VPN Suggestions please

I use PIA (Private Internet Access) www.privateinternetaccess.com - the client is user friendly and the price is fair (approx. $45 a year when I signed up)

You get given a proxy login to setup any torrent programs you use and can use the client on up to 5 devices at once.

Here is an article where lifehacker explains it.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-completely-anonymize-your-bittorrent-traffic-wit-5863380

 

No complaints about the speed at all, I'm on TPG ADSL 2+ and the fastest speed I'd gotten before using PIA was 1.7mb/s - after setting up the proxy I've had torrents coming down at 1.65mb/s .

Browsing speed is slightly slower depending on where I set my location to, ie I chose Melbourne and the speed wasn't affected noticeably - but when I chose Germany the speed dropped and pages took 2-3 seconds more to load.

 

Just reread the initial post and thought I would add some more info re: VPNs- anonymity, feds seeing what you're downloading.

First up your connection always goes first via your isp proxy - what a vpn does is encrypt your your comms to the vpn provider - all your isp can see is encrypted traffic going to one site - the vpn. so very little meaningful 'metadata' logged at the isp servers. BUT if the spooks were sus of you, then they can always bust in and decrypt your traffic, or put the hard word on the vpn provider to cough up details. the latter is unlikely (with countries like the netherlands i guess) but possible all the same. unless they dont have to keep logs in the country the vpn is hosting in

The following is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network


VPNs cannot make online connections completely anonymous, but they can usually increase privacy and security.[7] To prevent disclosure of private information, VPNs typically allow only authenticated remote access and make use of encryption techniques. VPNs provide security by the use of tunneling protocols and often through procedures such as encryption. The VPN security model provides:

• Confidentiality such that even if the network traffic is sniffed at the packet level (see network sniffer and Deep packet inspection), an attacker would only see encrypted data
• Sender authentication to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the VPN
• Message integrity to detect any instances of tampering with transmitted messages

And below is taken from http://lifehacker.com/how-do-i-know-if-my-vpn-is-trustworthy-508866499


If security is all you're concerned with, and you have a VPN provided to you by your school or company, you're already set. In fact, almost any VPN will cover you from the security angle, because you're only really concerned about protecting your activity from prying eyes, presumably on the same network that you're on—like a hotel, coffee shop, or airport's free Wi-Fi. Of course, you still need to make sure that your VPN provider isn't just sniffing your traffic themselves and making themselves the security issue, but we'll get to that in a moment.


If privacy is your concern, you have more to consider. Privacy-minded VPN users have to trust that their provider isn't watching what they're doing or willing to roll over and hand off their activity, logs, and personal data to whoever comes calling with a fancy-looking letter written in legalese. They also have to worry about what information the VPN provider themselves are keeping, and whether that information can be turned against them, sold to third parties, used for marketing, or just kept forever just in case someone comes calling. In either case, all it takes to either allay your fears or warn you off of a VPN provider is a little research.

Don't fall for the geography trap. Some people swear only by VPN providers outside their country for privacy. They're convinced that their local laws are privacy unfriendly, or that a provider in their country can be manipulated by other companies, legal wrangling, or law enforcement, and they'll just roll over and hand off whatever private data they have on their users. Trust us: geography won't save you. Living under the assumption that because a VPN provider is in another country it's immune to your local laws or will defend you when pressured is a false sense of security.
Both law enforcement and private industry groups can exert authority and pressure anywhere in the world they choose, and in most cases they'll get the results they want if they push hard enough. Otherwise, they'll just pressure the government in that jurisdiction to act on their behalf. Put simply: Don't assume that because you live in the US and you use a VPN provider in The Netherlands that you're immune from the law, or that a VPN provider in your own country wouldn't fight harder for your privacy than one overseas. In some cases this is true, but logging, privacy policies, and the general philosophy of the company are generally more important than physical location.


Keep this in mind - You can't run, can't hide, you just elude by obfuscation