France, The UK The US, New Zealand, and Australia are really on the internet monitoring bandwagon recently.  If it’s not piracy, it’s hackers, and they’re looking for ways to keep tabs on what you’re doing online.  Sometimes they say its for our own good. Sometimes they say it’s for the good of society.  Every time it’s super annoying.  An offshore VPN is going to be the best way to combat big brother, not matter where you are.

Now the term ‘offshore’ is going to depend on where your shore actually is, but chances are that you mean something in Central/South America or Asia.  I’ll try not to sound too shady when I say this, but their laws are different there, and there are a lot of advantages and work arounds involved with having an IP or rerouting your internet traffic through these locations.

***DISCLAIMER***

Before you get to excited, it should be noted that VPN services are NOT FOR ILLEGAL ACTIVITY.  While things like online gambling websites, P2P, and some types of site content are permissible by international standards, if you are breaking international law, YOU WILL GET CAUGHT.  I don’t even want to mention some of the stuff that people do online for fear that my site will turn up in the search engines for those keywords, but you have an imagination.

REMEMBE: Using an offshore VPN hides your online activity from your ISP and own government.  It however, does not hide the virtual IP address from the VPN.  IF you use the IP address from the offshore VPN to do something that breaks international law, the IP address can be traced back to the VPN service.  With a court order, or sometimes even just a complaint from a foreign government, you could get your account disabled or worse.

For example, if you are in The USA and want to connect to a P2P site, you should not use a French IP address.  France’s government will see that a french IP is downloading torrents, contact the VPN service, and there could be consequences.  This is possible even if the VPN service is not located in France, or The USA.

***Notes About Anonymity***

Sorry for all the warnings.  No matter what VPN service you choose, they will keep logs of some sort. Most will not log your activity.  They do not know what you’re doing online.  They do however keep time logs, which means you activity can be traced back to you.  Continuing from the example above, if France logs a complaint that an IP address is downloading copyrighted content and traces it back to the VPN service, they can see what time the content was downloaded.  If you are on record of having used that IP at that time period, that labels you as the culprit.  All VPN services do this to maintain server and service integrity, and if they don’t, it’s probably a rubbish VPN service or they’re lying to you.

>>> Best Offshore VPN Services <<<

***it should be noted that with whatever VPN service you choose, regardless of the location of their ‘home base’, you can choose your IP address location. The following services are located in Hong Kong, but have many IP options including Malaysia, Russia, Switzerland, and more.

#1

The obvious #1 choice is 12VPN.  They have broader device support than other services, offer OpenVPN (more secure VPN protocol), SSL encryption upgrades (military grade), and are dedicated to great customer service.  Installation and setup is fast and easy, and it comes with a money back guarantee.  For an offshore VPN service, that’s all you can really hope to find: Privacy, Anonymity, Professionalism, Guarantees.  Servers are fast, and they offer two package options (US IP, and World VPN)

>>> Go To 12VPN

#2

PureVPN another Hong Kong based VPN service. They’re home base is located in Hong Kong.  They allow P2P on Russian, Netherlands, and a few other servers.  They’ve got live support, and unlimited server access to 14 different countries.  The standard service gives you 30 GB of bandwidth per month for the mega low price of $74.95 (I know that sounds like an advertisement, but it really is low).  There’s an unlimited bandwidth upgrade, and a dedicated IP server upgrade.  Definitely a high quality, fast offshore VPN service.  They don’t offer OpenVPN, but do have SSTP for Win 7/Vista.  VPN servers in Panama, Switzerland, Malaysia, Russia, and 10 other countries.

>>> Go To PureVPN

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You may see that a VPN dedicated IP be referred to as a static IP address as well. This are the same thing.  Static, or dedicated IP addresses are in comparison to “dynamic”, or “shared” IP addresses.  Both are common ways to browser/download anonymously on the internet, and you’ll find a variety of combinations available at different VPN service providers.  Not all VPN services offer dedicated IPs, or at least not all are explicit about offering them.

Having a dedicated IP address is good for a number of things. If you’re using a VPN for gaming or business online, you may find that sharing an IP address, or having a dynamic IP (frequently changing) can present a number of problems.  For one, an IP addresses your identity online, and when your identity changes every ten minutes or so, it can set off some red flags.

1. You may get banned from servers (gaming)
2. You may cause mistrust with other users and their machines (business)

Depending on what your security needs are, some users prefer to have dynamic IPs, as it’s harder to trace and spy on.  But for reasons of trust and reliability, it may be necessary to use a VPN dedicated IP address.

Here are the best services for dedicated IP addresses.

StrongVPN

One of the most trusted names in VPN services, all of their OpenVPN servers are dedicated IP addresses. You’ll notice that many services offer free and unlimited server switching, while StrongVPN does not. This is probably why. Each time you sign into an OpenVPN server, you’re assigned a static/dedicate IP, which will not change until you do so manually. Even signing out of the VPN server and signing back in will result in you having the same (still anonymous) IP.  There are options for PPTP and L2TP static IP addresses, but much fewer.

There are a large variety of plans available, which can be overwhelming to a new user.  Take your time.  a “Lite OpenVPN” package will cost you $10 per month, which isn’t a bad price for 5 city locations in The US (170 VPN servers), and you can get more server location options (as well as more server switches) with upgrades of $15, $20, or $30. There are of course discounts for signing up for one year.  You can actually save somewhere between $30 and $130 dollars per year depending on which package you sign up for.  There is also a deal for $85 per year for USA/UK OpenVPN.

My head is already spinning just listing all the option, so take a look for yourself.  There’s 24/7 live support to answer any questions. You can’t go wrong with StrongVPN

Go To StrongVPN

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PureVPN

PureVPN is another good service to go with.  They’ve simplified the sign-up process to make it much easier to find what you’re looking for, which may appeal to some customers.  They don’t offer OpenVPN however. Their dedicated IP addresses are for PPTP and L2TP.  Though they do offer SSTP, they don’t have dedicated IPs for this VPN protocol.  Their dedicated IP plan is $145 for the year (or $15 per month).  There is a 30 GB bandwidth limit, but that will only affect torrent freaks.  Even an average amount of browsing and downloading (yes, they allow P2P) won’t even come close to 30 gigabytes in a month.  There are also other plans available, including an unlimited bandwidth one, but they are for dynamic IP addresses.

They offer live support, which is very friendly, and I had a great experience with both their PPTP and L2TP VPN, even from China.

Go To PureVPN

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