Which VPN do you use?

[megabyteme]

I believe this will become VERY important to US users as ISPs begin monitoring all customer's traffic. I'm quite uncertain who to use, if they are reliably secure, and who is easiest to setup accounts/ software with.

Please help with any VPN knowledge you have. I know next to nothing about them. Feel free to talk "down" to me as this is something I have never done before.


Thanks!

EDIT- I will specifically be using this with BT, so that is a must-have feature.

[manker]

A VPN won't stop your ISP seeing what you're downloading. It will only stop your peers and the websites you visit seeing your actual IP address.

[anon]

Which VPN do you use?

None.

That's obviously not the kind of answer you're looking for, but you'll find this article useful, if slightly dated.

A VPN won't stop your ISP seeing what you're downloading.

It actually should, thanks to encryption. Although middleman attacks are possible.

[manker]

A VPN won't stop your ISP seeing what you're downloading.

It actually should, thanks to encryption. Although middleman attacks are possible.

I was wondering about something similar to do with hashes.

There's a thing on private trackers to do with not bothering to .rar content now since it's obsolete and causes storage issues for people who seed on the same machine as they view. But I was thinking that if a movie or whatever was .rar'd along with some 3kb text file, it would change the hash and make it slip by any ISP checks so long as it had a password for encryption.

Seems like a simple enough solution but it should work, yes?

[megabyteme]

None.

That's obviously not the kind of answer you're looking for, but you'll find this article useful, if slightly dated.

A VPN won't stop your ISP seeing what you're downloading.

It actually should, thanks to encryption. Although middleman attacks are possible.

I have read that article (found your link in another thread), and found it a good start, but a lot can change in a year. As for the VPN being attacked by my ISP, I doubt they would do that from the start. I believe they will be picking the easiest ducks. I just don't want to be one of them...

[anon]

But I was thinking that if a movie or whatever was .rar'd along with some 3kb text file, it would change the hash and make it slip by any ISP checks so long as it had a password for encryption.

Seems like a simple enough solution but it should work, yes?

Just recreating the same torrent with a different piece size would yield a new info_hash, no text file required.

I couldn't tell how this might fare in reality, because it would probably depend on what criteria providers use to flag a certain hash as belonging to copyrighted stuff, if they use this system at all. They could just add the new one to the blacklist making it an endless "game".

[megabyteme]

I can't wait to see what hackers do to the leading companies it this coup d'état of the free internet. :popcorn:

[Artemis]

Back to your original question although not for BT the one I have 'used' in the past is StrongVPN specifically to enable the protected content on Kindle Fire devices in my country. It works perfectly for this application. The other option (which is cheaper) is to configure a small VPS with a Linux distro like fedora and install OpenVPN. If you are interested in this option I can give you some pointers.

[A]

I really like this thread: https://filesharingtalk.com/threads/448069-I-need-a-VPN Good stuff in there.

[megabyteme]

Back to your original question although not for BT the one I have 'used' in the past is StrongVPN specifically to enable the protected content on Kindle Fire devices in my country. It works perfectly for this application. The other option (which is cheaper) is to configure a small VPS with a Linux distro like fedora and install OpenVPN. If you are interested in this option I can give you some pointers.

I looked into OpenVPN yesterday, and the site mainly focuses on driving people to their "Private Tunnel" service. The site specifically goes into anti-BT/filesharing in its TOS section.

I am leaning towards the following security precautions since the free internet has fallen in the US:

Change my DNS to OpenDNS (in order to keep my searches out of the hands of Concast) cost: Free
Find a trustworthy VPN service (to keep my BT activities private with the sole exclusion of bandwidth) cost: ~$10 per month
Connect to sites via HTTPS (I already installed an extension for Chrome) cost: free
Limit the number of items I am sharing at one time (this way, I will not receive numerous notices at one time if detected) cost: free
Limit the amount of time I seed (DMCA notices I have received before all showed how long I seeded, as well as how much data I uploaded- seemingly to eliminate the "OOPS, I accidentally downloaded something I didn't mean to" argument.) cost: free

I wish this was not necessary, but I am not about to exit the world's greatest library. Adopting these few precautions at a cost of ~$10 per month is very reasonable for the access available to us. I am hoping this blows up, goes to court and is declared as what it is- wiretapping and (once they start collecting out-of court "settlements") racketeering.

Amerika: Land of the free*

*As long as you do EXACTLY as the corporations tell you what to do.