VPN's Yea or Nay .... and if Yea, which one?

[Kenna]

Bitdefender VPN. Its up and running now. At times access to certain sites is complicated. Use it mostly for $$ transactions.

 

[Huskerguy]

I use NORD and is the only one I have used. I have upgraded it from the basic package. Customer service is nearly impossible. You will need to figure some things out for yourself. It doesn't use terms that I am familiar with that you are expected to know so you can set things up. You cannot speak with anyone, not even a chat, you have to email. They ALWAYS ask for a screen shot, first thing.

How do you know if any of them actually work? How do you measure it? We have it on a desktop, laptop and 2 phones. We do have the upgrade to a dedicated server.

The one problem I had was signing up for YouTube TV. YT thought I was in some far flung land by my IP addy. I turned it off to get my free trial of YT TV and it worked fine. I hope there is something better than NORD.

 

[oldbrownhat]

...Customer service is nearly impossible. You will need to figure some things out for yourself. It doesn't use terms that I am familiar with that you are expected to know so you can set things up. You cannot speak with anyone...

In other words, a truly modern, up-to-date online provider! I only recall having to contact them once, two or three years ago and I think they were helpful, but that was then...

Yes, VPN's can sometimes mess with some connections. I've sometimes got a blunt message from Reddit, but it seems to depend on which server I'm connected to.

As to knowing how well they work, I think you just have to go on recommendations from Wirecutter, Tom's Guide etc. You can check what server you are connected to from What's My IP Address.

(BTW I notice Onomea had already provided the Wirecutter info before I posted it)

@swsig, re Safari Relay. It's a Mac only browser, so AFAIK only available on that platform. I use Firefox as my main browser because it has a lot more extensions for privacy.

And as regards privacy, you can check your online profile with EFF's Panopticlick Browser test. I just checked mine, which looks pretty good:

And before anyone suspects otherwise, I'm no internet privacy geek/nerd/expert. I know just enough to sometimes look knowledgeable