Almost OT: VPN in Canada

English Network/Internet
1

Leap 15.5.

I’m located in Canada and I’m looking for a VPN provider. Did some googling and most reviews recommend nordvpn (and it’s cheap). Some people say, stay away from nordvpn not good enough privacy (i did read about the 2019 breach).

Is nordvpn good enough for most privacies or is there some other one. I live in a building where some people are less than trustworthy when it come to the internet…

Thanks

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I use the paid version of ProtonVPN. But I will be moving to my own VPN server soon. I consider it the most reliable.

PS. About trustworthiness. You can probably assume that all reviews on the Internet are untrustworthy.

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How fast is it? How stable?

Thanks.

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Probably good to read:

VPN providers make money from selling VPN services so I am mot surprised there is quite some “positive news” about VPN’s but it would be good if you can first indicate what it is you are really looking for.

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My situation is that I live in an apartment complex with built-in internet access. And I consider it to be a “semi-hostile” environment.

my computers → my router (openwrt) → their local router → their central router → internet.

The apartment complex company tracks all the internet activities, so I want to encrypt the traffic from my local router → … then use the vpn as a proxy.

I’m already using dns over https.

6

Thanks, interesting scenario. Interesting such a company is allowed to tracks all the internet activities.

I am really wondering what you are thinking about Google, Facebook etc. I am sure they know more about you then the apartment complex company…

I find it always interesting people somehow trust an anonymous person on a forum more then their own search capabilities. Very often answering a question on this forum includes searching for the answer.

In this my search gave me first the “VPN Trust Initiative” but being an industry organization I do not trust that too much. Then I found a government site that refers to the local consumers organization which has a test, that is a good start.

I think the most private option is something like:

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  1. I very rarely use google, I mostly use startpage.com.
  2. I do not use either facebook nor instagram.

I’ve done my own search but often people will give me some information that will direct me toward other things than what I originally thought.

I’m not trying to evade any government agencies, just trying to get more privacy.

1 Like
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Same here, I find the fact that it is owned by System1 and that all money is made by the advertising interesting. That must cover their own operation and buying the search results. Wikipedia has a nice write-up.

If you are really going for Privacy you should also consider Mozilla VPN, not that that is the technical best option but with it you also support Mozilla and that is and organization that actively advocates for privacy.

I think everybody that uses a VPN for privacy should also (or even first) advocate general privacy as a VPN only a very small part of the whole privacy landscape, the way to do that is to support organizations advocating doing that. So another option apart from Mozilla is donating to such an organization and a VPN through one of the other providers.

For your case I would think there must be an organization that advocates for forbidding your apartment complex company and similar to tracks things, are they also monitoring electricity/water usage? Would be interesting to know if there is such an organization in Canada.

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Dream on. The fibre and the apartment routers are owned by Telus (the telco)!

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That is not the kind of organizations I meant, for the Netherlands I know Bits of Freedom, for Europe EDRi.

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Do you think Telus is allowed to tracks any internet activity?

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I know that the “building manager” gets copy of the logs and looks at it. He said so himself.

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@elfroggio I suspect that would probably only be a report on router traffic up and down for each router MAC address. To identify traffic hogs would be my suspicion.

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Yes, if the build manager get anything more that traffic volume I am pretty sure that is not in line with local regulation.

If you suspect it is more than that it would be good if you take action on that. I would start with contacting Telus and asking what is allowed/done and if that is in line with what you hear from the “building manager”. Organisations like I linked earlier can also help.

This is exactly the point I do not like about VPN’s, they are a work-around for the tech-savvy, the way better solution is to fix the system.