New to VPNs. Help with selecting service and questions inside!

[jbrah]

Hello there everyone!

 

I'm new to the world of VPNs and was wondering if someone could advise me as to what service to use. I see great things about Private Internet Access. I've been taking a look at that so far and they even have options to buy access to their service with giftcards (not sure if that's clever or really paranoid).

 

So anyway,

 

• Are logs really "deleted"? Could your ISP or any of the alphabet organizations easily request your data?
• Is it actually practical for the average everyday user to use a VPN?

I'm really just looking for a bit more privacy on the net, but it seems as if these days any efforts we take to be safer are futile.

 

• If you're recommending a service X, why is better to use than Y?

 

Thank you!

 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

VPNs don't completely make you anonymous on the internet, but they sure make it a hell of a lot harder to track you. Unless you're doing some seriously bad stuff, they're good enough. For the most part, ISPs won't know what you're doing, or at least won't know it's you. 

 

Whether it's practical or not depends on if you want to pay or not. Free services still provide privacy, but they tend to increase ping by quite a bit, and can effect DL/UL if they have bandwidth caps. 

 

I personally use the free version of Hotspot shield whenever I'm not doing something that requires a fair bit of bandwidth, such as gaming, streaming and such. For downloading, I keep the VPN on, as it doesn't seem to effect my speeds at all. For P2P traffic, I always have it on, mainly because my ISP throttles P2P traffic. 

 

EDIT: @jbrah Make sure you follow your threads so that you get notifications when you get replies. 

[jbrah]

VPNs don't completely make you anonymous on the internet, but they sure make it a hell of a lot harder to track you. Unless you're doing some seriously bad stuff, they're good enough. For the most part, ISPs won't know what you're doing, or at least won't know it's you. 

 

Whether it's practical or not depends on if you want to pay or not. Free services still provide privacy, but they tend to increase ping by quite a bit, and can effect DL/UL if they have bandwidth caps. 

 

I personally use the free version of Hotspot shield whenever I'm not doing something that requires a fair bit of bandwidth, such as gaming, streaming and such. For downloading, I keep the VPN on, as it doesn't seem to effect my speeds at all. For P2P traffic, I always have it on, mainly because my ISP throttles P2P traffic. 

 

EDIT: @jbrah Make sure you follow your threads so that you get notifications when you get replies. 

Thanks for your reply and the forum tip. I am new here and this was one of my first posts! Is it common practice to quote every reply when responding to it like this one? Just wondering for the sake of notifications. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Thanks for your reply and the forum tip. I am new here and this was one of my first posts! Is it common practice to quote every reply when responding to it like this one? Just wondering for the sake of notifications. 

Yep. That way they get a notification that you replied. A lot of users will reply to a thread, then won't check it again unless they get a notification. 

 

You can also tag users by using the @ symbol before their name (has to be their name exactly). Some names don't tag very well, like ones with spaces. For those you can tag like this:

@[member='Oshino Shinobu'] or @[member='jbrah']