How secure are VPNs?

All VPNs I am aware of are encrypted with a strong encryption scheme. This means any network it goes across between the client and the VPN server will see nothing but encrypted packets.

VPNs are considered secure enough to transfer highly sensitive large company data from ones home or public WiFi hotspot to the company intranet.

What is this "server" running? os x or xp, vista?

Try http://openvpn.net. You can google for openvpn or pptp or other IPsec protocols and applications based on what level of comfort you have in setting up keys and CA certificates and so forth.

I've used it on my FreeBSD based firewall/router (pfSense) to VPN remotely to my home network. I used to use this when using wifi spots and needed to do something sensitive (online banking).

You could even use DD-WRT if you have a linksys WRT router to get openVPN functionality.. However, I've never used that particular feature on when I did use my old linksys.

PPTP is not secure. See here: http://www.schneier.com/pptp-faq.html
If you got important data, don't use it.

As mentioned by another user above, OpenVPN is an excellent choice.

You mean your home computer that you intend to use as a vpn server is a Mac?
If so, just google "openvpn mac os x" and you'll receive plenty of help.

By the way, ISPs are usually very restrictive when it comes to incoming traffic. It's not necessarily a problem, but it's something to bear in mind when your setup doesn't work. The cause may be your ISP is blocking the required ports. There are workarounds. Just read up and don't get frustrated.

As an alternative to a PPTP VPN, there is using PPP over a SSH connection, but that takes some manual configuration to do.

SSH is a very secure protocol and has weathered the years well, but it is nowhere near as transparent and easy to set up as PPTP.

cantthinkofone said:

OpenVPN is for windows tho....correct? I can't find a mac version.

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NO. OpenVPN is Open Source and will run on any platform. They do have a Windows binary because Windows computers don't come with compilers but Macs do come with x-code so you can build from the source.

cantthinkofone said:

OpenVPN is for windows tho....correct? I can't find a mac version.

Click to expand...

Download the source code and compile it yourself. You will need Xcode installed do so though.

Tunnelblick

Cromulent said:

Download the source code and compile it yourself. You will need Xcode installed do so though.

Click to expand...

Or use Tunnelblick (http://code.google.com/p/tunnelblick/). It works well as a client side, and I also use it on a server.