VPN suggestions

[Cenuel]

Hi all

I currently have nordvpn and am thinking about switching. I would like to have split tunneling available to avoid Wikipedia ip blocks and because I think lack of split tunneling is responsible for some trouble I have with connecting to my printer. Nordvpn doesn’t seem to offer split tunnels in its Mint program. I was curious whether folks here had any suggestions on what service to switch to. I am in my preliminary stages of researching options.

Thanks!

[Bobb24]

For your reading list
https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technol ... iew-sites/

[Samarian Sunset]

Hi all

I currently have nordvpn and am thinking about switching. I would like to have split tunneling available to avoid Wikipedia ip blocks and because I think lack of split tunneling is responsible for some trouble I have with connecting to my printer. Nordvpn doesn’t seem to offer split tunnels in its Mint program. I was curious whether folks here had any suggestions on what service to switch to. I am in my preliminary stages of researching options.

Thanks!

Ask for VPN suggestions and you'll get a lot of them! When I decided to use a VPN, I researched them. But to tell the truth a lot of it comes down to what you want a VPN for and what you believe to be important.

So I'll just say after a lot of thinking I went with: PIA Private Internet Access, they're a sponsor of Mint.

They have a really nice and easy to use client interface, I suggest downloading it from their site as a deb file as the client GUI in the software manager is older (at least it is for Mint 19x).
They have a no logging policy and they've been asked twice in court to supply log records of one of the customers being investigated, they didn't supply logs to the court as they didn't have them.
The price is about as low as you can get.
There's a Killswitch, that works well.
You can easily chose which servers/countries you want to connect to.
My internet speeds haven't changed as they have a lot of servers around the world.
Probably some more reasons why I went with them that I can't think of right now. Oh wait, yes they have split tunneling.

No I don't work for them, ha! I'm just real happy with them.

[AZgl1800]

PIA Private Internet Access, is my preferred company also, why?
they have 10gByte speed Servers and guarantee you won't be slowed down,
provided you choose a server physically close to you.

for Dedicated IP Address, which is what I would want.

[Cenuel]

This all sounds like a good avenue to look into. I will take a gander at the link and at the website of PIA. Thanks all.

[murray]

For your reading list
https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technol ... iew-sites/

Ha! I always thought that those VPN "review" websites looked fishy. Same as those sites that tell you how to watch various things (eg live sports, etc) and push a particular VPN at the same time. They all have an agenda, either they're really owned by the VPN and therefore actually pushing their own product or they belong to some affiliate program and are receiving payments for each user they push towards the VPN service. I wouldn't trust any company that works this way.

[AndyMH]

PIA Private Internet Access, is my preferred company also, why?

Also a PIA user.

[legacypowers]

depending on your needs Mullvad VPN, the cool part is that you can mail in money and it don't require extensive identification.
Personally i have set my own Wireguard VPN.

[rossdv8]

This thread is getting a bit oldish now, but the Split Tunnelling thing is bound to come up again some time.
For easy Split Tunnelling setup, I'd recommend Private Internet Access.

I've been using PIA for quite a few years., I also have Pure VPN, NordVPN, VPNSecure and at least one other because that's part of what I did for a living for a long time. I still play with some of the others (hence my quick and dirty GUI for Nord last week), but I always and up back at PIA.
There are a couple of things I'm not happy about with PIA, but the things I like most are its reliability, and the ease of use.
Installing the PIA App into Mint used to be easy - but now it is easier than falling off a log.
Just download and run a shell script. The app notifies you every time it has been updated, and that is done regularly.

Enabling / disabling is a simple click on a big round button. The App interface is accessed by clicking on a system tray icon in the Panel, which also shows you by its colour whether you are connected (Green) or disconnected (white).
When the App is open, about half way down it says where you are connected to. Clicking there opens a list of available access points and their current PING in ms.

The Settings menu is accessed via 3 vertical dots in the top right corner.
The Settings menu offers an extensive range of options, including the choice of OpenVPN or Wireguard, your choice of DNS resolvers, Inetrnet Kill Switch and a thing called PIA MACE (blocks known malware and spam sites - on a list that seems to be kept up to date).

For a small monthly fee you can add a Dedicated IP address, and Split Tunnel is very easy to set up, with a point and click configuration.
There's even Multi-Hop available on your connection, which seems to me like a mini Tor, although I haen't checked that out.

It would have to be the simplest VPN of all those I've tried - and while I used to boast that it didn't seem to impact on speed much, I notice recently that I am only getting around 300Mbps on speed test, which is about a third of what I used to get using PIA, so something has changed there.

Their Pricing has always been ok too, considering what you get. Every now ans again they do a promotion and some excellent deals can be found. I scored a long term plan for only a few dollars (AUD) a month, but even at their normal prices I would go with them any time.

Actually I just checked as I am writing this. Normally they are (in $AUD):
$13.99/mth on a monthly plan.
$4.67/mth on a One Year plan
$2.79/mth on a 3 Year Plan - (Which is about 50c a month cheaper than my plan cost me 7 years ago).

[SueS]

I too have used PIA for a while. I've noticed that they are no longer a sponsor of Linux Mint. That's disappointing, but not a deal breaker. I wonder if it's a result of PIA being purchased by Kape Technologies.

[rossdv8]

A NEWER UPDATE on PIA VPN and AMAZON

The Split Tunnelling method I posted below worked for a while.
Now, a couple of days later - it seems to be BLOCKED across the board !!

Just advising this in case anyone has reread the post and tried it !!!

However, I'll leave the post in case anyone wants to know how to set up 'Split Tunnelling' in the PIA Linux App..







**************************************************






Just a Post here for anyone who has PIA as their VPN, and Amazon Prime (and probably any other streaming service that doesn;t like VPNs)

I just discovered that Amazon Prime will now let me in as long as I use Split Tunnelling to bypass the VPN for that address.
Open Settings in the PIA App
Click Protocols and if you are using WireGuard, SWITCH to OpenVPN

I have the Transport as UDP. and had to swap Encryption down to AES 128.
(You may or might not have to change the last 2 details, but will most likely need to go OpenVPN).

Go down to Split Tunnel
Click + Add IP Address
Add each of the IP Addresses for Amazon Prime Video in your country - and possibly other countries you might need.

I had a cow of a time trying to find the IP Address for Amazon Prime Video, until I remembered we have some tools. I tried traceroute and ping, but the one that worked best was nslookup (yeah - I can be a little slow sometimes - I blame old-timers disease)

So for me in a Terminal I typed:
nslookup primevideo.com

and I got:
65.8.39.54
65.8.39.62
65.8.39.127
65.8.39.67

Then I typed:
nslookup primevideo.com.au

And I got:
94.199.146.85

I entered those IP Addresses one at a time, disconnected the VPN (using the button on the App) and reconnected. - And I am now watching my Amazon Prime Content, while I have my VPN active for everything else.

This might not be the 'right way' to do it, but so far it is working.

My Netflix and Dizzyplace don;t seem to have a drama with streaming - but a couple of commercial TV stations On-Demand content bog down, so I might see if it works there too.

Anyway - A thumbs up again for the ease of use of the PIA App in Mint

[Windows2LinuxNoob]

Pay for cloud computer service and install VPN server on that. There are many OpenVPN scripts out there that are super-easy to run... If split tunneling is what OP is after, OpenVPN supports this I believe - according to web search. I personally have never set up split tunnel before so cannot comment on this.

Some routers come installed with VPN client software installed. If you wanted to not have to install any client SW on anything (or everything) on your network, this is the way to go. Pay for the cloud computer service, install the server there, then configure the router's VPN client to connect with your remote (cloud) server. Your local network is oblivious to the external connection being connected to a VPN server. You can access all local devices like normal, and when internet requests are made all this traffic is encrypted. Not sure why you would need split tunneling if you had this network configuration...

[markz]

Mozilla Firefox has Browsec add-on, seems to work good, I was using Proton VPN free version on Linux Mint 20.3 Una but it messed up my internet connection when I wanted my own ip, my internet would only work with proton free vpn when vpn was on.

[Windows2LinuxNoob]

Reasons for using a VPN:
- mask IP address
- access remote network
- geo access

I'm sure someone can think of more - I am only but one person...

In a nutshell, accessing one machine/device via encrypted channel that one should hopefully "trust" to protect their privacy. If privacy was my concern, I wouldn't want to have to use identifiable means to get access to that remote entity. Using a CC to get a subscription is right-off-the-bat giving the "answer" who one is. Just depends how secure someone needs to be - and what one may decide to do with a VPN connection like it could be some sort of internet super power or something.

[rossdv8]

U P D A T E: re PIA vs NORD for VPN

Just some observations after a few weeks playing with Nord and PIA.

PIA has a really neat App that just 'works'. It has a system tray icon and it is dead easy to tell at a glance whether it is running.
Split Tunnelling is really easy to set up using the steps I walked through in an earlier post on this thread.
Most things are just a simple click to enable or disable - EXCEPT for the Internet Kill Switch, which disconnects you from the Internet any time either your VPN just drops, or you forgot to start it or turned it OFF for some reason.

HOWEVER
There's a bug in the PIA Linux App that affects some Mint users (it is well known and a pain to fix).
If you Shut OFF the Internet Kill Switch, and you have had certain other things configured in the PIA App (even if you have set everything back to Default) - you may find, as I have several times now, that the Kill switch is still working.

The only way to fix it is to contact PIA on their Live Chat (which is not a huge deal because it operates 24/7) and follow their guidance to fix some config issues.

This hasn't been a problem for me in the past, but I have got an Amazon Prime account now that comes with a whole heap of movies included. And guess which VPN only works 'sometimes' with Amazon Prime Video.
Even Split Tunnelling is hit and miss (More Miss than Hit).

So, Back to NORD.
Nord is a pain on Linux because while they advertise a Linux App, after you install it, you discover it is a Terminal App.
There are about a dozen foolscap pages of commands that can be typed into the Terminal.
(Actuall- there's a page of them - and they are all explained in the help file)
It is ok, I suppose.
The most important are:
nordvpn status - to find out of you are connected
nordvpn login - to open a Firefox page to enter your login details
nordvpn connect - to connect to the VPN
nordvpn disconnect - to disconnect
nordvpn logout - to log out
nordvpn status - to be sure, to be sure

I think I posted the code for a quick and dirty GUI that makes that part easier - but there's NO INDICATOR icon to show whether you are connected.

I'm going to make a new post for the GUI just for anyone that doesn't like constantly typing stuff into a terminal.
I'll whack a link into this post when I've done it.

I still haven't written a GUI to select from a list of Server Locations yet.
And Split Tunnelling is still NOT an Option in Nord VPN for Linux.

The Good News though:
So far, Nord VPN has worked really well with streaming sites including Amazon Prime. No idea why, but just about every time I end up with a WARNING on PIA VPN, I can simply disconnect PIA and connect to NORD, and streaming works.

I hope I haven't just jinxed it for myself

[Maxwell-J]

has anyone tried out https://riseup.net/en/vpn ?

[Maxwell-J]

no one ?

[dissectiongirl]

been using mullvad for a while, hasn't disappointed!