This is what your ISP can see about you

Article courtesy of ESET

 

You are still behind the Authoritarian Kingdom of Britain in terms of privacy invasion. Here any government department can view your internet history without a warrant, and all ISPs have to keep your internet history saved for 12 months. I guarantee that almost no criminals will be stopped by these measures, all it will be used for is harassing citizens for wrongthink rather than stopping actual criminals. They arrested 3,330 people in 2016 for things posted on Twitter and Facebook and its highly likely the number will be much higher this year since they can dig through anything you have posted in the last year. A VPN is almost a necessity here if you have an opinion which dissents from that of the government.

 

So, what about VPN from ISP? Is it safe?

 

As in bought from your ISP?
I would recommend a third party VPN service located in a foreign country (which is what I use)

 

Yes. I would like to invest in VPN from ISP because configuration is NIL at user end. Then again, configuring openVPN is a hassle.
If I use Windows 100% all the time, then Software based VPN will be my choice. When I use 80% Linux and gaming on Win 10.

 

@Vasudev In my opinion paying your ISP for VPN service defies the point of VPN. It becomes more of a proxy server to spoof your location at best.
Configuring VPN might not be that hard though - I use VPN.ac as a VPN provider as I think does @Phoenix and they provide a very nice app that pretty much requires no configuration. Same for Android, can't say anything about Linux

Configuring OpenVPN to work on a router is a terrible experience - I've managed to get it working on DD-WRT and I'm still fighting a losing battle against OpenWRT. Once I'm done with it I will post a guide in the networking forum though.

 

Hmmm.. that means paying 10X is useless, right? I will see if netgear VPN service is of any use on Linux. Android,iOS and windows OS will work fine but not linux.

 

I use VPN.ac as well. They have a Chrome extension, which is awesome because it allows me to bypass my office firewall. It also doesn't take over the entire Internet connection like the app does, so I can maintain full speeds when downloading Steam games and whatnot.

 

@Vasudev If your router supports OVPN configuration files and OpenVPN client that might be a way to go, or not - depends on how fast your internet connection is and if the router is capable fo handling encryption at this speed.
This has an added bonus of covering all of your devices including Smart TVs or NAS servers that can't install VPN themselves.

 

Only PCs and phones/tablets so OVPN could be a wise choice. 10Mbps is too slow for additional encryption.

 

@Vasudev That could be a nice setup assuming Netgear firmware works with OVPN config files and has an OpenVPN client setup (most routers only work as a VPN server).
If it does not work on your stock firmware, don't go OpenWRT route though. You will regret this, the way I am doing now.

 

Fotunately my router is incompatible with OpenWRT or DD-WRT and only one unstable Padawan mod is available because of mediaTek Chip and broadcomm/qualcomm wlan.

 

I still have an account for VPN.AC but since the past 8 months or so, when I do a lot of downloads, the internet stops for a while then resumes messing up my downloads. Their support is not that good and they just give me scripted answers whereas before they would go as far as logging into my PC using TeamViewer to fix any issues. This happens with any protocol BTW, OpenVPN, L2TP, you name it.

Since then, I've been using hide.me

it's night and day faster than VPN.AC with no disconnections.

 

I'd consider switching if they had a browser extension like VPN.ac.