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Can Anybody Recommend a Great VPN?

Perhaps this would help and there are of course others who have shared top lists for VPN. Just be aware that not all sights welcome those who use VPN. You should find a VPN provider who makes it easy to temporarily pause or turn off/on VPN at will.

www.tomsguide.com

The best VPN in 2025: our top 5 picks

We've reviewed every major VPN (virtual private network) for privacy, security, speed, streaming and more – discover what our dedicated team recommends based on expert testing.
www.tomsguide.com www.tomsguide.com
 
elvisimprsntr said:
You know you can set up a VPN behind your home firewall, and route all traffic through the VPN?

Annual cost $0.00/year. I prefer that vs paying some scummy "privacy" VPN provider.

Click to expand...

I think you're referring to something unrelated to the topic of this thread. The video starts with the comment that the technique presented supports accessing your home network (running pfsense) from the internet. When I first heard about "VPN service providers" I was also confused. For years I'd used VPN's for external access to corporate or personal resources on protected networks. I thought that the VPN services were somehow trying to support that use case. That's not what they are about.

A VPN provider is essentially providing you with a slew of their IP addresses, in various countries, that can be used as the source of your internet traffic - all websites you visit will see those addresses as where your traffic is coming from rather than your home IP address. Access to all of those servers is mostly what you're paying for.
 
another vote for Protonmail VPN, I've been using them for VPN + mail for ~4 years now.

Beware of anything free, or close to it. If its free, that means that you (and your data) are the product for sale to others.

And to bring this to an open ended closure, do some research and find out the security policy is of any company you'd give money to for VPN services. Others, including myself, can provide some pointers for offerings that work well for us, but no one knows your needs and resources better than you do.
 
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Earlier in this thread I reported that the Private Internet Access client breaks Apple's private email/relay. Well, you can use Viscosity instead of their client. They give instructions how to set it up. If you use PIA that way, the Apple privacy stuff does not break.
 
I've been using ExpressVPN for a few months now, and it has worked terrifically for me. My only preference/want is for them to offer a Apple Silicone native app soon.
 
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I just tried NordVPN for about a week. In the end it didn't work for me, mostly because only very particular servers allow me to reach Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. And, unfortunately, the Windows version of the application didn't have an easy way to save favorites so that I might record, within the app, which servers work for me.

The Mac and Windows versions are quite different. They advertise split tunneling, but that's not supported in the Mac version. Other than that I find the Windows version less nice than the Mac version (for some trivial reasons).

In their defense, their support did respond to my Bank of America problem within a couple of hours. They provided me a small list of servers to try to reach that site; they all worked.
 
svenmany said:
I just tried NordVPN for about a week. In the end it didn't work for me, mostly because only very particular servers allow me to reach Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. And, unfortunately, the Windows version of the application didn't have an easy way to save favorites so that I might record, within the app, which servers work for me.

The Mac and Windows versions are quite different. They advertise split tunneling, but that's not supported in the Mac version. Other than that I find the Windows version less nice than the Mac version (for some trivial reasons).

In their defense, their support did respond to my Bank of America problem within a couple of hours. They provided me a small list of servers to try to reach that site; they all worked.
Click to expand...
I use Nord and yes, it is not perfect as some sites are sensitive to various addresses that come from VPN servers. However, the good news is the speed is decent, and rarely any perceived latency. Nord had an issue back when with an expose server in one of the countries and that since has been correct as well as further security put in place. My reason for going with them at the time was simply financial as they had a great deal going on. I likely would have gone perhaps with Express or similar if not Nord.
 
phrehdd said:
I use Nord and yes, it is not perfect as some sites are sensitive to various addresses that come from VPN servers. However, the good news is the speed is decent, and rarely any perceived latency. Nord had an issue back when with an expose server in one of the countries and that since has been correct as well as further security put in place. My reason for going with them at the time was simply financial as they had a great deal going on. I likely would have gone perhaps with Express or similar if not Nord.
Click to expand...

The lesson I learned is that you have to test a VPN rather than just research it. What works for one person might not work for you.

NordVPN support is super responsive and they offer a 30 day refund policy, so it's very easy to give it a try. I reset my browser to get the best deal with them; the first time I visited their website I received a slightly better offer with a time limit on accepting the offer. For me that just meant using Firefox since I reset it automatically every time I quit the program.

I've been using Private Internet Access and testing Surfshark and ProtonVPN; none have issues with any websites that I visit regularly. It is just my bad luck that one of the main websites I visit does not easily work with NordVPN.
 
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Decided to give PIA a try but discovered there’s a known bug in their iOS app that doesn’t accurately detect open WiFi networks as open and won’t automatically connect. Back to Mullvad for me.
 
I used to be a regular expressvpn subscriber. Now i found an alternative, pandavpn. Worked well on my PC and mobile phones. More importantly, it's much cheaper than expressvpn.
 
Been with PIA over 2 years and have been happy. Like any provider there have been glitches in the program itself but PIA is usually quick to figure out a work around. It 's worth the money in my opinion.
 
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Yep, PIA, had it for years. Blocks ads, popups and has a kill switch, etc. Easy set up and changing of settings to find what works best for your setup. I hate being tracked (the freaking creepers), one of my many soapbox issues.
 
chrfr said:
This article may be worth reading:
www.techradar.com

New research reveals Surfshark, TurboVPN, VyprVPN are installing risky root certificates

Security design flaw paves the way for surveillance or man-in-the-middle attacks
www.techradar.com www.techradar.com
In short, some VPN services, including Surfshark previously recommended in this thread, install a new root SSL certificate which would allow the VPN service access to your secured browsing.
Click to expand...

I'm currently testing Surfshark. I see the root certificate on Windows but not on Mac. Can anyone confirm that it's also installed on the Mac?

Surfshark is too slow for me, especially when shopping on Amazon. I'm going to ask for a refund today.

I might just stick with the free ProtonVPN on Mac until PIA solves its bug with MacOS private relay (it disables it). My subscription for PIA runs out in a year. It works perfectly on Windows and iOS.
 
I just received my refund from NordVPN. It was completely painless. I emailed support. They responded, asking if there was any way they could help before refunding. I declined. They issued the refund.

I would not hesitate giving them a test drive, considering how easy it is to get the refund.
 
HappyDude20 said:
Hello all,

I’m looking for a VPN to install to my new MBP. I feel like every other YouTube video has an influencer recommend another VPN service and I don’t know which to trust.

Obviously one that is fast and reliable are preferred. Free would be spectacular.
Click to expand...
www.androidauthority.com

Report: Popular VPNs have a dangerous security risk. Does yours?

Surfshark, Turbo VPN, Atlas VPN, and others have been engaging in practices that put their users' privacy and security at risk.
www.androidauthority.com
 
Yet another reason to not use free VPN services:

"From a website’s perspective, the IP traffic of a residential proxy network user appears to originate from the rented residential IP address, not from the proxy service customer. These services can be used in a legitimate manner for several business purposes — such as price comparisons or sales intelligence — but they are massively abused for hiding cybercrime activity because they can make it difficult to trace malicious traffic to its original source.

Residential proxy services are often marketed to people seeking the ability to evade country-specific blocking by the major movie and media streaming providers. But some of them — like 911 — build their networks in part by offering “free VPN” or “free proxy” services that are powered by software which turns the user’s PC into a traffic relay for other users. In this scenario, users indeed get to use a free VPN service, but they are often unaware that doing so will turn their computer into a proxy that lets others use their Internet address to transact online."

A Deep Dive Into the Residential Proxy Service ‘911’ – Krebs on Security

krebsonsecurity.com
 
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