could someone please educate me on VPN's?

Let's say I know nothing about them. (pretty close)
Are they fairly easy to use? Are there lots of hoops to jump through to get them up and running? After the initial set up, do they pretty much run in auto pilot?
How do the social media sites react to them?
Will my ISP have a cow?
Will one effect other computers on the home network?
What would I be looking for shopping for one? (so many choices available)

I did do a search here and using ixquick and found a lot of services.. not a lot of education.
thanks in advance

hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP53XSnwGLM enjoy

well.. um.. yeah... it's a start.
should have searched youtube to begin with..

Good video. using a vpn is easy after you done it once.

Most popular VPN providers provider a software which you can install and then connect with it while selecting a country/location. They are extremely easy to setup and running. How social media sites would react depends on the quality of IPs in the VPNs. If the social media sites detects the IPs in the VPN servers as proxy or network sharing devices, they might ban or restrict the IPs. It will only affect your computer and is a sort of proxy you can use as the default Windows server. The only benefit is that you do not need to manually enter proxies and you can connect and disconnect and select locations in a few seconds. Rest it works in all aspects like a single rotating proxy.

so.. using proxies works as well as a VPN but with manual entry?

Go here and start reading! We can "educate" you on specific questions that you might have (although those can be found on Google as well faster than you would wait for someone to respond to you) that usually require experience, but no one is going to write you novels of information you can find easily online in 1 click.

mamaOpal said:

so.. using proxies works as well as a VPN but with manual entry?

Click to expand...

VPN can be manual too if you don't have a software to connect to it.

mamaOpal said:

so.. using proxies works as well as a VPN but with manual entry?

Click to expand...

Yes, it would work as well. But it would keep on wasting more time both in finding proxies and it is nearly impossible to find 100K or so IPs that the popular VPNs provide. If you go for the yearly plans, most VPNs cost less than 7-8 dollars a month and many of them allow multiple computers to be connected. So, that is ultra cheap for the efforts you would otherwise need to do. Some VPNs with lesser IP ranges are even cheaper and cost hardly a few dollars (3-4) a month.

For example, HMA is the most popular one

https://www.hidemyass.com/pricing

It costs less than 5 dollars on annual payment. They also have the largest pool of IP ranges.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-vpn/

PIA is preferred by torrent downloaders etc. as they do not keep access data on their severs IIRC.

There are other VPN services out there too. A couple of them are free too I suppose but be sure that those free IPs would probably be heavily used and so, many social media sites might not accept them.

That's kind of a big question. And there's a lot of info, 90% of which will probably not be of much use to you, at least to begin with. It might be better off starting with: why do you want to know about vpn's? What do you want to achieve?

VPN = Virtual Private Network, VPN's are very different from proxies. You can use VPN using PPTP connection, OpenVPN etc.

Free services=

https://hide.me/en/

http://www.vpnbook.com/

Apricot said:

That's kind of a big question. And there's a lot of info, 90% of which will probably not be of much use to you, at least to begin with. It might be better off starting with: why do you want to know about vpn's? What do you want to achieve?

Click to expand...

I did search out information.. got mostly sales sites which is why I asked here. I figured you folks would know what's a scam.. what's good information and what to avoid.

I would like to be able to access multiple fb/pinterest/twitter accounts without getting banned for arriving from my true isp.

Ok, that's a good place to start. The main aim is to hide your IP address from websites so you don't get banned. You can use a vpn to do this but if it's just http traffic, it's a bit overkill for what you're doing and a proxy would be fine.

On a basic level http proxies are cheapest and easiest but only cloak traffic that starts with http. You don't need to install or do any complicated configuring. Http won't encrypt the data, just mask the IP address. However, you may need https encryption for FB so check this is covered in any proxy you use.

If you want it to disguise other applications like email, file uploading, torrents (protocols like SMTP, FTP or TCP) you'll need a socks proxy. These need configuring in each bit of software you want to use and need more research.

VPNs do all this as well but they create encrypted tunnels between you and the host server. This has its own implications - you'll normally have to install software on your PC and you're putting a lot of trust in the vpn managers. Tunnelbear's supposed to be a good, inexpensive vpn service although look around at what else is available.

God knows I'm not an expert. It's a vast subject and the osi protocol stack makes hardened geeks wince so don't take anything here for granted and do research. If you're interested google stuff like 'vpns vs proxies', 'http vs socks' and 'how to use http proxy' to get a basic idea. Beyond that, if you're not interested in the back end but want to get going, try looking at services like Hola or tunnelbear which will cost a few dollars per month but are easy to get started with.

thank you! I was just searching (I don't google anything.. ixquick or startpage please) for what's involved in VPNs and that's where I was just getting sales pitch landing pages. Now I know more what to search for. I appreciate it.
After lurking here for a while.. I can't even read product reviews without questioning them anymore.

Go to the proxy section, search for some fresh free proxies, so you can at least see how they work. Google how to change the proxy in your browser, then try a few of those proxies out. Then visit http://whatismyipaddress.com ... the IP you see listed should be exactly the proxy number you just typed in (and not your own IP address).

Once you know how that works, find some dedicated proxies for sale if you're going to be using them on social networks. You don't want your accounts tainted by public free proxies that may have been used by other people, where they've been previously banned and that gets transferred to your own accounts.

VPNs are easy to use.

It's software, you install it, click a few times, and you are using it.

Depending on the VPN and what it's users are doing, some of your IPs may be restricted from certain website(s).

mamaOpal said:

Let's say I know nothing about them. (pretty close)
Are they fairly easy to use? Are there lots of hoops to jump through to get them up and running? After the initial set up, do they pretty much run in auto pilot?
How do the social media sites react to them?
Will my ISP have a cow?
Will one effect other computers on the home network?
What would I be looking for shopping for one? (so many choices available)

I did do a search here and using ixquick and found a lot of services.. not a lot of education.
thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Hello mamaOpal, just in case you are still searching or those who come looking for the same.

If you keep with the "different IP's" idea, you can use an VPN service as Astrill. This one is not the best nor the cheapest, but is the easiest to use, you can buy dedicated IP's for $5 I think, and is multiplatform.

Anyhow, using a VPN, or using stealth browsing is not enough at all! Social websites will know you are the same person.

For someone with your profile, I recommend Tor browser, that small big boy will take care of everything, you just open it and close it each time you want to log in with a different user.

There are better ways, but for sure not easier ones.

tor is installed.. should use it more.. it's just so slow most of the time

What exactly do you want to know? How to set up a VPN? (easy) How to buy one? (very easy) Or how safe they are? (google is your friend).

mamaOpal said:

tor is installed.. should use it more.. it's just so slow most of the time

Click to expand...

Yes, it's slow most of the time... but each year is better and better.

The best three things you get with it:

• New IP each time you connect
• New identity each time you connect
• Social networks will not block it, as many real users use it, and they cannot distinguish between robots and humans easily.

You can use Astrill as I do, take a look my screenshot, just install it and click the server you want. With one account you can connect at the same time a computer and a mobile phone. If you are in China, you will need the expensive Stealth version to pass the firewall, but if not, you can just use just the Open web one.

Anyhow, any VPN you use will not protect you from tracking. Websites like facebook, google, amazon, and so on will know who you are because the identity of your browser (Tor will protect you from this). Search in Google "browser fingerprint test". It's like buying a car, each one is a bit different even when the model it's the same.

My final advises:

• If you need to hide your identity because, for example, you use several users within a forum or social network, just use Tor.
• If you use a single user, and you just want to get a bit of privacy or just change your location, for example, to avoid censorship, use a VPN.