Today, I have been unhappy to discover that my VPN provider of six years, Private Internet Access, sponsors polemicists rattling the sabre in favour of an ongoing war. (Because my intent here is not political, I should not say which war.) This does not sit right with my conscience. Moreover, I have learnt that certain communities devoted to online harassment explicitly encourage their users to use PIA, which puts the increasingly frequent network blocks I have suffered into another light. My subscription is paid yearly, with each cycle ending in early August, so I have until the end of July to choose another. Indeed, the decision to pay yearly has been to afford myself the ability to switch without too much difficulty should a provider become unsuitable, as is now the case.
My subscription serves myself alone. As far as my personal VPN usage goes, I should note the following:
- I use the OpenVPN protocol, not Wireguard. Any successor should be compatible with OpenVPN 2·4·7 or otherwise installable, possibly in a functional, older version, in Debian 10.
- I like to switch between a variety of servers, mostly in developed countries: various European countries, Canada, the antipodes, Japan. On rare occasions, it is useful to route traffic through a poor country.
- Among PIA’s features, I have enabled MACE, use PIA’s own DNS and permit LAN for my printer. I do not use port forwarding.
- I do not torrent, and occasional internet radio is my closest approach to streaming.
Beyond the obvious necessity of a no-log policy, which any respectable VPN maintains in any case, I should repeat that, given the circumstances, the next VPN should not be so eager to encourage civilian deaths. A free trial to test compatibility in advance is desirable, but not required. I am eager to anybody you can recommend.
