Something which may well unite Hackaday readers is the experience of being “The computer person” among your family or friends. You’ll know how it goes, when you go home for Christmas, stay with the in-laws, or go to see some friend from way back, you end up fixing their printer connection or something. You know that they would bridle somewhat if you asked them to do whatever it is they do for a living as a free service for you, but hey, that’s the penalty for working in technology.
Bad Laws Just Make People Avoid Them
There’s a new one that’s happened to me and no doubt other technically-minded Brits over the last few weeks: I’m being asked to recommend, and sometimes install, a VPN service. The British government recently introduced the Online Safety Act, which is imposing ID-backed age verification for British internet users when they access a large range of popular websites. The intent is to regulate access to pornography, but the net has been spread so wide that many essential or confidential services are being caught up in it. To be a British Internet user is to have your government peering over your shoulder, and while nobody’s on the side of online abusers, understandably a lot of my compatriots want no part of it. We’re in the odd position of having 4Chan and the right-wing Reform Party alongside Wikipedia among those at the front line on the matter. What a time to be alive.
VPN applications have shot to the top of all British app download charts, prompting the government to flirt with deny the idea of banning them, but as you might imagine therein lies a problem. Aside from the prospect of dodgy VPN apps to trap the unwary, the average Joe has no idea how to choose from the plethora of offerings. A YouTuber being paid to shill “that” VPN service is as close of they’ve ever come to a VPN, so they are simply unequipped to make a sound judgement when it comes to trusting a service with their web traffic. They have no hope of rolling their own VPN; setting up WireGuard and still further having a friend elsewhere in the world prepared to act as their endpoint are impractical.
It therefore lies upon us, their tech-savvy friends, to lead them through this maze. Which brings me to the point of this piece; are we even up to the job ourselves? I’ve been telling my friends to use ProtonVPN because their past behaviour means I trust Proton more than I do some of the other well-known players, but is my semi-informed opinion on the nose here? Even I need help!
Today Brits, Tomorrow The Rest Of You
At the moment it’s Brits who are scrambling for VPNs, but it seems very likely that with the EU yet again flirting with their ChatControl snooping law, and an American government whose actions are at best unpredictable, soon enough many of the rest of you will too. The question is then: where do we send the non-technical people, and how good are the offerings? A side-by-side review of VPNs has been done to death by many other sites, so there’s little point in repeating. Instead let’s talk to some experts. You lot, or at least those among the Hackaday readership who know their stuff when it comes to VPNs. What do you recommend for your friends and family?
Header image: Nenad Stojkovic, CC BY 2.0.
I’m sure the “VPN” services were and are in favor of laws like this.
They surely would never lobby for such laws…. /S
Just like I’m reasonably secure in my assumption that “services” like Incogni, DeleteMe and whatnot have connections with the advertisement “industry” (monetary, investments or just stocks).
Instead of paying money for services, users pay with their data. Then some of those users pay money to Incogni etc. anyway – and the laws actually governing this stay the same (nothing in USA and even GDPR is a mixed bag).
What motivation do Incogni etc. have to get better laws passed? What’s their motivation for “your” data to continuously re-appear on the net…
It’s kinda like Google’s “do not track me” cookie. They track you to identify that you’ve opted out of tracking, or ads, or whatever.
What it means is, they still track you and collect data, but it’s “anonymized”. I.e. you can’t find it under your own name if you ask Google, but Google can always de-anonymize it when and if they choose to, and in the end it doesn’t even matter whether they know exactly who you are for the point of selling your profile to advertisers, who can then put two and two together and fill in the blanks.
Same thing for all the “delete me” services. How do you know that advertisers don’t have your data? Well, you just read the report that they made 100 takedown requests this month – and so what? How do you check that those are even real? The net is still flooded with spam and ads anyhow.
Off the internet, where they should be.
Amen brother
Yes.
“The intent is to regulate access to pornography” That’s their stated intent. However, the wet dream of the worlds governments is to establish a surveillance network to spy on their citizens and suppress speech (under the guise of “protecting children”). Britain is simply the current target of these efforts.
Last year, more people were jailed for ‘wrong speech’ in England then Russia.
Magna Carta Magna Schmarta!
Source?
England or Russia – which had more people mysteriously fall out of the upper floors of a tall building?
In Putinist Russia, if you do “wrong speech” you might not be actually jailed immediately, but your life and the lives of those around you may become a living hell.
Yeah, so England and Russia are both repressive in their own fun and unique ways. I wouldn’t want to live in either of them.
In England, you can now end up in jail for waving the English flag. I think that’s quite unique.
Utter bollocks. Put down the Daily Mail.
The current thing is putting flags on someone else’s property. If it was a car or house it’s clear who owns them but people forget that bridges, lamp posts and crosswalks are functionally owned by your local council. (I am not a lawyer, this statement is likely inaccurate)
I don’t buy for a second this “It’s for the children!” bullshit.
If someone in government cared about kids the public education system wouldn’t be in shambles.
Another trust issue: VPN need servers, those are often local…
As for youtube ads, that makes me much more suspicious about an outfit I have to admit.
Ok so how would you like them to advertise that won’t make you suspicious, but people including you might actually see? For me at this point I can’t see another really viable option to advertise anything that isn’t on yt unless you are targeting a really small niche – you want to advertise to model railway enthusiasts you can sponsor a few model railway exhibitions around the world, show up with your product that presumeably is useful to many of the folks that would go etc, but if your product is a more general service that is useful to everyone at least from time to time…. Maybe a VPN can place advert or two in an airport as one of the common uses is pretending to be at home while you are travelling, but I’d never see it (most likely anyway), and likely neither would a great many folks that find VPN useful for something.
So you are going to have to judge on the content of the ad and yt creators they have worked with.
A VPN is by necessity somewhat of an exercise in trust… I wonder if any of the FOSS supporting/producing groups out there have considered hosting a VPN network or two at least in part to get for funding the development of their software – a big enough group, usually with no fixed boss or members to get sucked into seeking maximum profits, it obviously won’t be perfectly trustworthy but I’d suggest better than any opaque for profit company… Not sure I’d really want the FOSS community to open that can of worms given the political state of play though, seems like it could be playing with fire when folks are getting detained by multiple armed police officers for a very inoffensive tweet etc.
I guess they picked a (somewhat) famous guy because it’s much more effective as intimidation if it hits all the news sources.
Perhaps they even deliberately chose a relatively innocent set of tweets for that same reason, makes people afraid to say ANYTHING.
They pull the same stunts on the mainland but there they are often doing it doing it to normal people, which means the intimidation isn’t so widespread.
Not exclusively though, they also hit people that are well known but known to be critical thinkers.
I wonder if they will also adopt this British tactic at some point and are going to hit more mainstream, non-activist but well-known, people.
I now hear it’s all about a fight between the guy and a specific trans person where they both get pretty hot under the collar.
Doesn’t excuse the over-the-top arrest or anything, but at least there are now 2 fighting parties defined.
idk about you, but if I see a product or service promoted via youtube, you can bet your bottom dollar it is 100% garbage. See: kamikoto knives, secured titles, brunt boots, et al.
I have been using Mullvad VPN for years now.
I don’t know about any shitty behaviour from them… But it seems to be easy to find dirt on everyone.
Proton does have some stains though:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58476983
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/09/privacy-focused-protonmail-provided-a-users-ip-address-to-authorities/
https://techstory.in/proton-mail-faces-backlash-over-claims-of-political-neutrality-amid-ceos-praise-for-republican-party/
And they do not seem to take security as serious as you would hope, given they are a VPN provider:
https://cyberpress.org/500-million-proton-vpn-pass-accounts-exposed/
This whole article seems like an advertisement for Proton. I use Proton email but do not for a second believe it to be 100% secure, neither their VPN. I can’t recommend security focused software to anyone, in good conscience because, ultimately none are secure or if they are are likely going to be secure forever. Then I take the reputational damage when something happens because I was the one to lead them to that software.
How does this work? I assume you have to get a VPN service that has non-UK exit points so these are not subject to the age verification? If the EU adapts similar rules, where do you choose an endpoint? Like, is all European traffic gonna surface in Switzerland at that point?
Would it surprise you to learn that the world is actually much bigger than the UK & EU?
I keep thinking about trying https://vp.net/ but actually use ProtonVPN (and mail).
Tailscale
Tailscale might be a good option now.
Tailscale allows computers behind NAT to connect. So you can setup any home PC as a VPN exit node.
Eg: Person 1 installs Tailscale, adds Person 2 to their account, Person 2 installs Tailscale. Person 1 allows Person 2 route their internet traffic through Person 1s internet connection.
Their business model seems to be, allow people to play around with this on their home networks for free, and charge for corporate use.
Virtual high five my dude I’ve got my folks set up on tail scale on a on premise nas in their home and it has solved a world of headache for remote access with the simplest of implementation . This one technology combined with a nano KVM has allowed me to do bare metal recovery remotely. Total hardware investment was under a hundred bucks. Really nothing I can complain about
They specifically point out that not everyone has a “friend” who will be their endpoint in an unrestricted location.
Of eleven responses so far (twelve counting this one) two actually made a recommendation. And neither said why.
This makes me sad. I know I should know more about VPNs, and I was hoping this discussion would provide starting blocks for that understanding.
Sadly these sort of requests always bring out the conspiracy nuts, ‘free speech advocates’, and other extremists.
Right . enforcing the existing laws is now considered bad in some quarters.
Are you saying evil people never talk (conspire) with each other?
Are you saying advocating free speech is extreme?
And even if the above are true, why is it “sad” that people talk about these things?
Trying to understand your position here.
Assuming you’re not sealioning, there’s freedom from censorship by government which is generally a good thing. Some people go further and want freedom from any and all consequences of speaking, which is a bad thing. If you rile up a crowd with the intention of getting them to lynch someone you should face some consequences for that speech. There are also some that want to force everyone to listen to their speech, removing the listener’s rights. Both those groups are irritating.
You’re right, I do go further. Plenty of people are extremists in the other direction (disallowing speech) so I choose to be extreme in the other direction (allowing all speech without exceptions) to balance them out. Same goes for “listener’s rights”, which in reality is often just private censorship. No thanks.
One I have been meaning to investigate is Mullvad because they accept cash. Apparently you can mail them cash if you include a note with your account number on it, that way they don’t even know your name. I’d still pay by card for the convenience.
I’ve heard a few horror stories with Proton Mail about people getting kicked off the platform without being allowed to export their mail or anything which makes me wary of their VPN offerings. Atomic Shrimp on YouTube got his scam-baiting mailbox closed for scam-like behavior, which suggests privacy isn’t as important as they claim.
The problem is that any VPN which
A) isn’t under your control (meaning the cryptographic keys are know by a third party)
AND
B) “proxies” your data to somewhere else is by definition not a VPN anymore because nothing going over/through it is private.
Hidden from your ISP and state maybe but everything on it is visible to the VPN provider.
Rent a VPS/rootserver or something in between, establish an actual VPN between that VPS and your end devices and you have to trust the VPS provider.
IMO there are only two options:
1 – get all those retarded laws rejected/revoked/burned and send to hell. You want “child protection” (in this context)? Put it in the end user device and let websites just tell the device when they’re visiting what age rating they have and let the local browser/appstore block stuff (pretty sure all that is already possible but parents don’t limit their children’s devices??).
2 – move to TOR, i2p, freenet and whatnot.
That’s why you need to be behind a dozen boxies.
If it is only you(or a small group) behind that gain of proxies, it provides you no anonymity.
It is trivial to follow a chain to you when you can easily identify a high bitrate session.
Anonymity comes from a critical mass.
That is why it is important for EVERYONE to use tor, at least a little bit.
It doesn’t matter if you aren’t hiding something. Browse your morning webcomics over tor.
Using it for normal stuff Is what protects the people who need the anonymity.
Indeed, some VPN like PIA claim ‘court tested no logs policy’, but you still have to trust them – but really the question is why are you considering a VPN?
As if its just to get around stupid laws like this one you’ll blend into the traffic so much even a logging, secretly state sponsored VPN actively out to get ‘criminals’ is likely safe(ish) for you – whichever state sponsored that VPN probably can’t touch you as international law and order co-operation has never been great and is actively disintegrating now it seems, and even if it did happen to be your own government you have to be a very out of the ordinary user or you won’t stand out among the rest of the local population doing the same – they can’t actually do more than symbolically smash a few folks, and in the process reveal that VPN is a trap, and likely tank that handy government revenue stream and all that useful data they were gathering.
A number of states in US banned or restricted porn, people have been using VPN to get around that. A simple VPN would just hide the real IP address from the porn sites, making the user appear to be from where porn is legal. (I don’t recommend these VPN for illegal stuff like downloading movies, there are better VPN with no logging and no tracking)
Torrentfreak (a news website) generates a report I think once a year where they reach out to most VPN providers and asks them a list of pertinent questions. You should probably consult that.
I’ve had good luck with privateinternetaccess, i was drawn to them because of their no logs policy and their wide array of supported end devices. Never had a single issue with them and they have servers all over the globe.
PIA has some interesting baggage in it’s ownership.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Internet_Access
I’ll leave it to the kind reader to determine if it’s suitable or not.
I’m still using PIA but am looking to switch due to the parent company. They got bought out a few years ago by Kape technology’s and I’ve read some iffy things since then.
Mulvad would be my suggestions now and who I’m looking to switch to since you can send cash without a return address and just your username in the envelope as a way to subscribe. Seems pretty full proof currently to identify people, although I will probably use a card still which kinda defeats that layer of anonymity
A company can of course have a claim they don’t keep logs when a 3rd party keeps the logs, for instance by feeding them live connection data.
Now I don’t know if and how many companies do that, but I know EU city and government entities have pulled such stunts.
And how about that famous AT&T live feed of half the US internet to the spooks in their exchange back then? They could have claimed ‘no logs’ easily.
I use PIA. I’ve seen at least one court case where PIA was ordered to turn over their logs and they couldn’t since there were none. 🤷♂️ It’s all just a matter of having to trust SOMEONE…
I trust some individual people in Sweden, but you know there is a bit of an iffy history with the officials…
It’s a bit of an up and down thing with Sweden, at one time you think they are champions for privacy and rights, and at other times… not so much.
And now they joined NATO… You gotta wonder.
So why is it that this reply shows here instead of the comment below I replied to? I even closed my browser and reopened it with cleared cookies to avoid it going wrong.
Plenty of logs and persistent storage at HaD I guess eh.
What we all really need to be thinking about is the “next battle”, how we can make an internet which still can’t be censored even if there are no open countries left for VPN exit nodes? and make it still work even if states manage to perform the near-impossible task of blocking all VPNs. Yes, we can talk today about what VPNs to recommend no the less technically minded, and this discussion is important, but on this site we need to be thinking several steps ahead too. There are some ideas towards the second half of the attached article. Maybe there will be someone on here who can think how to get started towards those goals.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/08/16/the-online-safety-act-exposes-how-fragile-our-overly-centralised-internet-really-is/
Pirate packet radio mesh networks.
We are going to figure ways against tyranny, always.
A certain president is going to test that.
Oh please. If that is actually something you believe, you have no idea what tyranny or “fascism” really are. Bro…. it aint this by 100 galaxies.
I think you might need a lesson in history before you make statements like that.
There are shocking similarities between the tactics, structure, and beliefs used during the rise of Fascist Italy and the current Far Right Republican administration.
And by similarities, I mean they both turned in the same homework assignment.
The only difference is the setting.
If you have a problem with people calling the Trump camp “Fascists”, then you have no idea what that word means, because they are literally using the Fascist playbook.
The only one that still holds somewhat of an pristine reputation is mullvad, but if you are capable go with something diy.
Looks like Proton and PIA are trying to redeem themselves after some controversial things in the last few years but i don’t know if is for real or not.
oh from the headline i expected this to be a debate of wireguard vs openvpn. on that front, i have switched to wireguard because it’s slightly faster and slightly easier to configure. but i still have to use openvpn for two of the links, due to weaknesses in the remote hosts. used to have to use vtun for one, which was mildly frustrating because the linux implementation of vtun (at least the one distributed by debian) accidentally flipped endianness 10-15 years ago. and no one noticed for a good long time so to flip it back would be to break things all over again! i had to use a custom patched vtund, but maybe it’s a configuration option by now.
i used to really like openvpn but lately they are pushing to move away from the dead simple pre-shared key setup to x509 certificates (public key?). instead of one thing to share, now it’s 3…ca.crt, host.crt, and host.key….with a bit of a process to generate each of them. it’s not actually hard working with the openssl tool to manage x509 certificates…but i always wind up cut and pasting some cryptic commandline but once i started digging a little, it’s not really as complicated as it looks and a lot of the cut-and-pasted-and-pasted-and-pasted recipes you find out there are a bit more complicated than they need to be. but you run with what works!
which brings me to the topic :) i figure most for-pay / public VPNs are irreputable. i assume they’re mostly honeypots and the ones that aren’t are probably wildly misconfigured anyways. the thing is, you sign up for one, and then you test your favorite website or torrent server or whatever and then you stick with it until it breaks or until they raise the price. if you actually cared about security, about resisting a persistent and targetted threat, you wouldn’t touch any of them with a ten foot pole! if you’re just trying to dodge a blanket ban, i figure you don’t need real obfuscation, and if you are trying to like organize a resistance cell then you will have to be much more clever anyways.
but the thing is, these aren’t really VPNs in my mind. my VPN is a way for me to access all of “my” computers, at my house, on the go, and at the office. i know ipv6 blah blah blah but for now this mechanism is just convenient…from my perspective, it’s a fixed IP address that isn’t always flooded with port scans. i can carry my laptop across town and open it up and all my TCP connections are still valid, uninterrupted. my VPN is Private.
if i just wanted my web browser to bypass some location lock, i would much rather use a proxy instead!
So, this is HARD and you have to look at any recommendations with a very jaundiced eye. There are also some things you need to research BY YOURSELF before you make a decision.
For one thing, just like any other type of encryption, VPNs are not magic pixie dust. Even relatively small companies can afford deep packet inspection services (DPI – you need to research that).
You also need to understand the Five Eyes, the Nine Eyes and the Fourteen Eyes. And you have to assume that any sufficiently advanced state actor has compromised at least some of every VPN’s servers. Absolutely the US, Russia, China, UK, Israel, Germany and South Korea — and they all share with their friends. So if you plan to be the new Snowden conduct yourself accordingly.
Why do you want a VPN? Other than “serious” crimes (especially CSAM) and “treason” (e.g., Snowden), most of the 14 Eyes have better things to worry about.
Me, I don’t want Google and Verizon and Consolidated and Meta to know what meds my doctor says I should take or whether I’m looking for a new job. Most of the big VPNs like Proton and mullvad should be fine. Porn? I’m guessing Florida, Texas, Utah and the UK are going to start DPI soon but maybe that’s too much work / too expensive for them.
My point is (1) read up, (2) be skeptical of really any recommendations, (3) assume it’s just like the lock on your door, it will only keep out the “amateurs” — make it easier to spy on someone else than on you, (4) assume no one cares about most of your secrets, and, (5) assume Google and most state actors know everything about you already.
Recommendation FWIW – I’ve tried a bunch – proton is the one I’ve used the longest — their “stealth” protocol and wireguard-over-TCP seem legit but who know? They both kill battery life on phone though.
poorn, the eternal debate, should be ilegal? so at what point a goverment should decide if you can or not watch poorn?, I have the feelings that over the past decades the rolls of authoritarian versus free nations have been slowly flipped the coin,so we are more and more like; oh! soorry you can’t do that anymore, oh! no you can’t have that, no! it ilegal to look at people that way, sorry but now is ilegal to walk backwards…
and yeah “poorn” cos I don’t want my comment be deleted, maybe I should mask “goverment”, “authoritarian” “ilegal” anyway ,happy brave world.
I have tried a couple of VPN services, ProtonVPN and TunnelBear.
I used Tunnel Bear for a couple of years but had a bad support experience last year and so switched to ProtonVPN. I’ve been happy with ProtonVPN so far.
As a laptop user, I just want a service that allows me to use public networks with confidence so I don’t really care about logging IPs. I simply want to know I can work from a coffee shop a few times a week and still use the net.
This is pretty much the one usecase I would never waste money on a “VPN” service for.
Do you have internet at home? Just install a at least halfway decent router with integrated VPN and use that.
(assuming your ISP doesn’t force CG-NAT on you and you live in a country where any ISP must give you “dialup” pw+username+etc so you can use any router you want)
I use urban vpn whoch is free of charge. I have been told they are the worst for privacy. I don’t know if that is true (maybe)
That’s a bit giving away a bit of privacy against freedom. I know that is far from being ideal. But I am and expert of bad decisions anyway 😂
Technically it works real well both on my computer and android phone.
MULLVAD. Sweden. Open.
Something that has been overlooked is that age verification systems are generally (perhaps totally) unusable by the unaided blind. Requesting assistance from a friend or family member can lead to embarrassing questions.
I lost patience when Wikipedia was threatened with an agewall.
Deranged comment
“We’re in the odd position of having 4Chan and the right-wing Reform Party alongside Wikipedia among those at the front line on the matter. What a time to be alive.”
I really don’t know why that would surprise you. 4chan is rather anarchistic in nature so that they are against the OSA is a given. The reform party is centrist, not really right wing. They still want to keep charge of utility companies and only want to do some tax cutting, to a more sustainable level. I wouldn’t even call them right wing, more center/center-left. The more a government moves to the right, the less control the government wants over their people and companies and that includes privacy laws. In theory it’s just economics, more to the left is more taxes, more control over companies, but in practise it includes privacy and other methods to control the population. The more to the right, the less control over companies and people. Only one I’m surprised about in this list is Wikipedia. They remove articles they don’t like not because of their own rules, but based on feelings. Other articles are fully locked so only Wikipedia moderators can edit them, filled with false information, articles written as such that it becomes a smear and using unreliable sources. Never a good idea to take that site at face value.
For VPN’s, I personally use Mullvad. I used to use Private Internet Access until I found out that Andrew Lee was involved. He’s a horrible person. He did a hostile takeover of the Freenode network and destroyed it. It was the oldest running IRC network there was. Stole ownership and took it away. He later sold it to a company that made spyware. PIA is also really slow. I haven’t used ProtonVPN but I’m plannning on testing it as I’m already using other Proton services.
I live in the Netherlands and I refuse to use the internet without a VPN. I don’t trust my government, at all.
+1
If it was about protecting kids it’s not its always control, I could think of other ways to limit a child’s access to pornography through means that don’t require revealing personal information. When you want to buy smokes, alcohol, or porno mags you must show your ID to the clerk. If you want to watch porn you must by a decryption key. Sites that host porn must encrypt such a way that those decryption keys are the only way to view the site. The point of verification is the same as all other adult products the clerk. I’m sure there’s flaws to this I’d like to here what others think.
Few I can think of are sites that are non compliant and don’t encrypt. Maybe enforce at the ISP level instead and have a list of domains they encrypt. Leaked keys are another issue, no way to tell after the purchase who is actually using it, but the same could be said for alcohol and there are laws against buying alcohol for minors.
“…[You] know how it goes, when you go home for Christmas, stay with the in-laws, or go to see some friend from way back, you end up fixing their printer connection or something…”
This could form the basis for a good article.
Precisely WHY do so many people in this circle feel this way?
If a friend/acquaintance/family member said, “the dishes are piled up in the sink because I never really got the hang of dish-washing”, would you run right into the kitchen and start washing all those dishes? I thought not.
TL;DR: “…you end up fixing their printer connection or something…”.
You, absolutely, do not HAVE to do this; in most cases your largesse and display of technological prowess are completely forgotten about almost immediately…forgotten, that is, until the next time your hard-won expertise is needed.
Why is this such a common occurrence. (?)
One of my relatives kept screwing up their laptop around the vista era. Constantly downloading stuff without checking, I kept fixing it and eventually made it so their account couldn’t install software without an admin password and they got the 13yr old kid of a neighbour to reinstall windows. When their HDD died and they came looking to me for help, I told them I charge £60 per fix and for parts now. Doesn’t matter if they’re family or not. That stopped them asking ever again.
If there is one thing netizens do well, it is mass exodus. Let’s see how well the US fare without the trillions of free data inputs.
We could flock to VPNs, or, just cease to use the services. I already opt out of services requiring account creation.
Just saw this consolidation of VPN endpoints. It seems that there are very few real solutions, all branded slightly differently.
https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/researchers-find-alarming-overlaps-among-18-popular-vpns-191828342.html
This is why tools like the Tor project are so valuable ( https://www.torproject.org/ )
Having recently investiageted the Tor exit nodes, I can tell you that a lot of sites and CDNs are actively blocking “known VPNs” and “known Tor exit nodes”. So, the aspect of “just use a VPN” or “just use Tor” is not a long term solve for privacy and security. There needs to be an acceptance of privacy and some anonymity on the internet.
Fire up a Tor node, I think the project could use the attention !
I have been using airVPN for years. They have a large amount of exit nodes in several countries to choose from. I’ve never had any issues with speed, they use open source code, they don’t store your data, you don’t even need to give them any user info or email address, you can use bitcoin for complete anonymity.
Another one I use for surfing in coffee shops and air ports is mega vpn. If you subscribe to their 20gig cloud storage, you get access to their vpn. It’s an easy to use “one click” app.
tl;dr mega.io for ease of use, airVPN.org for best chance at anonymity.
We all gonna ignore the fact your ID is already connected to your webtraffic thanks to your cell phone? All this does is make it easier.
Why not self-hosting on one of the hundreds of VPS providers? You have full control, it’s much cheaper and you can also use that machine for something else. Wireguard is an option.
Or, if you have trusted friends, have them set up a VPN on their router, a lot of newer routers support this.
Or use Tor whenever possible.
There is no real reason to support most of the commercial VPNs, especially the ones which advertise on YouTube.