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Comment by dotBen | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, the best thing to do is own a US based VPS (esp a lowendbox - google it) and proxy your connection when abroad.

It's worth proxying your connection securely via SSH/OpenVPN when you are on open wifi anyway.

A cheap $5/month VPS is something every hacker should have in their toolkit.

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Wow, lowendbox is a fantastic resource! I've been looking for a cheap UK VPN endpoint for years, and lowendbox has plenty of options. Thanks for the link.

Just be careful with anything that looks "too good to be true", unless you are not going to be adversely effected if the provider disappears suddenly (eg you are proxying rather than web serving). Don't pay for a year upfront unless we're talking <$10

A lot of these 'companies' are literally run by 15 year olds - which is fine (I used to run a web host way back in the day when I was 16), but don't expect A1 business practices.

Frankly, you can't beat a $19/month Linode out of their London datacenter.

I'm already a happy Linode customer, but for my particular needs, $19/mo is much too expensive for a UK VPN endpoint. I'm looking for something more like prgmr.com prices (also a happy customer of theirs; they just don't happen to have any colo in the UK).

Thanks to lowendbox, I found quickvps.co.uk, which, with a 60% discount offer, offers a 256MB Xen VPS for £3/mo. They appear to be competent so far, even though they did e-mail me my root and web UI passwords :\ Anyway, if it goes poorly, I'm out less than a lunch.

Thanks again for the link!

Yes the standard management systems most of these VPS providers run (SolusVM, etc) keep the passwords in plaintext which is why I usually give a simple throw-away password and then reset it to something secure when I gain access.

Also just be careful what you put on the drive as the provider has full access to the drive and I don't trust these cheap providers as much as I would Linode.

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