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Comment by Arubis | Hacker News Reader

Nice while it lasted. Any alternative recommendations for less tech-oriented folks? TunnelBear has been what I pointed friends and relations towards historically.

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Mullvad (https://mullvad.net/en/) is the highest rated VPN service by That One Privacy Site[0] and it's pretty easy to use.

It's what I use, check it out!

[0] https://thatoneprivacysite.net/2017/10/03/mullvad-review/

I’ve been using Mullvad for a few months and it’s been working pretty well so far—no complaints here. Not sure if it’s standard practice, but I really dig the passwordless account number only login.

I'll give another +1 for Mullvad. They're servers are damn fast too, for what it's worth, on top of a pretty great privacy policy.

I've been using them for a year or so, and I've never had a complaint. Good range of servers, nice speeds.

Private Internet Access is my suggestion given their support of EFF, FFTF, Creative Commons, as well as the greater FOSS community.

Full disclosure: I work at Private Internet Access.

Can second PIA. Used it for years now and its solid. And I'm not affiliated in any way with it, just a happy customer

Thirded, used for years and have never had a problem with their service.

Can second this. I switched to NordVPN because of their design (PIA needs a branding and design overhaul), but really regret it as PIA was fast, stable, generally great.

Also use it, no real complaints. Can't speak for the software since I'm manually connecting. Speeds are decent, but can be slow.

I've been a PIA customer for a year and a half with no complaints. I'm not a VPN power user by any means but it's been solid for me the whole time and haven't had any reason to look elsewhere.

Been using PIA for a few years now and it's pretty fantastic. I leave it on 24/7 and only sometimes notice peak hour speed drops.

Background: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29

Best recommendation: Get a cheap server from LowEndBox and setup OpenVPN (or, hopefully in 2019, WireGuard) for your less tech-oriented friends.

That'll only get you a single IP in a single country though.

If you need rotating IP addresses, in various jurisdictions, why would you even be looking at VPN services? Just use Tor.

The use case there is: I need to fool this one site's geo restrictions into thinking that I'm from this particular country, but only for the time it takes me to get what I need from this site. Tor doesn't really serve this type of requirement.

I like Encrypt.me (Formally cloak). https://encrypt.me/

They don't pretend a VPN is going to keep you anonymous (https://encrypt.me/what-is-vpn/) but rather pitch their platform as a way to stay protected while at coffeeshops and public networks.

Mullvad. Read through their FAQ to understand exactly what kind of company they are. Great company ethos, plenty of international servers to choose from, wireguard integration, multiple crypto payment options... pretty nice.

These guys are great: https://encrypt.me

I used them when I was freelancing and working on public wifi. Super easy to use and reliable.

Heads-up: Encrypt.me logs your IP address when connecting!

Which they are very upfront about, and if you are only using it to connect over public wifi I don’t see any big issues with it.

I've found NordVPN very good and easy to use: https://nordvpn.com/

Note that the Linux support is "meh" (no client software)

It's still possible to setup by copy pasting a config file and downloading openvpn- but not as convenient as the regular application.

https://github.com/Chadsr/NordVPN-NetworkManager or https://github.com/jotyGill/openpyn-nordvpn

For what it's worth, I regret switching to NordVPN. It's unstable for me (it can drop out during peak times and I regularly have to switch server), their Mac software isn't great (struggles to reconnect on wake, poor UI, Electron app), I get random European endpoints despite always choosing the UK (meaning I can't use iPlayer which is region locked to the UK), and it's very slow compared to my previous provider (I have an 80Mb connection and NordVPN is definitely the limiting factor, probably cutting my speed by 30%).

I was with Private Internet Access before and will either switch back to them or possibly to TunnelBear in the near future I think. The last 6 months with NordVPN has been pretty terrible.

I agree. NordVPN is nice most of the time (at least for me), but its UI is clunky and incredibly slow when searching for a particular server. I've also been experiencing major connection issues over the past few months, so that's been annoying to say the least.

They charged my card long after I'd already canceled and changed providers. Eventually got a refund, but I shouldn't have needed one in the first place.

Agree and price with 3 year deal is unbeatable https://nordvpn.com/special/specialdeal

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