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Best VPN for privacy on Mac? (June 2018)

Crunch

Crunch

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 26, 2008
701
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Crazy L.A.
Seeing that a lot of you are developers, I'd love to get a feel for what you guys consider to be a good VPN, and perhaps a little advice as to which VPN providers to avoid.

My primary concern is not movie watching overseas, although that's a nice bonus, my primary focus is on privacy and security, which means those providers who accept cash through the mail and/or something like Starbucks (and the like) gift cards as payment should rank higher on this list, shouldn't it?

I'm tired of taking it month by month and switching around. I'd like to get a longer term subscription and while I appreciate a good deal, for true privacy - should such a thing exist - I'm willing to pay more.

Thanks a bunch! :)
 
Personal Internet Access (PIA) work fine for us and there are usually sale offers. Only caveat is that google will flag you often as a bot when you browse but that will happen with most VPNs function on animosity of not being able to track you hahahah!
 
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IDMah said:
Personal Internet Access (PIA) work fine for us and there are usually sale offers. Only caveat is that google will flag you often as a bot when you browse but that will happen with most VPNs function on animosity of not being able to track you hahahah!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. Funny, I am using PIA right now and the app keeps turning off my OS X app firewall, even though I gave permissions, etc. I don't like that, and yes, I've found that Google search constantly needs to "verify" me with these unrelenting street signs/cars pictures. I expected stuff like this and the service is usually very fast and reliable.

I've read that there are other issues with the PIA app. Are you using the app or setting up the VPN in Settings instead?

Thanks!
 
I use Private Internet Access (commonly called PIA). I find it to be a very fast and reliable service and the price is reasonable.

The primary reason to use a VPN is to prevent your internet provider from monitoring your traffic, and in some cases to allow access to services that are geo-fenced (but these often block VPN-sourced traffic anyway). Down-sides include those horrible, horrible google captchas (seriously, google, f*** you for that!) and problems sending (but not receiving) email.

Note carefully that the use of a VPN means having trust in your VPN instead of your internet provider, because now the VPN provider can see all your traffic instead. Services make promises and some have been "independently audited" or whatever, but who really knows. Don't put too much faith into it.

For stronger anonymity, consider using TOR. But that's very slow, and you have to realize that it's almost impossible to achieve genuine privacy when on-line no matter what you do.
 
I'm using NordVPN with my Mac for travel -- I use it with my phone too whenever I'm on public wifi. I signed up for their 3 year $99 deal. Been using it for a while now - other than overloaded servers now and then (can easily switch to the thousands that aren't) - been working fine for what I need it to.
 
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Crunch said:
Seeing that a lot of you are developers, I'd love to get a feel for what you guys consider to be a good VPN, and perhaps a little advice as to which VPN providers to avoid.
Click to expand...
Have a look here: That One Privacy Site | Detailed VPN Comparison Chart

This is an outstanding and comprehensive evaluation of VPN services out there. Not all VPN's are created equal and you can use this chart to filter and find the one that best suits your needs.
 
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Viscosity is an OpenVPN client, and PIA provides you with the OpenVPN config files you need to make it work. It is seamless, but Viscosity costs to license. The PIA app stinks.
 
Not sure which one to avoid, but ProtonVPN is definitely the one you should look at.
 
You could use VPN Tracker their world connect function would fit the bill. Seems expensive though
 
HenryAZ said:
Viscosity is an OpenVPN client, and PIA provides you with the OpenVPN config files you need to make it work. It is seamless, but Viscosity costs to license. The PIA app stinks.
Click to expand...

TBH, I think Viscosity stinks. I have a license and no longer use it. The support absolutely sucks, the developer completely ignores many questions posted on the Sparklabs forums (and yet answers others). And it still doesn’t have a kill switch after god knows how many years.

Tunnelblick achieves the same thing and what I use now. It’s is free, and because of that at least you wouldn’t feel like you have been ripped off if the developer provided terrible support.

I notice that PIA have recently closed their forums. I think that’s a mistake, you could get good support from fellow users who frankly were more knowledgeable than the average support person. I suspect it was closed because there were also postings that criticised PIA. I used to use PIA, but now use Mullvad.
 
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I've just gone through this, because I've been with PIA for about three years, but lately they suddenly blacklisted the Apple server so I couldn't send email. They've done that once before, their support was atrocious, I mean really really slow and inept. Plus they connect through Ruby, whatever that it it's a system level thing that bugs me. Plus you can't really choose your servers.

I've dumped them and moved to NordVPN and it's like a breath of fresh air. I like that I can used their stand alone installer to connect to their servers using OpenVPN but still use their interface, I'd recommend this rather than downloading their app from the App Store. My email worked perfectly.

Plus with PIA, when I tried to watch a video on the BBC.co.uk, I was not able to get around their geoblocking. Even deleting cookies and signing in from London could not get around it, it somehow still knew where I was. With NordVPN, no problem at all. Same with Macys.com, couldn't connect from Australia, even using US servers with PIA, but no problem with NordVPN.

Plus with Nord, I have a choice of many dozens of servers in Australia or elsewhere instead of one. As well as more specialised servers if necessary like more tuned to P2P, the price is the same as PIA and they are as fast. And the service is absolutely impeccable.

So that's a big recommend for Nord. As for privacy, they do not keep any records and they use their own DNS servers which I can see in the Network pane of prefs, with PIA while they did use their own DNS, it was hard to tell, I had to run a terminal command to check.

As far as payment goes, I'm pretty sure you can pay with bitcoin if you need to.\\

I forgot to add with PIA, I had to continually disconnect my iPhone from the vpn and reconnect to make it work. So I'd say 'hey Siri' and nothing would happen. Nord has none of these problems.

Running the NordVPN installer .pkg set up the OpenVPN invisibly.
 
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I use the Opera browser and it has a free built in VPN. Whenever I'm on public internet that's the only app I use.
 
1252 said:
An excelent comparison, unfortunately not updated for longer time and the vpn providers are updating frequently their services.
Click to expand...
I don't know what to tell you, but on the front page is says "(Data last updated on 6/17/18)". That's pretty recent to me.
 
tresmith said:
I use the Opera browser and it has a free built in VPN. Whenever I'm on public internet that's the only app I use.
Click to expand...

This stuff isn’t free. It costs companies money to provide VPN services, so how do you think they generate revenue? In most cases it’s selling your browsing behaviour, which pretty much defeats the whole idea of a VPN. Opera is owned by a Chinese consortium, hardly the most transparent and open market.
 
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I highly recommend ExpressVPN. Extremely fast and their support is wonderful.
They have a one year subscription deal for USD 99 with 3 units allowed.
Apps for all units, including Mac.
I have never ever had any problem with their service.
 
AirVPN ( https://airvpn.org/ ) is the best out there. I've been a subscriber for years and it is aptly described as:

"AirVPN - The air to breathe the real Internet -- A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship."

Very highly recommended. No limits, supports several simultaneous connections, fast, stable.

I have no affiliation with AirVPN.
 
The first impresions on a very new VPN coding are extremely positive, but for the moment only 2 or 3
providers offer this standard. There is only an Android client and on Mac works only from command line.
https://www.wireguard.com/
 
Crunch said:
My primary concern is not movie watching overseas, although that's a nice bonus, my primary focus is on privacy and security, which means those providers who accept cash through the mail and/or something like Starbucks (and the like) gift cards as payment should rank higher on this list, shouldn't it?
Click to expand...

If your primary concern is privacy and security, you should avoid any VPN that you didn't build yourself. There just isn't any other answer.

When traveling I connect to a VPN hosted in a DMZ on my own network that I built from OpenVPN, using Tunnelblik as the client. If I'm in full paranoid mode I connect to a different VPN instance that I stand up on an Amazon AWS server, then Tor from there into my private Tor entry node. When I'm done I tear down the AWS instance.

If all I need is a geo-shift, I pull up PrivateTunnel, a client written by the team that wrote OpenVPN. Nothing sensitive on that link since I don't own the endpoints.
 
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