VPN info required....newbie

[Pib]

 

Fastest VPNs based on daily testing

https://proprivacy.com/vpn/comparison/fastest-vpn-services

 

A few website talking "Best VPNs for 2020"....about a gazillion such sites and new ones everyday since it geared to advertising....and the websites are always changing their VPN recommendations.  Only listing 3 such websites...google is your friend when looking for sites that recommend/rate/review VPNs....just google something along the lines of "best VPN.   Take all of such website recommendations/review with a big grain of salt because of advertising/sponsorship/affiliation they may have with numerous VPN companies.  And just being an expensive VPN (i.e., monthly/annual premium) does not mean the service is any better/much better than a much lower cost VPN. 

https://restoreprivacy.com/best-vpn/

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/best-vpn

https://www.cnet.com/news/best-vpn-services-2020-directory/

 

 

 

 

 

[Kenny202]

20 hours ago, rwill said:

I use Surfshark.  It works good and is cheap.  $48 for 2 years.  Unlimited devices and you can pick what server to connect through. They also have a free search engine you can use that does not track you.

https://surfshark.com/

 

If you need to get an antivirus program Bitdefender comes with a VPN.  The free one that comes with it has limited usage of 200mb/day.  Unlimited costs an additional $49/year.

https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/total-security.html

Decided to go with Surfshark. Has good legit reviews and good price. Loaded the app on smartphone and Smart Tv. Connected and running. Do I need to do anything else ie:

activate it with google / samsung browsers or other apps or just the app running in the background does it all?

 

Other thing is I noticed in one of the settings it can make your GPS the same location as the VPN server. I left that one ticked (default) and I tried Food panda, Grab (Food delivery apps that use your GPS location), Google maps etc and doesn't seem to have effected my GPS? Whats that about?

 

The automatic server country is Thailand. Should I leave it as that or select somewhere out of country? I heard someone say Germany very fast

[simon henry]

FastestVPN is designed with 100% security and that’s the main focus of the brand. The easy setup and power to unblock geo-restrictions makes it the best VPN for firestick. The configuration is super easy because it has a dedicated Firestick VPN app that users can easily install. Anyone looking for the VPN download for firestick can download FastestVPN.

[Kenny202]

Well after a day with VPN mixed feelings. Does seem to slow things down greatly at times. Have tried Germany and Switzerland servers. Now trying Singapore seems to be a bit more consistent. Several apps don't seem to be working through the VPN, my email on computer not synching with phone email although this seems to have corrected itself. The good thing is you can route certain apps directly and not through the VPN connection. Netflix wouldn't work using the VPN so I connected it direct and no problem. Did come across a problem on my Macbook pro (older model) where unless you have the very latest OS, Surfshark is incompatible. They do have a manual connection solution which seems to work ok but there are no features like selecting which apps go through the VPN and which don't. And I have stopped receiving Thai / Australian pop ups and now receiving swiss advertisements on some websites lol. I'll persevere with it but well may be its just not worth the trouble. What bothers me is the whole VPN industry seems to be as scammy and nefarious as the actual scammers / intrusive websites / info collection sites etc we are trying to avoid. Just google VPN providers or reviews. Obviously the reviews by the companies themselves thinly masked. Even had a few PM's and replies to this thread which look strongly like veiled advertisements for their own products.

[Pib]

Most reviews (honest ones which can be hard to fine) usually give Surfshark a thumbs down for streaming as apparently their servers get blocked much more by various streaming services in comparison to most other VPNs.

 

Slow down in speeds when using a VPN connection is quite common when connecting to VPN servers far away like between Thailand and US, Europe, etc.  Slow down may not be a lot when connecting to a nearby VPN servier.  A lot of VPNs reviews tend to focus on VPN speeds when connected to nearby servers....in the same country.   

 

Reviews of VPNs, in print and youtube video, can be all over the map.  Some reviews make a VPN sound like it's an absolutely awesome VPN service and the next review rates it as a so-so or bad VPN service  because of the reviewer's testing methods/servers tested to (which might not have been good testing), personal viewpoint regarding what a VPN service and app should do/look like, whether they are receiving compensation for the review, etc.  

 

[Pib]

Kenny202,

   Wonder if you would mind doing a couple of speedtests to Surfshark's "Houston Texas" VPN server and include the time of day "Thailand time" test(s) was done.  I've been interested in Surfshark for a while but some reviews have held me back from signing up as reviews can be disingenuous/faulty....getting harder every day to place a lot of trust in VPN reviews.  However, most reviews give Surfshark a thumbs-up except maybe for video streaming to some paid content streaming sites.  Thanks.

 

Pib

[Kenny202]

One annoying bi product I have found using the VPN and connecting to different countries (sometimes one connection slow or I use a different country to access programs back home) Is that it keeps getting my hotmail account locked out because of "unusual activity". My mail would be auto updating every 5 minutes or so and logging on one minute say Australia, and next minute Singapore. Has happened 3 times now where I have had to verify my account, receive SMS and send code etc. I mean I could manually check my emails but don't want to do that. How does everyone else get around this? Surely Im not the only person in the world using a VPN from different areas? I thought Microsoft would have got the message now but still keep locking me out of emails

[Pib]

If you are using a email client like Outlook to do a POP log onto your hotmail acct then you need to stick to using a certain city or two as your logon location.  While you'll probably & initially receive logon challenges like you are receiving now that should go away once you built up a history of logon for those locations/specific IP addresses.  

 

If you allow the VPN just to pick any city/location in a particular country to logon from then the location/IP address is going to be changing significantly each time which may cause email logon challenges/verification.  LIke you just pick the US for VPN location...well, Surfsharf could end up connecting you to any of the cities in the US to make the connection....if your last email logon was from Los Angeles and then the next one from New York City or Miami or Dallas or ????  then you'll probably get an email logon challenge when using a email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

 

Now if you are using a browser or smartphone app to logon then you shouldn't receive those verification challenges as my experience has shown the challenges/verification is much, much less when compared to using a standalone email client POP logon. 

[Kenny202]

1 hour ago, Pib said:

If you are using a email client like Outlook to do a POP log onto your hotmail acct then you need to stick to using a certain city or two as your logon location.  While you'll probably & initially receive logon challenges like you are receiving now that should go away once you built up a history of logon for those locations/specific IP addresses.  

 

If you allow the VPN just to pick any city/location in a particular country to logon from then the location/IP address is going to be changing significantly each time which may cause email logon challenges/verification.  LIke you just pick the US for VPN location...well, Surfsharf could end up connecting you to any of the cities in the US to make the connection....if your last email logon was from Los Angeles and then the next one from New York City or Miami or Dallas or ????  then you'll probably get an email logon challenge when using a email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

 

Now if you are using a browser or smartphone app to logon then you shouldn't receive those verification challenges as my experience has shown the challenges/verification is much, much less when compared to using a standalone email client POP logon. 

Not 100% sure on the terminology but a web logon mail thing no good. I do want to get instant email notifications on some sort of application be it on my smartphone or Mac. I currently have Outlook apps on my phone and Mac. So are you saying for eg if I delete the Outlook app, and just use the generic Samsung mail app to get hotmail, it should be ok? 

Same on the Mac / Notebook?

[Pib]

2 hours ago, Kenny202 said:

Not 100% sure on the terminology but a web logon mail thing no good. I do want to get instant email notifications on some sort of application be it on my smartphone or Mac. I currently have Outlook apps on my phone and Mac. So are you saying for eg if I delete the Outlook app, and just use the generic Samsung mail app to get hotmail, it should be ok? 

Same on the Mac / Notebook?

When I said apps I mean the kind of stuff you download/install from places like Google Play, Chrome Web Store, etc.   These type of apps look and feel like you are really using a browser/viewing a webpage.  Apps like Outlook, GMail, etc.    I use Outlook and Gmail apps on my smartphones.

 

But where I was saying a "....client like Outlook to do a POP logon..." I'm talking about a software package such as Office 365, Office 2019, etc., (these software packages include Outlook) that runs on Windows.  This kind of software which many people  also call apps don't give you the feeling of just being on a webpage, you can use them without an internet connection, etc.   This type of software/app is seen differently by your email service (i.e., hotmail) when logging on....more susceptible to be challenged during an email logon when the email server senses the IP address is from a location you normally don't use....or maybe a country where  lot of malware might originate from.

 

Now on Windows you can also runs an "app" version of Outlook and/or Gmail....it pretty much like using Outlook/Gmail on a smartphone. 

 

As mentioned earlier, when I use GMail/Outlook apps on my smartphones or Windows computers using different VPN locations I don't get logon challenges;  but if I use Outlook software/client from different VPN locations "which I don't have a history of using" then I get challenged. 

 

I would recommend when dealing with email servers and you want to use a VPN connection to pick a couple of cities in the world to logon from and stick with those.  While you may get some initial challenges those will go away after the Outlook/Gmail servers get that recorded as some logon locations you use.   Like I only use Singapore, Seattle, San Francisco, and Houston as VPN servers pretty much for any thing I'm doing on a computer/smartphone.....and of course Thailand with no VPN connection.   

 

Now I'm not using all of these equally; actually I only use two of above VPN location connections very frequently whenever I want to use a VPN connection for some reason....the other two are just backups.  And approximately once a month I will use all four VPN locations to do an email logon (I use multiple email addresses on outlook.com, live.com, and gmail.com) using my Outlook client on Windows just so I can refresh the tracking in those email servers for locations I log on from....this prevents challenges.  But the great bulk of my logons are simply with a Thailand IP address.  So Outlook/Gmail pretty much knows I log on from Thailand, Singapore, San Francisco, Seattle, and/or Houston and I don't get challenged....I did initially but no longer.  

 

In fact, in doing some testing this afternoon made a VPN connection on my smartphone to London and logged onto Outlook/Gmail no problem.  However, but if I had made the London VPN connection from my Windows computer using my Outlook client with POP3 connection I would have probably got challenged.

 

And here's something else that can cause logon challenges even when you have faithfully being using say only one VPN location connection....just for discussion purposes let's say it was Chicago.  Well, if your VPN provider changes the "underlying IP address" for the Chicago VPN....say from 172.xxxx to 75.xxxx, well, you still have a connection to Chicago but the email servers might challenge such a big IP address change, because such big IP address changes don't occur unless the logon is being attempted from a new location and/or someone is possibly try to hack into your acct.

 

What you may want to do if you have a need to be constantly changing VPN locations but also don't want to cause email server challenges is maybe use any "split-tunneling" capability that may be available with your VPN app.  With split-tunneling you can identify which apps will use the VPN connection and those that will not (continue to use your local, non-vpn connection).  Surfshark apparently has such capability.  Such capability may vary depending on whether you are using their app on a computer or smartphone.

https://surfshark.com/features/split-tunneling

 

 

 

 

[Kenny202]

Thanks for such a detailed reply mate. I have a Mac, and I have office / use Outlook for my email program. Not sure if on a Mac you would classify it as an app or a program?

[Pib]

1 hour ago, Kenny202 said:

Thanks for such a detailed reply mate. I have a Mac, and I have office / use Outlook for my email program. Not sure if on a Mac you would classify it as an app or a program?

Sounds like we are talking a program...software....where  you downloaded a BIG installation file...or used a CD-ROM to install the program....and when the installation dust settled you have installed a program(s) of at least a couple hundred megabytes in size.  Kinda going back in history before we had the Google Play type online site where a person downloaded/installed browser extension, small apps that generally make you feel like you are looking at a webpage when using the apps....and you generally need an internet connection to use them.

 

So, when I was talking an Outlook client I was talking a program...and when logging onto your email servers that way the outlook/live/hotmail/gmail servers treat them differently than say using outlook/gmail on your smartphone.  

 

Heck, just a few days ago when the underlying IP address for my Pure VPN service Singapore VPN changed from a 46.XXX series to a 45.XXX series IP address the gmail servers were fine with that but the outlook/live servers were not and challenged the logon when using my Windows Outlook program....but was "not" challenged if using my android smartphone Outlook app while logged onto the Singapore server.    I then had to clear that outlook/live challenge and then I could logon again using my Windows Outlook client.

 

Now this issue would apply to "any" VPN service provider and not just Surfshark.  It's just the email servers sensing a IP address change and/or combined with a certain type of program attempting to logon that triggers the challenge. 

 

 

[mrwebb8825]

you can check actual connection speeds simply by pinging the servers. Ex: if 3 VPN providers have servers in Singapore then ping them to see the speed differences.

[Pib]

50 minutes ago, mrwebb8825 said:

you can check actual connection speeds simply by pinging the servers. Ex: if 3 VPN providers have servers in Singapore then ping them to see the speed differences.

pinging a server just shows the response time....that is, what is the round trip time to say hello to each other.  That does "not" tell you how fast the server is....the bandwidth capability of the server....like can it provide a connection speed of 50Mb or 100Mb or 200Mb...or XXXX.   Two VPN servers could have identical ping times but one server could be much, much faster than the other....one server with a 30ms ping time could be much faster (or slower) than another server with a 30ms ping time.

[Vacuum]

On 2/24/2020 at 7:12 PM, Iron Tongue said:

I also use NordVPN, about $100/3-years.  Just renewed another 3-years.  Use it on multiple, laptops, notepads, cellphones and TVs.

 

You should also give Opera web browser a look, Opera is free, doesn't track you like IE & Safari and has built-in VPN.

Opera VPN keeps your logs and browsing history. Not only that, it also keeps track of your social media profiles once you login to social websites. It's 'free' though.

 

 

[Pib]

As FYI...something I just discovered....you can get a free 7 day free trial period on ExpressVPN if using their Android/iOS app and Firestick devices.   Unfortunately, the free 7 days trial is not available for Windows. 

 

No credit card info needed.....no real signup....just provide an email address and the ExpressVPN app is activated.    Below webpage tells you how to do it....it's easy....it must be as I did it.

https://www.vpnranks.com/free-trial/expressvpn/

 

Then a person can do comparison tests between their VPN app (i.e., Nord, Cyberghost, Torguard, Pure, whoever, etc.)  and the ExpressVPN app....like doing speedtesting to different parts of the world/same speedtest servers within a minute or so of each as you switch connections between VPNs.   See if your VPN beats ExpressVPN which is known for speed.

 

Say do a speedtest to San Francisco...connect to the ExpressVPN SF server....choose a speedtest server...do the test....then disconnect.  Now repeat process using your VPN's app using the same speadtest server.   Today around 4pm Thailand time I compared Pure and Express today in some tests from Bangkok (my residence) to Singapore, San Francisco,  Texas, and Chicago.....Express beat Pure hands down in speed.  Will be doing more tests over the coming days.

 

[calvinsteel]

Numbers of vpn in the market that are offering good features and services. But not every single has provided you the best service on all platforms. So I recommended to get a vpn that offers service like speed, security, anonymity and no log policy.  https://www.purevpn.com/download/firestick-vpn

[paddypower]

On 2/22/2020 at 9:19 PM, freeman01 said:

i like protonVPN, you can use it for free but the free servers can get busy and slow some times. if you pay they have servers everywhere with lightning speed.

the login servers are in switzerland and they don't keep logs, very reputable company for privacy i believe.

agree. been using them (the paid subscription) for the past 2 years. they offer email service as well. My bank in Canada actually insisted that I re-register an new email addess (@protonmail.com) with them, for online banking access to my account. It is encrypted.

[IvorBiggun2]

I recently bought a IPVANISH 3 year account on YABE (anagram) for a fee of approx 80 Baht, just for fun, and it works perfectly. Price now gone up to 100 Baht.