against you unless they have a reason to do so and target you. Whatever data they have from you is part of a huge mass of data, most of which is useless. I recommend checking out Edward Snowden's last interview for more on NSA capabilities and targeting. It is much more expensive to investigate and litigate, even for those with the resources to do so, and it is not likely to happen unless there is a real or perceived threat to their interests.
Well, they obviously log bandwidth usage by account. That's fairly safe, but an adversary with access to that data would know when users were online, and how much bandwidth they used, during whatever time period.
This is what TorGuard has to say about above question: "Bandwidth metrics are measured in real time and are in place to help us improve network performance and prevent abuse. This has nothing to do with an individual user's requests or actions being logged. We do not log usage, timestamps, or IP's across the VPN and Proxy network."
Yes, it is fairly safe. But if they will lie about something so obvious such like that, what else maybe they are willing to lie about?
I haven't tried it yet. I read about it a few days ago on Torrentfreak. http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-sends-100000-users-free-vpn-141024/ It sounds like it could be good for anonymity due to the sheer volume of users since TPB started promoting it. I just took a look at the website and it can be used with OpenVPN. I don't even see a custom client software on the website. That is good.
I just set up a pfSense VM for it, and all seems OK. There is one unusual thing: the VPN tunnel interface has an IPv6 address. I have IPv6 totally shut off and blocked in pfSense. The VPN server is clearly pushing IPv6. I'm not sure what, if any, the implications of that might be.
Heh? I thought they usually just use specific ID codes. Although I admit I'm very inexperienced here.
Just letting you know that we have upped our encryption to use SHA-512 and AES256 for most configurations except the surfingstreaming ones which are kept at SHA-1 and AES128 for the smoothest experience.
Will you be updating your VPN client to have an internet kill switch like the other VPN clients have?
