Help me choose a VPN provider.

May 3, 2009 9:56 AM

Help me choose a VPN provider.

I live in the UK, and am growing increasingly weary of government snooping and bright ideas like this. I have nothing to hide, but still don't like the idea of anyone monitoring and logging what I do on the net.

So I figure a VPN that exits somewhere that doesn't do the kind of scary stuff the UK gov. seems to specialize in at the moment, and that doesn't routinely share information with the UK might be a good way to go.

I'm aware of companies such as superawesomebroadband.com and www.witopia.net but wondered if anyone could share their experiences with particular providers and maybe make some recommendations?

Of course it should be good, secure *and* cheap :) Oh yes, and I primarily use Linux.

Also, what kind of performance hit could I expect from this kind of set up for a) normal surfing and b) bit torrent usage.

posted by blacksky to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

My experience (in the US) is that foreign VPNs are a pain in the ass and face inherent limitations that I doubt can be overcome. Even if you found a provider that gives you dedicated broadband, you're still hopping from your ISP routers to the VPN providers network then off to wherever you want to go, which even with the best routers will still add some degree of latency.

I think you'd be better off segmenting what you consider sensitive and what you do not care about other people seeing. You do realize that anything not SSL faces the potential man in the middle attack, right?

Google Swiss banking and you'll see that the Swiss government is not so private as they once were and if someone is determined to get your information, simply having in Switzerland is not going to help.

Again if you're worried about torrents I'd simply setup a server in a foreign nation (google torrent box) and do all my torrenting from that and pull finished files over the wire. You can encrypt that but I wouldn't bother. I'd stay out of the EU and look at nations where punishing you would be cost prohibitive given the time and expenses involved in obtaining warrants in foreign nations, etc. I realize that Switzerland is not in the EU but I'd bet the British consulate has a better report with them than say some Eastern European nation.
posted by geoff. at 11:12 AM on May 3, 2009

While less than ideal, you can install Tor (The Onion Router), however this does not make everything secure and mean you can skip usual security precautions. Sometimes it's slow, and I wouldn't advise it for torrenting, but it will work for obscure surfing/etc you don't want tracked.
posted by iamabot at 11:21 AM on May 3, 2009

swisssvpn works
posted by dance at 1:34 PM on May 3, 2009

Best answer: 2nding Dance - swissvpn.net has treated me well, esp. w/ torrents. I pull ~100-350k down from here in the US, and about 100-150k up.

Relakks.com was great when it started, but it seems like the owners have long since abandoned the thing. It was basically useless the last 10 times I tried touching it.

If you want the crazy, weapns-grade security, look into Xerobank, which is basically a private TOR network with some neat add-ons but they aren't cheap. There are a couple of similar XB-ish ideas floating around but XB has the best reputation, was founded by some known crypto/security folks, invites audits, etc.

And of course, TPB is coming out with IPREDator but I don't think it has been released yet.

I have a fairly long list of cheap-ish VPN providers like this in my notes somewhere, but everything I know has been summarized above. MeFiMail me if you'd like to see the list anyway.
posted by bhance at 3:16 PM on May 3, 2009