Curious if you people subscribe to a VPN service for travel. I currently only have NextDNS to keep my DNS queries a little more private. With nearly everything using SSL I’m not terribly worried about people intercepting traffic. Plus I don’t have anything to hide aside from credit card numbers, bank logins, etc.
I’ve tried Nordvpn in the past and left (twice) because the peace of mind wasn’t worth the abismal speeds in locations I was traveling to. I don’t have a need to trick Netflix or other services that I’m in the US either. On the rare occasion that a site won’t allow a login outside of the US, I have a VPN back to my apartment that I can use, but the latency is horrendous.
Again, I’m not super worried about privacy beyond a reasonable level for the average person. I do care about preventing places I stay from snooping what I do on the internet (like sites I visit) just because I know that’s fairly easy to do and some people are just uncomfortably nosy. I also vastly prefer NextDNS ad blocking versus the less customizable ones VPN services all seem to have.
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Cybersecurity Expert here. VPN is not really protecting your privacy. It’s actually helping providers to aggregate your information easier. ProtonVPN and Apple Privacy Relay might be an exception. Encryption in public WiFi is also not a issue anymore as long as you don’t set the WiFi as a private WiFi in your network settings. But VPNs help to get more movies on Netflix and for that I recommend NordVPN.
Well first of all, if you’re not hosting your own VPN (ex. with Wireguard) then you’re using a 3rd party VPN which is definitely not private at all (even if they claim they are, you never know).
I use a VPN for banking, stock and crypto trading, accessing various streaming platforms and for privacy/security in public locations. Performance varies depending on local broadband infrastructure, but overall I’m very satisfied.
I was using proton vpn but in Tanzania I couldn’t find a way to make it work. So i moved to surfshark with wireguard protocol. Multi device subscription, good graphics, doesn’t slow down the network too much, and easy configuration. But i’m not an expert.
Not using VPN now since it triggered security flags on my account back then and it was inconvinient. Just make sure you are visiting the right website with the right SSL. If the SSL is different meaning theres traffic snoopping going on a warning in the SSL bar will popup.
I recommend Windscribe. $3/month, no contract, using the build your own plan. They don’t keep logs. It’s certainly not the best, but for generic stuff like privacy or geospoofing, it’s hard to beat. Plus they give you 10 gigs per month as a free user to try it out.
I have nordvpn. Sometimes I use it in airport, for protection. Sometimes because some website don’t like that I log in from a new country, so they don’t let me login. I have this problem a lot with my mailboxes…
Exactly my reasoning for using it. I don’t want to access my financial sites (or even make a CC purchase online) from a coffee shop, airport, or other public place without the extra layer of protection. I’m not concerned with any latency issues, either, as it’s mostly just text/image sites I need to access and am not attempting to stream anything in those situations.
The ability to use some streaming apps (some work, some don’t) is a secondary benefit to me.
It’s also fairly cheap when committing to a 2-year plan.
I agree. It feels a lot like marketing. Pay a few bucks a month for “protection” and many people don’t even know how it works or why they’re really using it.
I’ve certainly had issues with blocked VPN IPs too and it defeats part of the purpose. Already things are blocked in some countries (usually banks or govt) and I don’t want more blocked. This is where the VPN back to my apartment comes in handy as it’s just a normal consumer ISP IP back there.
I haven’t been the biggest fan of their apps either. Too graphical and annoying to navigate. That and I’d have to run it alongside NextDNS to get the ad blocking I like.
