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Comment by leadingthenet | Hacker News Reader

Would you recommend IVPN?

Well, of course I would! They're one of the oldest. Except for the the first generation, anyway, such as Anonymizer (now basically owned by the CIA) and Cryptohippie (still very cool, but very expensive).

And they have great clients for Windows, OS X and iOS. I've found a few others that are just as leak-free.[0] However, the data there are old, and just about all VPN services have improved their clients. What's most relevant about the site is the testing protocol. There's more about that in an IVPN guide.[1]

I also recommend AirVPN, Mullvad and PIA. But not necessarily for their clients. I mean, IVPN doesn't have a custom Linux client. So in many cases, you need firewall rules. And you need to make sure that you're not using an ISP-assigned DNS server with the VPN.

0) https://vpntesting.info/

1) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/how-to-perform-a-vpn-lea...

The great thing about Mullvad is you can use OpenVPN instead of their client if you want. And those guys really know what they are doing.

Same applies to IVPN, FWIW.

Even better, with Mullvad you can now use WireGuard instead of OpenVPN, for considerably better performance and possibly better security. I've configured my EdgeRouter Lite to route all wifi traffic on my default home network through WireGuard for a couple of weeks and it has worked very well.

https://www.mullvad.net/blog/2017/9/27/wireguard-future/

You can use open-source OpenVPN with any VPN service that offers OpenVPN connectivity. You can also use AirVPN's client Eddie, which has a pretty decent built-in firewall.

I use OpenVPN to connect to PIA both on my Linux machines and Android.

Just adding another vote for Mullvad. Tried a few others, have had the best luck with Mullvad (bandwidth, # of servers, rock-solid connection, etc.)

My VPN activities run on a old Windows box, and I did not want to trust the VPN clients to not fail and blast my data in the open for a day or two before I noticed. I ended up writing a SafeVPN Windows service that kills processes within 30 seconds of VPN failure.

I used PIA for a couple of years without issue, but then it went into some kind of decline for me, always driving network traffic to zero after a few hours. After changing hardware and reinstalling the OS with no effect, I finally tried AirVPN and things went back to normal. AirVPN is a bit more expensive, but their client is light years ahead of the PIA client.

It's better to use Windows Firewall, because blocking is virtually instant. Basically, you set LAN as a private network, and the VPN as a public network. For LAN, you allow connections only to the VPN server(s) that you use, plus a DNS server that's not associated with your ISP. You can also allow connections to other LAN devices, if you like. For the VPN, you allow all output, but only input for established connections.

Can you point to a writeup of how to do this?

The only step beyond this that I have seen is a recommendation to use OpenBSD as a firewall in a virtual machine.

No, sorry. I used to know a URL, but ... And most of your search hits will feature application-level blocking, which seems silly to me. Also, I don't use Windows much anymore. And I've forgotten the specifics.

But. It's basically what I described. For public VPN network, just use the default (all output, only established input). For private LAN, deny all output and input, and allow output to selected IP addresses (VPN and DNS servers).

Thanks for taking the time to reply. It seems like this would be worth a write-up!

Perhaps something like this can be scripted; if it becomes polished enough it could be recommended as a part of every VPN setup.

Interesting feature of Windows firewall, thanks. As the AirVPN client connects, it checks several hundred servers for the lightest load, so for that default behavior, I don't know which IPs to configure locally.

Well, the AirVPN client in Windows has its own firewall, which I didn't manage to make leak.

Various sites on the internet (e.g. Reddit, piracy sites, etc) will recommend either PIA and/or Torguard over anything else.

That's because PIA and Torguard are willing to outbid others to get that ranking :) Or so I've heard.

That's why you generally ignore online reviews.

Well my Torguard license is expiring soon. Who would you personally recommend instead?

AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad or PIA. They've all been around for several years, and focus on privacy. And I've never heard anything bad about any of them. PIA is the least expensive, and IVPN costs the most. AirVPN and IVPN are probably the fastest. IVPN and Mullvad probably have the best technical expertise.

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