I'm shopping for a VPN providers, and really struggling to find a detailed and non-biased breakdown of the various options. A number of years ago, I recall finding an extremely detailed VPN comparison spreadsheet that had 30+ columns, which were contained criteria by which the VPNs were judged both quantitatively and qualitatively. I can no longer find that table, so I suspect it has been removed, but I did find the less-comprehensive table, below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/edit?usp=sharing
In the thread posted by the owner of this sheet, a few commenters pointed out that the highest rated VPN providers in this table just happen to be the ones that advertise most aggressively and are well-known for buying positive reviews from tech blogs, which are pretty clearly designed to be misleading. I too am suspicious that this table can't be trusted, however I really am not knowledgeable about VPNs, so before passing judgement, I figured I should consult those who know more about it. I also recognize that a strong marketing team and an excellent product aren't mutually exclusive, however I think that generally applies more in markets where economies of scale play a significant role, as does mass-adoption, which fuels loads of well-informed, independent research (ex: the car market and phone market.) That obviously isn't the case with the VPN markets... but I'm still sorta holding out hope.
If I end up excluding this table, I'm not sure where to turn at that point. Shilling is extremely pervasive in the VPN market, so it's tough to trust any one person or any one thread. It's also well established that a few of the large VPNs actually own a number of review blogs, so I can't really trust blogs either.
I guess I'm here hoping to be told that my suspicions about this table are unfounded, and / or that another excellent, unbiased resource for comparative VPN info exists. Any help would be appreciated!
I host my own on a vps where I pay $15 per year
So what if the vps hands your data to the feds and the feds are like hey, why was your vps torrenting Paul blart mall cop 2?
What do you say to that?
That’s my only concern with hosting my own vps.
That 100% correct, literally no different than just using your ISP at that point, zero control over the hardware and no ability to control the IP.
you think they cant issue a warrant against any VPN hosts?
Sure they could, but you are a a bit more anonymous and don’t keeps logs, then there may be nothing to hand over.
Hosting your own vps directly ties internet traffic to you. They can see your ip is part of a swarm and see who owns it. If it’s owned by some guy, they can press you. If it’s owned by a company with a legal team, it’s much more difficult.
NGL doing something like that is WAY above my pay grade anyway, but I still am interested in the answer to this question, because I've seen the advice to take the 'self-operated' approach before.
It’s not too difficult to setup, but I think people don’t realize that even if your not breaking the law, you may still have to deal with charges and going to court for years before your found innocent. All while dealing with the stress of a jury possibly finding you guilty.
Then you have prosecutors offering plea deals, so then you think do I stand my ground and risk X years in jail? Or do I plead guilty and just go to jail for 2 years?
Good point. This sounds like a vote against going the vps route, am I correct?
And in doing so you have a never ending list of logs that you can't control. Fine if you only want to hide location, but useless other than that. 1 LE request and every log will be in there hands in 5mins.
I host the server, I dont have to keep any logs and I can pay with moneros
@authed @grubbylarry I also used to host my own openvpn and wireshark servers on a vps. But later I shut them down. The thing is, vps will definitely trade your data if Gov pressure is high. Remember, data protecting is not their first priority being a VPS provider, their main priority is giving infrastructure to customers. But with vpn providers, their core business model is based on protecting users privacy (I am not saying all really do that, but many are bound to follow swiss laws or such)
@authed @grubbylarry Proton VPN free plan is even better than hosting vpn on a vps, because they atleast can claim of being protected by the Swiss law, so atleast they can protect your data by that. Whereas you can't even sue your vps if they share your data with anybody, because nobody knows if they really did it. Additionally the problem of dedicated ip is there always.
Do you really think that a VPN provider would resist requests from the US gov?
@authed I think they will resist more than a VPS would
thats your opinion... I think they will honor a warrant any day... I.E.: Plz enable logs and let me look at them
@authed All I wanna say is, you are free to use anything, it's your life, have fun.
Honoring a warrant doesn't mean much, when there's nothing to turn over than a connection IP and some timestamps, vs all the traffic that could be there otherwise. That's been proven multiple times with zero knowledge VPN providers.
They can't make them starting doing things there system isn't made to do just because they want them to, not how warrants work. Again, been proven many times over at this point. Knowing that you connected at a time, exited from a shared IP, with a bunch of nonsense in the middle keeps you pretty safe. That ignoring that's even harder when that zero knowledge provider is ina country like Switzerland where it takes VERY direct reasons to have a judge approve a warrant in the first place, dragnets aren't allowed there, and even then, nothing useful comes back.
A country like Russia wouldn't kick back info, but their spying is at China level, so you've already lost there.
Where tf did you find a vps for 1.25$/month???
I cant find the website right now, but you can some similarly priced vps here: https://lowendbox.com/