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Ask Slashdot: Best VPN Service For Australia? 138

Posted by timothy from the funny-you-should-ask-citizen dept.
New submitter frrrp asks, now that "Australia has proceeded on its merry way towards being an absolute nanny/surveillance state," what the best way is for Australians to avoid government snooping. "The Australian public, and media, have been largely asleep on this issue and, by Parliament standards, the speed with which this legislation has been rushed through must be a new record — with both major political parties colluding to force it through and quash any thoughts of amendment to its draconian scope. So the time has come — VPN is no longer a luxury but a necessity. The question is, which VPN service providers are best for us poor folks on the arse end of the planet? I have more or less settled on probably going with Private Internet Access. Can any of the BigBrains on Slashdot enlighten me further on the subject of personal VPN — the kind that provides the full spectrum of service as a naked direct link does?"
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Ask Slashdot: Best VPN Service For Australia? More

Ask Slashdot: Best VPN Service For Australia?

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  • What illegal activities are you so desperate to hide? If you have nothing to hide then you have no problem. If you're surfing kiddy porn then you get what you deserve. If you go to places like Tor or Darknet then be prepared for additional scrutiny of your traffic. I've read some of the oddest, whackiest things about how subtly related information has resulted in law enforcement successfully prosecuting people who think VPN and other obfuscating services will hide their activities on the net.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by c0lo ( 1497653 )

      I've read some of the oddest, whackiest things about how subtly related information has resulted in law enforcement successfully prosecuting people who think VPN and other obfuscating services will hide their activities on the net.

      Can you please share?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Don't use a VPN when updating your Facebook page talking about decapitating generals. Use Tor for that.

      • Method 1: Anything involving physical delivery or cash trails can be stung... "The site can only be accessed via TOR, which masks IP address details that could otherwise be stored by an ISP and associated with a user account. Silk Road trade relies on the virtual currency BitCoin for transactions. Alana Sullivan, acting national of Custom’s cargo and maritime targeting branch, said it monitors Silk Road along with other illicit-drug sites and was aware of the Australian presence on Silk Road as both

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by i-reek ( 1140437 )

          Oh. You are confused.

          Tor != VPN

          "Methods" != Citations

          Happy to clear that up for you

        • Re:The real question is (Score:5, Insightful)

          by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:32AM (#41092141)

          Method 1:...
          Method 2: Information seized from Tor nodes is anonymised but may not be encrypted.
          Method 3: (partly uses method 2)

          Thanks. Now, a personal answer your original question...

          What illegal activities are you so desperate to hide?

          Nothing illegal. But I was born and then grew up for 22 years in one of the Eastern European block under a communist regime. Unless you experience this on your own skin, I reckon you simply cannot understant how profound the everyday life is altered by knowing that a secret police has a file on every citizen and may be tracking what you do at any moment.
          In the present, I can't get rid of the distrust in regards with any king of power, political power especially... So, as long as it is not illegal (is it already?) I will tend to "stick it to the Man" even if I'm not doing anything illegal. I do hope to be dead by natural causes if/when anywhere on this world it will be illegal to have a private life without being asked "what do you have to hide".

          • Hell I live in Australia and I don't like what our inept government is doing and that they will keep their own files on systems maintained by very low paid IT workers and protected by security built by the cheapest bidder. But I don't think that anyone putting data on any computer should have the expectation of privacy simply because there are too many avenues of attack. Ask yourself if the Pentagon, NASA, ASIO, banks and credit card companies can't protect their data what chance do you REALLY think you hav

            • But I don't think that anyone putting data on any computer should have the expectation of privacy simply because there are too many avenues of attack.

              What? The fact that there aren't zero avenues of attack doesn't mean that people should expect the actual government to create laws that make it mandatory to keep information. That just makes the matter worse and expands the government's power.

              Some protection is better than no protection.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by c0lo ( 1497653 )

              But I don't think that anyone putting data on any computer should have the expectation of privacy simply because there are too many avenues of attack.

              This is exactly one reason NOT to save any traffic for any of the citizens unless you have very good reasons to and you are made responsible of what happens with the recorded data. Take for instance the old copper phone lines wiretapping: it was the police that acquired, stored, handled and were responsible for recordings (letting aside the need of a warrant). Because they needed to support the cost for doing all these operations, the police have a good incentive to do it only when necessary.

              Now, with the

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jamesh ( 87723 )

            Nothing illegal. But I was born and then grew up for 22 years in one of the Eastern European block under a communist regime. Unless you experience this on your own skin, I reckon you simply cannot understant how profound the everyday life is altered by knowing that a secret police has a file on every citizen and may be tracking what you do at any moment.
            In the present, I can't get rid of the distrust in regards with any king of power, political power especially... So, as long as it is not illegal (is it already?) I will tend to "stick it to the Man" even if I'm not doing anything illegal. I do hope to be dead by natural causes if/when anywhere on this world it will be illegal to have a private life without being asked "what do you have to hide".

            Go right ahead and use Tor and VPN's and anything else that will protect you. The secret police won't know what you are doing, but the fact that you are using Tor and VPN's to hide what you are doing will indicate that you are up to something and you'll be deleted.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by c0lo ( 1497653 )

              Go right ahead and use Tor and VPN's and anything else that will protect you. The secret police won't know what you are doing, but the fact that you are using Tor and VPN's to hide what you are doing will indicate that you are up to something and you'll be deleted.

              Do the Western countries already run "secret police"? If not, do you want to reach that point?

              Because, let me share you from my experience... if you reach that point, the everyday languages that you'll be using will be derivatives of the Tamarian [wikipedia.org] culture. Yes, that's right, languages at plural: with every person that you trust enough to exchange information, you'll use a different set of metaphors.

              I won't tell you how painful is to reach a point in which you trust enough a person (one will never trust a p

              • I'm sorry you had to live in that environment and I'm sorry that those kinds of environments still exist today. Unfortunately, I believe that "secret police" is EXACTLY the path we are on. I hope it never becomes like what you had to endure. There is already a western routine domestic surveillance culture. Look at London- biggest CCTV network in the world. Police cars which do automatic number plate recognition looking for vehicles that have been used in crimes or by known criminals. Police are even getting

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by c0lo ( 1497653 )

                  Unfortunately, I believe that "secret police" is EXACTLY the path we are on. I hope it never becomes like what you had to endure.

                  Fortunately, Australia have quite a huge outback. If they needed the govt to build the copper phone network first and the NBN now, I guess it won't be too soon to have CCTV cameras in every pub with no beer. Besides, the women glow to much for the CCTV, the men will plunder them and Vegemite either will make your face unrecognisable (disgust grimace) or can be used in small enough quantities (less than for a sandwich) to smear the lenses of CCTV-es. Anyway, cover or not, she'll be apples for a while.

                  There is already a western routine domestic surveillance culture.

                  This is

                  • Until avoiding surveillance is also deemed illegal. Didn't they pass (or try to pass) legislation in the US which declared technology that obscures the source and destination of any electronic communication- ie: Tor, VPN, and wouldn't NAT even fall afoul of this political stupidity?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jamesh ( 87723 )

                Yeah it's a shitty life. What I was referring to is metaphorically walking in a crowd wearing a stocking over your head so people can't see your face and you can be anonymous. People won't recognise you, but you will sure stand out. That's what using Tor does - makes you stand out.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by c0lo ( 1497653 )

                  Yeah it's a shitty life. What I was referring to is metaphorically walking in a crowd wearing a stocking over your head so people can't see your face and you can be anonymous. People won't recognise you, but you will sure stand out. That's what using Tor does - makes you stand out.

                  The defence against that is "to make from wearing a stocking a fashion statement", so that a majority of people will start using Tor/VPN/encryption. In my opinion: it is needed. If the liberties are slowly eroded and one reaches all the way down to the rock-bottom of civil rights loss, one will need to use all sorts of obfuscation just to survive.

                  This is why I say the OP's "Ask slashdot" is relevant, the matter should not be treated lightly (like "what do you have to hide") and sharing the information on ho

                  • Making a stocking a fashion statement is one of the things Pussy Riot kinda did. Didn't work out so well for them. But on the other hand it has made them very popular. I wonder what would happen if we had a band like pussy riot in Australia. I'd imagine probably not the big hoo-haa going on in Russia about it at the moment.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by c0lo ( 1497653 )

                      I wonder what would happen if we had a band like pussy riot in Australia. I'd imagine probably not the big hoo-haa going on in Russia about it at the moment.

                      This is serious, Mum [wikipedia.org]... other times, though and no conflict with the power (looking on how the Assange saga evolves, I tend to agree with you).

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What illegal activities are you so desperate to hide?

      If you have nothing to hide then you have no problem. If you're surfing kiddy porn then you get what you deserve.

      If you go to places like Tor or Darknet then be prepared for additional scrutiny of your traffic. I've read some of the oddest, whackiest things about how subtly related information has resulted in law enforcement successfully prosecuting people who think VPN and other obfuscating services will hide their activities on the net.

      Maybe he just wants to access Hulu and Netflix. Or did you not think of that before going off the rails?

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by bsercombe72 ( 1822782 )
        Why would you need to do that anonymously?

        • You wouldn't, but you would need a US proxy. Not that this has anything to do with this thread.

          • Yes it does. By using VPN to access that service from an unauthorised jurisdiction aren't you then illegally accessing a computer system to which you have no right? Isn't there a pretty stiff penalty for doing that?

            • Uh, no. Violating a ToS is not a criminal act. Especially if you never clicked on it.

              • These Terms of Use, which include our Privacy Policy and End User License Agreement ("EULA") govern your use of the Netflix service, including all features and functionalities, instant streaming, our website and user interfaces, and all content and software associated therewith (the "Netflix service" or "service"). By using, visiting, or browsing the Netflix service, you accept and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use. If you do not agree to these Terms of Use, you should not use the Netflix service, inc

      • The fucking summary says: "to avoid government snooping" and "So the time has come — VPN is no longer a luxury but a necessity". Nothing changed with respect to Hulu and netflix, "the time has come" refers to legislation in Australia about government snooping..

        So you'd have to be pretty damn stupid to think it's just about Hulu and Netflix and not about the exact thing the author said it was about.

        • Threads like conversations have a habit of wandering. Say something constructive instead of being a whining little bitch. Either that or turn your thread filters up a bit.

    • I know TFA is asking what VPN service is best suited for ppl living in Australia

      I happen to travel frequently, from the Americas to Europe to Asia (including Australia/NZ) to Africa, for business, and there are times I desperately need VPN that just works

      I do not need a lot of GBs, but I do need security - which means, VPN which do NOT keep any log of my online activity

      Can anyone recommend VPN services that can work in _any_ country in this world?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by agm ( 467017 )

        It's not a VPN but what about a good old SSH connection toa server you trust (i.e. a server you own)?

      • Re:What's the best VPN that can be use _anywhere_ (Score:5, Informative)

        by unixhero ( 1276774 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:26AM (#41092105)

        I know TFA is asking what VPN service is best suited for ppl living in Australia

        I happen to travel frequently, from the Americas to Europe to Asia (including Australia/NZ) to Africa, for business, and there are times I desperately need VPN that just works

        I do not need a lot of GBs, but I do need security - which means, VPN which do NOT keep any log of my online activity

        Can anyone recommend VPN services that can work in _any_ country in this world?

        I suggest you take a look here. And that goes to all of you: http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/ [torrentfreak.com]

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by tqft ( 619476 )

        why not just buy/rent a server and do it yourself?
        also backups.

      • Buy a Virtual Server from a cheap provider in Europe, install linux on it if you're savvy, and windows if you're not.

        Set it up to be an encrypted VPN endpoint and do all your browsing from there.

        It's about as cheap as getting a VPN service provider, your IP address in destination logs will just look like a standard data center in Europe (rather than a suspicious VPN provider), you get massive data allowances for almost nothing.

        Yes, the AFP can still pressure the foreign virtual server provider to give up lo
        • Oh, and remember to Truecrypt.

          It's all circumstantial until they take your PC, and if you haven't encrypted, that's usually got all the _real_ evidence they need, regardless of your VPN provider.

          • TrueCrypt will not help you. Passwords and decryption keys must be provided if ordered by a magistrate, or you face six months in jail.

            The Australian Cybercrime Act 2001 No. 161, Items 12 and 28 grant police with a magistrate's order the wide-ranging power to require "a specified person to provide any information or assistance that is reasonable and necessary to allow the officer to" access computer data that is "evidential material"; this is understood to include mandatory decryption. Failing to comply car

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by CoolBru ( 798217 )
              You've missed one of TrueCrypt's major features: plausible deniability. You can provide keys that unlock encrypted data on your HD. It may not reveal all the data, but it's not possible for your accuser to prove that it's not.

    • Re:The real question is (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wild_quinine ( 998562 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:04AM (#41092031)

      What illegal activities are you so desperate to hide?... I've read some of the oddest, whackiest things about how subtly related information has resulted in law enforcement successfully prosecuting people who think VPN and other obfuscating services will hide their activities on the net.

      Quite so. Law enforcement, with sufficient motivation to investigate a person, will tend to get the information they need from other sources, using available facts, clues, and investigative logic. It's time consuming and expensive to actually work things out, of course, and they only do it when there's a strong reason to do it. And that is a desirable outcome.

      On the other hand, having my internet history, my transactions and medical information, my relationships, any affairs I may be having, rough financial status, sexual preference and political views directly accessible to who knows who simply because it is politically convenient... That is not acceptable. That is open to abuse. Access to that kind of database will be available to, for example, tabloid reporters for a price, because access to databased information that is widely available to a law enforcement community is always available for a price. And that's NOT ok.

      When you make just a little effort to hide what you are doing, I agree, that you are not anonymous. However, that information then requires effort to obtain. It requires co-ordination, intelligence, time and effort. It's only used when there is a strong reason. And a strong reason, even in this day and age, is usually a good reason.

      In many ways, consistent use of obfuscating technology serves merely to put the warrant back in to the process. We should all be doing it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't have to have "something to hide" if I ask you to respect my privacy - immediately jumping to the conclusion that if I wish my activities to be private they must be illegal is basically assuming I must be guilty of something and therefore need to prove myself innocent...

      do you get all your bills and your postal correspondence sent to you in an envelope?

      what do you have to hide - are you doing something illegal with your electricity - is that why you don't want anyone in the postal service to know wha

      • Innocent until proven guilty is how everything should work. People have jumped on the bandwagon of saying "just because he wants to do stuff anonymously you have automatically assumed he is a criminal". No I didn't. I asked: WHAT is it you want to hide. IF it is a criminal activity THEN you deserve what you get. IF you want to hide (as wild_quinine posted) information about your messy break-up, power bills, medical data and who you're cheating on your wife with- fair enough, that should be your private busi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by awrowe ( 1110817 )

      "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" is a bullshit argument at best, I really wish supposedly intelligent people would stop trotting this shit out. The law and the government is "supposed" to be there to serve the people, not spy on them. This "nothing to hide" bullshit is saying "What's that? You would prefer to have a little privacy? Aha! Now I know you are guilty of something, it's just a matter of catching you!"

    • If you have nothing to hide then you have no problem.

      I wear clothes. I have a lot to hide.

    • I'll be watching you through your window tonight. I'm sure you have nothing to hide because you aren't doing anything illegal, right?

    • The REAL real question is "What are your latency and jurisdictional needs?" Do you need a VPN service that's located outside Australia for legal reasons, or do you want one that's in/near Australia for performance reasons? Is it ok if it's in the US or Europe?

      If you want outside Australia, but relatively nearby, e.g. Hong Kong or Singapore, you'll want to use traceroute to check that your connection to them stays on your side of the Pacific Ocean, as opposed to going from Aus to the US and back across. T

  • You'll have to try (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ccguy ( 1116865 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @04:55AM (#41091987) Homepage
    As someone with experience providing VPNs to Australian customers I can assure that saying "I'm in Australia, what's best for me" is not enough *at all*. At the very least, you should provide your city and ISP.

    Not that you really care about replies obviously since you just wanted to advertise one specific provider :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by i-reek ( 1140437 )

      Not that you really care about replies obviously since you just wanted to advertise one specific provider :-)

      Yeah, it reeks of that to me as well. Helps to decide on what VPN company to avoid though ...

  • Knowing about how Australia likes to regulate home electrical work and even plumbing (I'm talking water, not gas here) I would say the average Australian is either very much asleep or very much likes being cared for by Nanny.

    Not quite what I would expect from the children of pioneering emigrants looking to force a new life...

    • s/force/forge/

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Trracer ( 210292 )

      So you think home electrical work or plumbing should not be regulated? Home electricity, if wired wrong is a serious health/death hazard. As for plumbing it can also be a serious health and environment hazard.

      • I do not think DIY should be regulated beyond requiring that the person doing the work "is competent" (which is what the laws pertaining to UK gas plumbing state[1])

        England and Wales went through this in 2005 with the introduction of "Part P" of the Building Regulations. Basically anyone doing electrical work that is notifiable (most major work) must either be registered or must report the work to the Building Control dept of the local council for a fee. The councils generally don;t know how to handle this

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dwywit ( 1109409 )

          I visit lots of people in their own homes, to fix their computers - that's what I do for a living - house calls to fix your fake antivirus/faulty broadband/BSOD/whatever - so I accept that my sample might be skewed.

          I have yet to meet someone (other than a qualified sparky, and even some of those need the cluebat) who I would trust to wire anything on a 240 volt circuit - even a table lamp. I have no problem with regulation of electrical work. Ditto plumbing - some of my customers can't cope with the

          • Do you mean you have no problem with there being "regulations" (eg IEE/IET wiring regs for the UK, NEC for the USA, VDE etc)?

            Or are you saying you approve of running plumbing and wiring as a closed shop, artisan style?

            The former is necessary - but I have not problems making my wiring IEE 17th compliant. OTOH I detest closed shop practices and I'm surprised and slightly disappointed the Australians put up with it.

            In which case I can see how they might like Nanny watching "the Internet" to keep the bad men aw

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dwywit ( 1109409 )

              I'm saying that the legal requirement to have a qualified electrician do your wiring is a good thing - my own street had a house fire from - can you guess? - dodgy wiring installed by a builder who was too cheap to hire a contractor. Yes, domestic household wiring isn't really that complex - mostly single-phase power and lighting circuits, with plug-in circuit breakers, ECD devices, etc, etc. But even that seems to defeat most people. Perhaps if our education standards were to improve, I could change my opi

    • Re:Maybe they like it that way? (Score:5, Funny)

      by i-reek ( 1140437 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:15AM (#41092079)

      Indeed. In fact, lack of regulation is why the US economy is the envy of the Western world while Australia is experiencing hard economic times and corporate collapse.

      Combine this with our lack of universal healthcare and, well, the place is a mess. Dont even get me started on restricting our freedom to homestyle electrickery implementations ...

      Wait a sec ...

    • Knowing about how Australia likes to regulate home electrical work and even plumbing (I'm talking water, not gas here) I would say the average Australian is either very much asleep or very much likes being cared for by Nanny.

      Not quite what I would expect from the children of pioneering emigrants looking to forge a new life...

      I rest my case...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 1s44c ( 552956 )

      Knowing about how Australia likes to regulate home electrical work and even plumbing (I'm talking water, not gas here)..

      That's not as nuts as it sounds. Large parts of Australia have a very limited amount of water to pump and losing any from leaks is a senseless waste of a vital resource. Sure the householder gets the bill for the excess water usage and maybe a fine too but that doesn't help the rest of the street who don't get anything to drink for the next few months.

      • Don't you think it's more likely that requiring plumbing be done by expensive card carrying professionals will actually cause more leaks not to be fixed as the householder will now have to pay, what, $50-$100 for a plumber to come and fix that dripping tap or overflowing toilet cistern vs a few dollars in parts to do it themselves?

        Besides, how many DIY plumbers would actually leave a leaking joint in place?

  • For what purpose? (Score:3)

    by heypete ( 60671 ) <pete@heypete.com> on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:03AM (#41092021) Homepage

    If it's protection from local snooping (e.g. wifi snoopers at the coffee shop), any provider will be reasonable, though it may be better to get a reasonably local provider for better performance. As you say, Australia is on the arse end of the planet and there's very long links to get to North America or Europe.

    If you want to be able to access geographically-limited sites (e.g. Netflix in the US), again, any provider with endpoints there should be adequate.

    If you want anonymity for Serious Purposes (e.g. whistleblowing, or any other activity where you or your family could be at risk), you'd probably be better off using Tor or some other system that doesn't require user registration. Of course, considerable amounts of services have ended up blocking Tor due to extensive abuse being emitted from their network, but that may be something you're willing to put up with. Pretty much any commercial VPN provider logs basic stuff about users (e.g. which user is assigned what IP address at what time) so they can shut down accounts being used for abuse.

  • Why not running a Tor node/bridge in the cloud? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:04AM (#41092025)

    Using a VPN has the disadvantage of being a single exit point, thus possibly subject to an international warrant to record the traffic (remember? - we are discussing this in relation to a law allowing Australia access to the "Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime", thus the more countries do the same, the less chances to find a VPN service that you can trust to anonymize you).

    So, instead of paying a VPN service, why not running a Tor node or bridge? If you are willing to pay a VPN service, then paying for a "cloud" hosted Tor node/bridge should not be a problem to you (the prices are pretty much comparable, I guess).
    The more people would do this, the less capable would be anyone to track the data traffic of a certain person (unless they control a good majority of the exit nodes and are willing to spend time/effort/money to reconstitute a traffic that may exit randomly thought different nodes).

  • Paranoid much? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zouden ( 232738 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @05:12AM (#41092069)

    Can we have a bit of sanity here? The laws are pretty clear that your online activity can only be recorded if the police specifically ask your ISP. Since most Australians are not under investigation by the police, a VPN is hardly a "a necessity".

    Your language makes it sound like it's the end of the internet as we know it, when the reality is far more mundane.

    • It was here with the Patriot Act. National Security Letters, which were supposed to be used in an emergency to get info on terrorists from third parties. There was no judicial oversight, and those given the NSLs were forbidden from disclosing the fact. After a couple years of the Patriot Act, it was found that the FBI had abused NSLs in tens of thousands of instances. Instead they were used to obtain information on Americans where they couldn't obtain a court-issued search warrant due to flimsy evidence, or

    • Re:Paranoid much? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Thursday August 23, 2012 @06:01AM (#41092291)

      Can we have a bit of sanity here? The laws are pretty clear that your online activity can only be recorded if the police specifically ask your ISP.

      Yes, can we? Why should the police be able to ask the ISP to start recording without a warrant?

      Since most Australians are not under investigation by the police, a VPN is hardly a "a necessity".

      Without being required warrant, the police can ask the ISP to start recording persons that are not under any investigation. I don't know... say a policeman with a personal vendetta against a neighbour? A corrupt policeman on the payroll on NewsCorp or the like? Yes, I know...once the data is recorded, theoretically it requires a warrant to be legally accessed. But I think the anonymous stunt [theaustralian.com.au] demonstrated that, once the data is recorded, it can be made accessible by illegal means.

    • Since most Australians are not under investigation by the police, a VPN is hardly a "a necessity"

      That doesn't mean none or even few are. If Australia was shooting 1 out 4 people as a conservation measure to protect koalas, it would be of no concern for the individual since most people will be spared?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by goon ( 2774 )

      "The laws are pretty clear that your online activity can only be recorded if the police specifically ask your ISP."

      @Zouden since the legislation was signed yesterday have you personally looked at it?

      I haven't but I've scanned through the discussion paper [0], "The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has commenced an inquiry into potential reforms of national security legislation." from the 'Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security'. [1] This legislation is simply a r

  • IPreadator (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    IPreadator
    https://www.ipredator.se/?lang=en [ipredator.se]
    Fixed, inexpensive costs and unlimited bandwidth. About as anonymous as you'll get for something you have to pay real money for.

    The endpoints are somewhere in northern Europe, though exactly where will vary from time to time.

    Has a few problems that are just about fixed. Firstly, it supports only PPTP, which is known to be insecure ( http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/breaking_micros.html [schneier.com] ). That also makes using anything other than Windows a pain. But it

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by frrrp ( 720185 )
      Thanks. You're the only one that actually answered the question. I was working off the list at Torrentfreak. I had Ipredator short listed, but dropped them as they had limited endpoints. I tentatively chose privateinternetaccess and said so, of course got accused for spamming/shilling, but my question was more are they trustworthy? The other two were BTGuard and Torguard. Really thought this was a straightforward question. Should know better than to expect straightforward answers.

  • When I need to use a VPN, mostly either to get around geo-blocking or obfuscate my usage from my ISP, I use a cloud server on either Amazon or Rackspace with OpenVPN.

    Since this isn't too often it means I only pay for the time the cloud server is up. When I'm not using it I delete the server. I've written a script to get the server set up in a couple minutes.

    Of course, you can't trust the endpoint to be secure. The hosts and government (including the Australian government even if the cloud server is locate

    • Would you mind sharing the script?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by i-reek ( 1140437 )

        Sure. It's a bash script written for Debian but is easily adaptable.

        Most of the time taken is transferring the keys.

        I'll ferret out the script for you when I get home from work.

  • Prox Network is pretty good.

  • I'm currently living and working as a software developer here in China, and my livelihood depends on using a VPN. A few things I've learned:

    • On the whole, VPN providers are unreliable and heavily restrict services.
    • It's trivial to set up a VPN using VPS providers.

    I have about 7 different VPN servers that I manage for myself, my main one I use nowadays is on EC2, however I'm running a low cost low bandwidth VPN on DigitalOcean now and have been very happy. There are a huge number of VPS hosts around, pi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jamesh ( 87723 )

      I'm currently living and working as a software developer here in China, and my livelihood depends on using a VPN. A few things I've learned:

      • On the whole, VPN providers are unreliable and heavily restrict services.
      • It's trivial to set up a VPN using VPS providers.

      I have about 7 different VPN servers that I manage for myself, my main one I use nowadays is on EC2, however I'm running a low cost low bandwidth VPN on DigitalOcean now and have been very happy. There are a huge number of VPS hosts around, pick one in a country with a good privacy record and work through that.

      The process is simple: I just chuck an Ubuntu image on the server, install OpenVPN, and zip through a guide on configuring. The process becomes painfully simple to replicate to new servers if you're happy using a single private key for each of your servers, you can just copy the original server configs to a new server and have multiple servers available to you.

      Just out of curiosity... as an Australian with only a vague interest in China I only know about what i hear in the media, which is mostly bad, but isn't running a VPN highly illegal over there?

  • I agree that internet users should try and stop data from being given out freely. Even though I don't really mind if people are snooping through my personal data, others do. I would like to make this sort of change for their sake. But from my experience with Tor, it can be kind of slow. Is it really the best alternative for anonymous internet surfing? Does VPN work any better? It seems if people want to make anonymous internet a viable concept, it will need to come close to matching the speed of browsing wi

  • As an Aussie, your submission is appreciated. I'm really not happy about the added latency this is going to have on my link but this outright disgusting move by the government once again shows their contempt for us.

    I'm hoping to find a solution at a reasonable price that still lets me put through a significant amount of data, ideally something my DSL modem can auto-connect to as well so I don't need to maintain local clients on my workstation(s)

    Hopefully some reasonable services are available out there.

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