I have REDACTED as a VPN provider, and their service and software is excellent.
As for the main question I find using a VPN all the time to be a worse and worse experience. Google will drive you insane with Capchas (because we know they want that sweet, sweet data location info for the ad services…)
And some websites just plain refuse to work if they detect a VPN address. Don’t believe me? put your VPN on and try to visit this site: https://www.canadacomputers.com.
Basically I have found using a VPN to become more and more frustrating to use. The only good thing it seems to be for nowadays is downloading stuff from certain sites. And that’s about it.
Anyways, what your your thoughts and feelings?
p.s. Why am I not allowed to post my VPN provider on a subreddit about VPN’s?
I’m in China and a VPN is absolutely essential. In fact, get two in case one doesn’t work. The Google picture recognising thingy is annoying as fuck, and I just use DuckDuckGo instead.
I’d say VPN use has gotten a little worse lately, but still maybe 98% of sites work fine with no hassles. Maybe it used to be 99% were fine a year ago.
I use YouTube, and sometimes a Google Search via “!g” on DDG, and don’t see captchas on either of them, using VPN. [Edit: I am not logged in to Google.]
I see at least three reasons you need a VPN:
- Access remotely to your network resources (company or personal). This is even the reason VPN exist, privacy is just a side effect.
- Protect from eavesdropping when you use public Wifi.
- increase your privacy (less and less as less and less sites use ip address for tracking)
There could be other.
Depends on what you’re using it for, IMHO.
Yeah, VPN is still useful. I don’t use it so much for privacy, because I’m always logged into sites like Google anyhow, so it’s kind of a lost cause. But I think for security it is important. For example on my phone traveling, I would never connect to Wifi that is not my own on a bare connection. It is just dumb. Even at home, I don’t want any random website having my IP address, or any other unnecessary information. But this is more for security (e.g. trolls trying to grief you or something) not privacy from big companies. And my net connection is actually slightly faster *with* the VPN, since I discovered my ISP was throttling. So that is a nice bonus. A couple websites don’t work, like for banking and stuff, and in that case I use my phone. I do have a VPN on my phone, but it is the one that came with the service, so it works on everything, I guess they are whitelisted.
If it doesn’t work for their site then don’t buy their product or use their service because their service is designed in such a way that is incompatible with respecting your privacy. VPNs are worth it more than ever right now.
Thanks Christian u/iamthatis ApolloApp. It’s been a slice.
I can access the website in your description with my vpn. For me a VPN is essential for accessing the internet in a censorship country. Yeah some sites give hassles. But switch location and I’m in
I use my VPN all the time and was able to see that site you posted no problem.
It depends on your use case, whether you trust your ISP, etc. Personally, I trust my ISP, and since just about everything on the internet these days is https, the only thing they can see is what site you visited, not what you did there. They can make inferences based on traffic analysis, but they don’t have a plain text view of your internet traffic. If you go to something like freeswitchroms(dot)info or whatever, and shortly thereafter your usage spikes, they can probably infer that you’re downloading large files, but they still can’t tell which ones.
Personally, I pay for a VPN service and use it to bypass content restrictions on certain networks, or whenever I want to look at something I’m not quite sure about and don’t want a record of it logged with my ISP. As far as using them 24/7 for all your traffic? No, they were never worth it in my opinion, unless you really don’t trust your ISP to not be super shady, restrictive, nosey, etc. My ISP here is amazing, it’s a co-op so I get a dividend check and everything. But, I understand that not all ISPs are created equal, so it depends on what your threat model entails and what you’re trying to hide.
I run a Tor snowflake relay/proxy on my home server, and I’d say most people who pay for a VPN would probably be better served by Tor, unless they’re using it for things that require lots of bandwidth like streaming or torrenting.
Q. I use a SAS VPN 24/7 because I don’t trust my ISP at all. I do most of my surfing through Chrome. Is everything I do logged?
I know there are sites that outright block VPN traffic but I have accessed that one in your post with a VPN on.
Torrenting.
I also my VPN it when I don’t want the google to know certain things about me and attache those things to my real google identity/IP/whatever.
Like for example, when I research a health condition.
Virtual machine with phony user name → VPN → ‘private’ internet.
A VPN is good for buying services cheaper. If you select a server in Argentina for example, for streaming services, I’ve also used them to buy coins from games way cheaper than on my actual country. And to unblock streaming content available in the US and not in my country
These days VPN usage is even more important than ever. More and more industries have YOU as the product, by data mining everything about you. In addition to all of this is the constant stream of malignant actors who you should protect from.
Should you use a VPN at all times? In my opinion, yes.
If a website refuses to work with you because you are using a VPN, then there are a couple options: #1 Whitelist that website to work around your VPN, or #2 Take your business elsewhere. Don’t give money to entities that don’t respect your rights.
Lastly, find a very reputable VPN provider. That is key to a good experience.
Movies cost $60 each. That’s reason enough.
If a website refuses to work with you because you are using a VPN, then there are a couple options: #1 Whitelist that website to work around your VPN, or #2 Take your business elsewhere. Don’t give money to entities that don’t respect your rights.
Your Browser plays a big Role in it too. My Hardened Firefox with privacy addons often gets flagged, while when browsing with brave, chromium or chrome work without captchas.
I tried it and could connect, however when I switched my VPN over to Canada I could no longer connect. Seems kinda counter productive from their end, possibly driving customers away.