Welcome @FloCola
Thanks for sharing your experience.
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- For many years I have used Cyberghost VPN. However, I find that between Apple’s Private Relay and Hide My Email features in Monterey I have little need for a VPN per se. Both Private Relay and Hide My Email are unobtrusive and have no noticeable impact on network performance.
- My primary concern is privacy but I do have the occasional need to get around a content blocker.
- I use Cyberghost because I got a one-time good deal on a lifetime license when they were a startup operation, which by now has amortized to a few cents per month.
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- NordVPN
- Side step content blocking
- Pretty good. My day to day work is VPN-free. I move to VPN for access to European content.
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OpenVPN.
To give my daughter access to the home network when she leaves to college.
Decent, but it’s limited to letting her tunnel into the home to login to the server here. We’ll see how well it works once she doesn’t have dad managing it for her.
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- PIA (Private Internet Access)
- Reason: Privacy & Content Blocks
- Excellent experience
- privateinternetaccess dot com
I tried BitDefenderVPN, ExpressVPN and NordVPN a year ago when my first 3-year PIA subscription expired. I wanted to update my personal experience with the most popular alternatives so I could better advise clients/family/friends.
I found both ExpressVPN and NordVPN to be very poor experiences compared to PIA - shockingly fiddly and confusing setup/configuration on Windows, Android but less so on iOS and Mac.
Finally, family, friends and clients who complained about their experiences with other VPNs have been much happier since switching to PIA - from elderly retirees in their 70s and 80s to new parents in their 20s and 30s.
PIA doesn’t negatively impact my regular internet usage and download speeds are excellent compared to when the VPN is turned off.
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• Proton VPN
• Security & getting around location blocks
• 9/10 been pretty faultless for the last 2 years I’ve had it, will probably stick with it when term ends. Support are very quick to offer help if you need it.
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When traveling (hotel or other people’s Wifi), I use IPVanish VPN. I have a lifetime subscription. I have it on MacBooks (Pro and Air), iPhones, and iPads.
It seems to work well in the places visited in the U.S. Didn’t have much luck abroad.
The question I have is do any of these VPNs protect your password(s), say, if you visit a banking site? I generally do NOT visit my bank or credit card sites when traveling, but occasionally I have had the need. Does a VPN protect this?
Thanks,
Bryan
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PIA, Private Internet Access. Serves me well. I avoid a lot of ads and tracking.
Regards, Paul.
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OpenVPN on my Synology NAS
Security reasons
10 of 10
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Your password is already reasonably well protected since banking sites use HTTPS. The VPN just adds one more layer of encryption.
In my opinion, the risk for passwords and other data does not come from person in the middle attacks but from badly managed sites. It’s much more efficient to attack those then trying to steal passwords one by one with pitm attacks.
Also you might want to use 2 factor authentication with your bancs, if possible. Simple passwords are not very secure anymore.
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Mullvad VPN, especially for adblocking on my phone and for public Wi-Fi. Seems reliable, and setting up a Wireguard connection is almost instant.
I previously used TunnelBear. Nice friendly website and VPN client, but getting connected could be fiddly. At the time they offered only OpenVPN; I don’t know whether that’s changed in the meantime.
I also used to use a corporate network for which Cisco AnyConnect was the default client. This is horrible, and I recommend Shimo as a replacement.
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any particular reason related to DEVONthink you are exploring this?
I’m a university-based researcher (astronomy & statistics) and I use some remote supercomputing resources in my research. For about a year or so I used a supercomputer hosted by NCSA @ UIUC. They required users to use Cisco AnyConnect. I absolutely hated it. The interface is not great, but the main problem is how intrusive it is. It installs in a way that autolaunches an obtrusive app on login, with no way to turn off autolaunch, not even via System Prefs (lots of complaints about this online, with no response from Cisco for years). I only occasionally used NCSA, so having to deal with this every time I booted up was a nuisance (that reminded me how poorly Cisco products are designed every time I logged in). It also installed a companion app (I forget the name—sorry, my memory is dime on the details of this particular problem) that ran in the background and wasn’t strictly necessary but caused connection bugs that took quite a while to identify and sort out (by simply removing the offending, unnecessary app).
When that project got moved to a more friendly non-NCSA host system, I couldn’t remove Cisco AnyConnect fast enough. I’m just baffled that a company with Cisco’s resources could release such a 3rd-rate product. Perhaps under the hood it offers greater security, and for institutions that need that protection, the painful implementation is an acceptable cost. But from an end-user perspective, it’s a disaster.
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Even though it’s a small sample, seeing who’s up to what, the reasons why, and the general experience. Also, since Bonjour doesn’t run over VPN, just wondering how many people may be affected.
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Encrypt.me. It is bundled with eero+ and 1Password (offered by eero). Use it when away from home and other safe wi-fi networks. Positive experience. Used TunnelBear before that with no issues.
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As a university-based researcher in the humanities, I access a number of databases and websites that require the university VPN for remote access. Cisco AnyConnect, as @TLoredo mentions, is a rubbish experience, not made any more enjoyable by 2FA via Duo. But it works.
For non-work VPN use cases (mostly privacy when abroad, occasionally privacy from my employer), I’ve gone through a handful over the years: hide.me, TunnelBear, and then most recently Express VPN. They all have their various advantages and disadvantages, but I have noticed that everything is much easier these days than it was even a few years ago. From initial setup to profiles and apps on iOS devices, moving from one provider to another is much less painful than it was.
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You know, I’ve seen this written many times and I am wondering if I am some sort of outlier because I use Mullvad VPN (about 4 months and before that 3 years of Nord) and I exclusively synch with Bonjour and it’s never given me a problem. I generally try to keep the three devices (MBPro, iPhone, iPad) on the same VPN server but it doesn’t always work out that way and I don’t recall having much problem with synch.
Actually today was a big day because I closed enough client files to give me time to rebuild the laptop system. I backed everything up in a few ways (CCC clone of system drive, Time machine BU, Backblaze and I threw ZIPs of every closed Devonthink DB into Dropbox for safety) wiped the system drive and installed a fresh Monterey OS. Reinstalled all the software from scratch (full Adobe suite, Mac AV apps, tons of other stuff) all with 1Password, MullvadVPN, and Devonthink being the first things to get installed and running. Copied the folder of Databases from the Clone to the new Documents folder, open, set up Bonjour, and then for each iOS device sync each database. No problems. This is all on my home network, everything over WIFI. So maybe that’s not hitting the VPN and that’s a level of networking where my knowledge drops to zero.
I wonder what’s going on?
Bonjour requires all devices to be on the same network (much like DHCP). So it might well be that if your Mac and your i*OS devices are all in the same VPN at the same time that Bonjour works.
I guess what @BLUEFROG was referring to was the situation where one device is abroad and connected to the VPN whereas the others b are sitting at home in their different network. In_that_ case, Bonjour will not work.
Also, if your VPN connects to your local network (eg via your router or NAS), Bonjour might work.
Who knows? You could look at the IP addresses on your devices to see if they use the same subnet. And then there are split VPN tunnels that do not send local traffic through the VPN. But nobody except you call know how your network is set up exactly.
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NordVPN.
Especially for Sci-Hub Access.
OK, good service, but some serves recognize a VPN and block all. When i siwitch it off, it works.
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ExpressVPN for use on public WLAN networks and occasionally for “being” in a different country.
ZeroTier for Layer 2 access to my home network
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