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Viscosity VPN?

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Mitakuye Oyasin said:
Any computer savvy people want to comment on this? I've heard some VPN services are honey pots. Thanks.
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I asked such thing to a savy nerd, and he said that a paid connection is favorable to the free ones.
I tried some free connections and they seem to drop regular or cannot connect, annoying.
It was not viscosity but securitypoint, but they are the clients (programs to connect on-selves with VPN) only, not the connections itself. I think (suppose ?) the weak link is in the connections itself, both quality wise and trust-wise.
So I have tunnelbear now, pay for it, and the connections are wayyyyyy more stable than the free connections I tried before.
 
Mitakuye Oyasin said:
Can anyone either recommend or warn against using Viscosity VPN? Thanks.
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Viscosity is just software that enables you to connect to a VPN if the operating system doesn't support VPNs internally (WinXP and lower). Most current operating systems know how to handle VPNs.

I'm in the US but I still prefer to use non-US based VPNs.

I like AirVPN because they accept BitCoin, aren't US based, don't keep logs and are generally pretty secure and allow for a bit of customization in how you connect.

There are tons of others out there. This is a good article from TorrentFreak where they ask several VPN providers about their practices and their responses. It might help you find a service that is right for you.
 
Thanks guys. The reason I ask is that a VPN named "Hide My Ass" did turn out to be a Honey Pot for official sources. :x Just trying to be careful. Peace.
 
I'm looking for a good VPN, and hope someone might be able to give me some suggestions. I'm fine with paid services in they are in the $5/month or so range. I did a little online research, but am not very computer saavy and didn't find any really good resources. I'd like something that can be used in conjunction with Tor.

Thanks in advance for any help!
 
Continuum said:
I'm looking for a good VPN, and hope someone might be able to give me some suggestions. I'm fine with paid services in they are in the $5/month or so range. I did a little online research, but am not very computer saavy and didn't find any really good resources. I'd like something that can be used in conjunction with Tor.

Thanks in advance for any help!
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I am also looking into that. Basically though I feel like the internet now is just like "The Imitation Game" as far as NSA is concerned. Letting the little fish swim the digital sea so the big fish don't get scared off. With DARPA delving into quantuum computing and AI and all the recent TOR breaking tech it is hard to trust anything is truly anonymous but one can only do there best to protect their privacy. For instance I still use TrueCrypt to store my passwords because I don't think the common hacker can crack it. NSA probably, but at least phishers probably can't especially if PGP is used in conjunction.
 
Yes NSA can probably crack it all, but their "imitation game protocol" is your friend. Nexus level stuff flies under their radar. As you said - it's unavoidable. I guess the deeper you try to avoid it, researching privacy measures etc, the more flags you raise and the closer you will be watched? But then again, what can you do..

Regarding privacy concerns on the nexus and such, it's low level government agencies such as local police you should be worried about. I'd prefer if the police doesn't know who I am bragging with my "I just extracted 5 grams snow white spice, see pics" post, eh? Especially very strict countries that lock you up next to child molesters if they bust you. A VPN helps to protect your traffic from your ISP. So even though the NSA can still hack it, "lower" government agencies cannot.

Then there are the google /facebook etc data collector corpses. They also don't need to know more than they need to know about me. So using the same browser to surf the nexus and use gmail etc is a big no-no for me. (I use a bootable Tails USB).

Finally there is a the getting blackmailed from a blackhat hacker issue. I don't know exactly how this would happen and what the consequences are. Maybe also ID theft etc? But I like to run linux and keep everything updated and safe for good measures.

Anyway, I have research VPN providers quite a bit, and I second MelCat: airVPN is one of the best! i highly recommend them. Use a fake email address and pay with bitcoins.
 
You can build your own gratis VPN with TOR, by telling TOR to only route your traffic thru e.g. Russia or by excluding US / Five eyes nodes. Highly unlikely that the NSA compromises TOR nodes in Russia. Maybe the Russian intelligence knows which sites you are visiting, but why care?

Tor has the ability to let you choose which exit nodes you’d like to use – either by name, fingerprint, or country code. If you have a trusted list of nodes you’d like to use as a whitelist, you can use that, or if you have a list of nodes on a blacklist, it supports that configuration. But for those of us that are attempting to be someone else, specifically someone from a different country, we can use Tor to not only hide our identity, but make it appear to be from a specific geographic location.

Our example here may be an identity where you want to appear like a Ukrainian dissident — when in reality you’re a soccer Mom from Chicago, IL. By setting up a dedicated machine, with a specific Tor configuration, you can make sure that all of your traffic is routed out of an Ukrainian Exit Node.

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Code: 
ExcludeNodes {us},{de},{uk},{gb},{au},{ca},{??}
ExitNodes {ru},{ua},{by},{ec},{th}
StrictNodes 1
 
Clever :thumb_up:

You still need a VPN provider if you want to tunnel your phone's internet traffic though, can't do that with torr. Also tor is slow. No good for streaming /downloading /torrents etc. For 5 bucks/month all your traffic /devices are set with VPN. For increased security, you can then combine your VPN connection with TOR.
 
Got some deeper TORRC config knowledge - maybe interesting for some. The settings even improved the speed, I can now watch Youtube with 200kb/s. :thumb_up:

It excludes nodes in the five eyes regions & uses strict torservers.net exit nodes I trust - you can define your own trustworthy exit nodes from the server pool if you want.

The TOR manual explains the various options:
Code: 
ExcludeNodes {us},{uk},{gb},{au},{ca},{??}
ExcludeExitNodes {??}
ExitNodes 77.247.181.163,77.247.181.162,77.247.181.164,77.247.181.165,109.163.234.7,77.247.181.165,109.163.234.8,109.163.234.5,109.163.234.4,109.163.234.9,109.163.234.2
GeoIPExcludeUnknown 1
HardwareAccel 1
HiddenServiceStatistics 0
StrictNodes 1
UpdateBridgesFromAuthority 1
UseBridges 1

PS: PureVPN: Secure, Reliable and Lightning-Fast VPN Service is very fast and affordable ($2.2 p/m), works with Win10, Linux, Android and I guess OSX, too. You can even pay with Bitcoin and leave no trace, no payment address needed and they are based in HK. Sign up but then close the payment window: get 10% discount - code: DISCOUNT10
 
I noticed that you can speed up TOR dramatically by specifying the exit nodes, now getting 800kb/s. However there's a catch, the fast exit nodes may be controlled by NSA Inc., but it's a good tool for downloading semi-discreet stuff or where you need a different IP.

Code: 
ExitNodes 163.172.194.53,82.220.89.53,178.217.187.39,192.42.116.16,192.42.115.101,77.247.181.163,77.247.181.162,77.247.181.164,77.247.181.165,109.163.234.7,77.247.181.165,109.163.234.8,109.163.234.5,109.163.234.4,109.163.234.9,109.163.234.2
GeoIPExcludeUnknown 1
HardwareAccel 1
HiddenServiceStatistics 0
StrictNodes 1
UpdateBridgesFromAuthority 1

You can get a list of fast exit nodes here: http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/
 
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