VPN's

[clogs]

I'm using *ex pat vpn* at the mo, next month or so for renewal.......
it's just getting worse and they won't do anything about it........

any recomends please.......remember I'm not in the UK........

 

[benhen31]

Windscribe. They have a free 15gb tier to try it out. Very good and simple to use.
https://windscribe.com/yo/np62mly0 (my referral URL which just gives me little more data if you do choose to sign up using it)

 

[DeanH]

Out of curiosity what is the reasoning behind the VPN. Think I saw on another thread you're in Crete - do they restrict access to certain things?

 

[Dee J]

Out of curiosity what is the reasoning behind the VPN. Think I saw on another thread you're in Crete - do they restrict access to certain things?

Television streaming services often have a geographic lock to control access to services for licence and copyright reasons. UK folk living outside the UK often use a vpn to give access to BBC Iplayer etc, same applies to French folk living outside l'hexagone watching french TV.

 

[Stuartgb100]

Windscribe. They have a free 15gb tier to try it out. Very good and simple to use.
https://windscribe.com/yo/np62mly0 (my referral URL which just gives me little more data if you do choose to sign up using it)

I use Express VPN here in France. Very happy with them. Excellent customer service etc.

 

[derek.gibb]

Hi, I have used ExpressVPN in the past and found it to work well. As stuartgb100 said, the customer service was excellent when I needed it. They do a rolling 1 month contract, which is nice (annually is cheaper of course) if you just want to try it out.

 

[trvlr]

BitdefenderVPN works fine for me.

 

[paulrbarnard]

ExpressVPN is terrible stay away from it.

Actually it’s very good but too many users will killl my bandwidth.

 

[Owd Jockey]

Switched from NordVPN to Surfshark, wish I had'nt, although cheaper, more difficult to set up and gives irritating little freezes, every now and then. Will go back back to Nord when my current SurfShark subscription runs out.

 

[Bristol_Rob]

I have experience with a few.

Express VPN is excellent with great speed. But you do pay for what you get.

Bitdefender VPN is my current excellent VPN. It just works.

Nord VPN I used for 6 months in a paid service was horrendous. I can't express how poorly that service was.
If you take no other advice - avoid NORDVPN.

 

[Myfordman]

Can anyone please explain in simple terms what advantage a VPN brings to a uk resident. Ok its hides my IP address but ive got nothing to hide from and my router has a firewall built in. Thanks

 

[TomGW]

Can anyone please explain in simple terms what advantage a VPN brings to a uk resident. Ok its hides my IP address but ive got nothing to hide from and my router has a firewall built in. Thanks

Very simply, it allows a UK resident to watch TV from another country. For example, it allowed my wife’s cousin (from NZ) watch the All Blacks vs Argentina match on Saturday in our house in Northern Ireland.

 

[Spectric]

Using a VPN to put you in the states does bring up some great searches on woodworking and interiors that dont come up normally.

 

[MikeJhn]

Never understood anyone paying to watch the TV, I use a Freesat Humax box in the UK and in France when I had a house there.

 

[Myfordman]

Ok conscientious objector to all sport and certainly dont want to watch any foreign tv.
Obviously i dont know what searches that i miss out on with a uk ip address but seem to find a varied diet of youtube etc to keep me entertained and educated most evenings when the wifes choice of uk tv is dismal.

Ive seen claims for improved security in terms of people finding my location but google only resolves my ip address to the nearest town. No one has knocked on my door saying they found me online. My address is on company’s house website and has to be publicly available.

I dont feel that a vpn is for me.

 

[Agent_zed]

Ok conscientious objector to all sport and certainly dont want to watch any foreign tv.
Obviously i dont know what searches that i miss out on with a uk ip address but seem to find a varied diet of youtube etc to keep me entertained and educated most evenings when the wifes choice of uk tv is dismal.

Ive seen claims for improved security in terms of people finding my location but google only resolves my ip address to the nearest town. No one has knocked on my door saying they found me online. My address is on company’s house website and has to be publicly available.

I dont feel that a vpn is for me.

You are correct that you don't need one for what you are doing. It can help protect you if you want to use public wifi but generally speaking it's best not to connect to a random wifi spot to do a bit of banking.

Opera web browser actually has a free vpn built in. You just have to turn it on for each tab you want to secure. Although you can't choose the country with the free version so no good for pretending to be in a certain region.

If you want to hide your IP address from a website there are other free tools called proxy servers like anonymouse.org and hidemyass.com/proxy which basically open the website on their server so the website doesn't see you.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Ive seen claims for improved security in terms of people finding my location but google only resolves my ip address to the nearest town. No one has knocked on my door saying they found me online.

It's your on line identity you're hiding not your physical location.

 

[Mike Pirs]

Hi all. I've been using NordVPN for quite some time and it's quite enough for small needs. Although I have heard not very good reviews about him. But if you need it for a serious project or for a longer period of time than watching a movie, you need to use proxy servers (website). It all depends on your needs and don't forget about safety.

 

[pgrbff]

I find Express VPN terrible where I am. I'm right on the edge of the Freesat footprint so that is OK. But not all the channels.

 

[nickds1]

If you want to see what can be determined just from you connecting via a browser to a site, have a look at https://whoer.net/

It will show you what can be determined from your connection.

Then access it over a VPN. Quite enlightening. Try different VPNs - Not all VPNs are the same. Try different browsers too.

There are subtle ways a site can use to detect whether a VPN is being used or not - the BBC are quite good at that, as are many others.

As mentioned above, unless you're using a decent VPN, NEVER use public WiFi for anything even remotely sensitive, such as banking etc. - it's really easy to set up a fake WiFi access point to temp folk to connect to that so that your data can be intercepted and stolen.

I don't use a commercial VPN provider as they can harvest your DNS and other data - you can create your own private VPN for very little money if you want.

On the subject of DNS, many DNS providers collect your DNS request information and even over a VPN, it can sometimes be tied back to you. It's easy to use a non-logging DNS, e.g. Cloudflare. Your traffic to the resolver should also be encrypted - you should look for DoH, DoT or DNSCrypt support.
For ultimate (but slower) secure resolution, use "unbound" locally with the above protocols.