VPN / Anonymizers recomendations

[miseaujeu]

Looking for advice on a good VPN that can do a couple of things.

First would be to encrypt/hide torrent activity.

Second would allow me to be assigned a different international IP when I so choose.

suggestions?
-M

 

[HardOne]

I'm not sure if it is what your looking for or not, but friends of mine who need a VPN when traveling (In China and the like) use StrongVPN, and recommend it to anyone needing a VPN.

 

[PeteSampras]

im using hide my ass pro vpn, works well and i can connect my ipad and such. you can also connect your router directly, but mine was too new so there were firmware support for it yet to do that. was $80 for a year but meh worth it so far.

 

[hawthorne]

hidemyass vpn logs everything and delivers it to any LEO on request. You might want to rethink that.

 

[Zero0003]

Here is a free one and this one is good.

https://www.torproject.org/

I've used this for a long time.

 

[StaticX27]

Might be a little off topic, but for things like torrenting, even if you re-route your traffic to the point where your ISP can't see what you're downloading, don't most ISP's catch torrenters by how it's downloaded? Would a VPN actually protect against something like that?

I mostly ask because Japan just passed some pretty heavy anti-piracy legislation, and I'd like to be sure a VPN is gonna protect my ass =P. Cuz at a $200-250k fine and 2 year prison sentence waiting for "oops, that didn't work," I'd like to be a little more educated before I experiment =P.

 

[JimJohnson]

Might be a little off topic, but for things like torrenting, even if you re-route your traffic to the point where your ISP can't see what you're downloading, don't most ISP's catch torrenters by how it's downloaded? Would a VPN actually protect against something like that?

I mostly ask because Japan just passed some pretty heavy anti-piracy legislation, and I'd like to be sure a VPN is gonna protect my ass =P. Cuz at a $200-250k fine and 2 year prison sentence waiting for "oops, that didn't work," I'd like to be a little more educated before I experiment =P.

Unless they packet sniff to see what you are downloading they can not tell to my knowledge. It is not hard to see what IP range torrent sites are on and monitor those. What you connect to is not as private as what you download from my understanding.

 

[Tempest]

Might be a little off topic, but for things like torrenting, even if you re-route your traffic to the point where your ISP can't see what you're downloading, don't most ISP's catch torrenters by how it's downloaded? Would a VPN actually protect against something like that?

I mostly ask because Japan just passed some pretty heavy anti-piracy legislation, and I'd like to be sure a VPN is gonna protect my ass =P. Cuz at a $200-250k fine and 2 year prison sentence waiting for "oops, that didn't work," I'd like to be a little more educated before I experiment =P.

Unless they packet sniff to see what you are downloading they can not tell to my knowledge. It is not hard to see what IP range torrent sites are on and monitor those. What you connect to is not as private as what you download from my understanding.

Plus your ISP doesn't give a fuck what you download and in fact they like that everyone is blowing through 100+GB a month because of torrents since you are going to need a higher plan.

The issues arise when a company like Sony knocks on their door with details about on of their customers using their service for pirated movies and when they are issued with a court order to hand over the details of the offender.

So that fact you are using high downloads might tip your ISP off, but unless there is a law in your country telling the ISP they have to do something about it it won't get you pinched.

 

[StaticX27]

I'm not sure if it is what your looking for or not, but friends of mine who need a VPN when traveling (In China and the like) use StrongVPN, and recommend it to anyone needing a VPN.

BTW, this came from one of StrongVPN's customer service rep people

When connected to the vpn all data is encrypted. We do not monitor anything, like what sites you visit, downloads, etc. When you connect to a bitorrent, all IP's that are part of the "swarm" can be recorded.
That is what the anti-piracy companies do. They record the IP's, look up who owns them and send us the DMCA complaint.
We do not give out your info to the anti-piracy companies. We just notify you as required by law. We are required to take actions on your account, and we do not recommend that you run torrent software while on our service.
Multiple DMCA offenses will result in suspension, or even cancellation of your account.

So if you are looking for a VPN, maybe just ask em first if torrenting is cool =P

 

[rob]

Torrent as a protocol is not prohibited. There are many legitimate software distributions that use it (like WoW and many linux distros).

If you use it to download pirated software, then that is illegal. It is no different than using FTP or HTTP or any other protocol, though.

Also, I wouldn't recommend using TOR. That does mask who you are, but it doesn't mask what you are doing. People can sniff your traffic.