I’ve been trying out ProtonVPN’s premium service (free 7-day trial after signing up for ProtonMail) and I must say it’s pretty quick. Only a few complaints (no access to Vudu overseas, apparently) but nothing major. Does anyone else here use the paid VPN service and find it worth the money?
Public cloud instance + WireGuard
If you are not paying for a VPN service, there is usually some data gathering unless the service has a paid tier. With VPN, it’s important to consider server locations, speed, privacy (what data gathering is in place), company’s location etc. ProtonVPN along with Mullvad are some of the best options in the market IMHO. Of course, it depends on your threat model, but these two are worth exploring as a start.
Did you ever try http://ip-vanish.com/ ?? I never had problems that certain stuff didn’t work with them.
A paid VPN is what I use for testing google results in different areas, streaming content that is geolocked (although amazon has been being a prick about that), and for when I’m travelling and using public wifi.
If I didn’t have to test google results in different areas (seo shit) and didn’t care about BBC shows, I would still be using my own VPN server hosted either at home or in the cloud.
If you are just concerned about privacy from your ISP/Public Wifi, I’d do it yourself. It is cheaper and works better since you aren’t sharing the same VPN server with a bunch of script kiddies launching LOIC (or whatever the kids are doing nowadays).
I suggest heading over to /r/VPN and checking out the links in their sidebar.
There’s a comparison spreadsheet that tells you what’s what from all the major VPN providers.
I personally prefer PIA.
I was questioning this as well 
I’ve been using Nordvpn for 3 years now and they’ve been excellent, fast and reliable. They have 4000 servers Vs Proton’s 112 and keep no log files. Their apps are top notch, very intuitive and very reliable with many useful features (including a 3rd party kill switch in the event of connection loss).
What do you mean, “public cloud instance”?
Never heard of Mullvad.
ProtonMail seems to be the goto for privacy-interested individuals which is why I’m giving it a go (I’m decreasing my ‘presence’ on the network as my political views become more mature) and how I came into a 7-day free trial of their top-tier VPN service (which I also use on my phone, though I’m unsure how useful that is to be honest). After 10 years of being very vocal and public, it may be a too little-too late thing, but now that I have a daughter I also have her to consider.
ProtonVPN has two-three paid tiers iirc and depending on what I hear could be willing to reduce expenses in one area to pay for the better-tier of what Proton offers (to enable streaming and the use of Tor for added security).
I have never heard of them, I’ll check them out. Thank you for the recommendation.
Thanks, I’ll look into that.
And they hid a major Databreach for months. And are not the most transparent. Who knows if we would ever have gotten to know about the Finland incident without PR being forced to open up about it.
Basically a VM running on a public Cloud provider’s infrastructure. There are several companies that offer it, the most notable are Amazon AWS (EC2), Amazon AWS (Lightsail), Microsoft Azure (Virtual Machines), Google Cloud Platform (Compute Engine), IBM Cloud (Virtual Server), DigitalOcean (Droplets), Linode (Linodes), and Vultr (Cloud Compute).
/u/trpfl was suggesting that you deploy your own wireguard VPN server. That gives you more control over the VPN connection and maybe better performance but you lose the number of server locations you get with a consumer VPN service and you won’t get unlimited data transfer on any of the cloud platforms I’ve mentioned earlier. Some of them charge by the GB and some have a data cap with a fixed overage rate. And you’ll definitely have issues with content that restricts access from proxies (like Netflix) because most of them blacklist cloud and data center IP ranges as well (unless you use a small and obscure cloud provider, which may not be very trustworthy).
If you want something easier, I think Mullvad or AirVPN or ExpressVPN are great options. You also probably won’t get better privacy with public cloud providers because even though you don’t have to deal with your information passed to a VPN provider, you’re still handing it over to that cloud provider, which typically aren’t privacy focused and probably have basic logging in place (but probably won’t sell your data).
= a Linux VM on a public cloud provider (Vultr, DigitalOcean, etc.). $5/month, plus/minus a few bucks.
Follow one of the many install/hardening guides for a WireGuard setup, then connect your clients, or run a WireGuard-compatible gateway (UBNT EdgeRouter, pfSense, Linux box, etc.) and you’re set. 
Actually, Mullvad is very popular as it’s open source and supports WireGuard making it fairly popular on r/privacy for example.
ProtonVPN as well as their mail service are really solid. Good selection of servers, based in Switzerland and solid speeds. Also, they have Tor servers as you mentioned and their Secure Core functionality. Their clients are solid or you can use OpenVPN. They do not support WireGuard at the moment and are not open source although they should be publishing an audit in 2020 hopefully.
Just throwing it out there, you might want to use Tor for privacy over a VPN.
A VPN will keep you private from your ISP, but Tor will keep you private from pretty much everyone.
To add to that, you shouldn’t combine Tor with a paid VPN because it makes it a lot easier to trace back to its source. In case you want to learn more, here is a blog post on the subject. https://write.privacytools.io/my-thoughts-on-security/slicing-onions-part-2-onion-recipes-vpn-not-required
Also:
(I’m decreasing my ‘presence’ on the network as my political views become more mature)
Lol, I’ve noticed that my “advertisers profile” has gone from extreme left wing to centrist conservative over the past decade. Unfortunately now I get hit by “LIBERALS ARE TRYING TO SILENCE ME, GIVE ME MONEY TO KEEP TRUTH ALIVE, HERE THEY ARE TRASHING OUR PRINTING PRESS THIS MORNING” ads all the fucking time.
To be fair now, it wasn’t a major databreach.
It was a data breach that they hid for months. That is very true. But calling it “major” is a stretch.
All good points /u/cree340. You lose ease-of-use, multi-homing and pickup a data cap by rolling your own. Turnkey stuff would be the way to go if any/all of those are deal-breakers.