I’ve yet to actually try it, but I know there are a variety of ways to achieve the same goal.

@crazycells this is certainly worth looking at, and a great suggestion - thanks. For people like ourselves, it’s probably easy, but for those looking for something simple, it’s probably outside of their reach owing to setup and maintenance complexity.

However, I will certainly have a look at this for myself. It’s been on my list of investigations for some time but one of those things I never really got any time to look at. Perhaps now that will change!

Hi @phenomlab , I wonder if you had time to have a look at “personal VPN server”…

they offer a free tier too, maybe this was the issue?

No, I purchased the full product - and then asked for a refund after testing it and realising performance was very poor. The free product is restricted to 2 countries (one of which is Japan), which isn’t of any use to me.

However VPN plus servers are only available to Paying customers.

I’m paying monthly now so I’m going to see how it plays out, but like I say so far so good.

I’ve installed mainly on mobile, but so far so good, the whole Proton Plus suite is running well (Mail,VPN, Drive & password manager) which is in beta.

However, it’s ideal for testing purposes at least, and if you already run a VPS, you could easily use some of the compute power for that.

@crazycells this is certainly worth looking at, and a great suggestion - thanks. For people like ourselves, it’s probably easy, but for those looking for something simple, it’s probably outside of their reach owing to setup and maintenance complexity.

However, I will certainly have a look at this for myself. It’s been on my list of investigations for some time but one of those things I never really got any time to look at. Perhaps now that will change!

I was also considering something like this for a while… and would be happy to listen your experience and of course get some help during set up

I think amazon EC2 servers can be used for free for 12 months… and then will probably be very cheap…

https://aws.amazon.com/free/

I think this should be enough, because it is for one person only anyways… what do you think?

However, I will certainly have a look at this for myself. It’s been on my list of investigations for some time but one of those things I never really got any time to look at. Perhaps now that will change!

@JAC I had another issue with Nord again yesterday evening in the sense that it dropped connection and wouldn’t reconnect. I had to kill the app on my phone and relaunch it to get it working again!

Not a great experience.

If you do not need many different country locations at the same time… Instead of buying a VPN… Why do not you get a super cheap server, and then install Wireguard on it? And then use Wireguard apps (mobile or desktop) to use your server as your personal VPN? I believe it will be very secure, private and most importantly fast.

https://www.wireguard.com/

https://github.com/angristan/wireguard-install

Yet to try it on PC, will do this tomorrow and let you know how it gets on.

I don’t have any complaints so far with Proton again, I think it’s going to be a slow process, it’s something I’m paying monthly for instead now so if major red flags crop up then I can exit swiftly .

Not a great experience.

I’m back with Proton now.

It’s the same way that Surfshark (same company effectively) have gone, the VPN has taken a slight backseat for their other newer products I feel.

Glad to hear it’s working for you again though Mark.

Constant disconnects, crashes, etc. I seriously started looking at alternatives.

Then after what seemed like multiple updates, it’s now solid.

You’re welcome to use my Surfshark to test Mark

Anytime pal

https://surfshark.com/what-is-my-ip

https://ipleak.net/

https://ip.me/

https://nordvpn.com/ip-lookup/

https://www.expressvpn.com/what-is-my-ip

https://atlasvpn.com/what-is-my-ip

https://whatismyipaddress.com/

The final showpiece is the ability for Nord to scour the dark web looking for data about you that could have been leaked.

This is a good feature, it’s one that came in handy really when a forum was attacked.

I think realistically Nord & Surfshark are both up there for me. I have subs with them I’ve been testing them back and forth and overall Nord has been the best as you may expect, although Surfshark isn’t that far behind, maybe not so surprising either considering they are effectively under the same umbrella.

I’d say Nord does the basics well - Auto connect works well, it doesn’t fail to connect sometimes like Surfshark does.

I think this is more to do with the kill switch on Surfshark, as it will always connect once you have turned your WiFi off and on again.

You’re welcome to use my Surfshark to test Mark, I actually get faster speeds than Nord sometimes, that’s why they are don’t fall too short behind in the comparison reviews.

For example:

Image credit: cybernews.com

https://cybernews.com/best-vpn/nordvpn-vs-surfshark

Interested to hear how you rate Nord then Mark compared against any other VPN you’ve tried seeing as it’s your go to?

I’ve tried most of the VPN’s out there, and none of them come even close to what Nord has to offer. The cheaper ones have obvious drawbacks such as either selling your data to a third party, or being so slow that it’s virtually unusable.

Nord has the distinct advantage in the sense that it has the most servers available to connect to, offers double VPN, plus the ability to use a VPN and still be connected to the TOR network.

There are also very well written additional features such as secure file sharing between VPN endpoints - for example, I can send a file from my desktop pc to my mobile phone through that same secured channel, and it’s instant. They have even made this specific feature completely free, and open source, meaning that anyone can view the code and contribute to it.

On the flip side, Nord is expensive - as are some of the add-ons - for example, the password manager, which in my view is overpriced when you can use BitWarden on a paid plan for $10 per year. The final showpiece is the ability for Nord to scour the dark web looking for data about you that could have been leaked.

Their latest offering is a service that even removes this leaked data. Very cheap as it’s an introductory offer and I may get this to check it out.