2 Great Offshore VPN Services
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
……….
Why you need a Good Anonymous VPN Service
Anonymity online is more important that you think. Aside from the conspiracy-theory-government-is-watching-me type stuff, the truth is that surfing the internet with your real IP address is a huge security risk. Most of the time, it’s not a problem. Then again, most of the time, you wear your seatbelt just in case you have an accident, right?
And browsing with your real IP is an accident waiting to happen. Which is why I use an anonymous VPN service when I connect to the internet. I’ve got some info about packet sniffing and identity theft if you want to check it out, or you can just skip to the bottom to see what I have to say about a couple of VPN services.
Packet Sniffing
One of the main reasons to use an anonymous VPN service is to avoid having your data spied on, monitored, or stolen. “Packet sniffing” is basically what this is. A program is used to monitor all traffic over a network, and can be set to collect everything, or it can be customized to collect data that fits certain criteria.
In the right hands, a packet sniffer can be used to monitor and troubleshoot networks. It can find and stop malware, locate errors, and help you improve overall network functionality. But in the wrong hands, it can be used to do just the opposite.
When you connect to a public network, you are giving permission to other users to monitor your online activity. Even from a remote location (somewhere outside of your home network), it’s possible with various types of malware and spyware to gain access to you home network and operate in the same way.
The can see
- Who you send e-mail to
- The contents of your e-mail
- Which websites you visit
- What you look at on the site
- Audio/video streams you view
- VOIP calls
- What you download
And it’s difficult to stop this kind of malicious activity. Packet sniffers are “passive”, simply watching for the goods. This mean no telltale activity to look for that would warn you that you’re being spied on.
Identity Theft
Ok, so these stats are a bit old (from 2008/2009), but you can bet that it’s not getting any better. In the US alone, in 2008, there were 10 million cases of identity fraud. 38-48% of these people find out someone has stolen their identity within three months, while 9-18% of victims don’t learn that their identity has been stolen for four or more years. On average, per household, a victim will lose over $1,000 dollars, and many will experience a wake of negative effects like difficulty getting loans and fees related to recovering the money or finding the perpetrator.
Ok, so now that you’re good an paranoid, you can check out some of my favorite anonymous VPN services.
Hide My Ass
You’ll see this on the top of pretty much any list of virtual private networks. They offer way more IPs, in way more countries, for a cheaper price than anyone else. Multiple VPN protocols, unlimited bandwidth, free server switching, and a 30 day money back guarantee is pretty hard to beat. It’s really no competition. As far as anonymity goes, they’ve also got that covered. Actually, it’s an interesting story that you can check out HERE (http://www.streetarticles.com/cyber-law/vpn-services-will-mask-your-ip-address-but-will-they-sell-you-out). If you don’t read the article, to make a long story short, HMA was involved in catching hacker and everyone got upset because HMA is supposed to keep you anonymous online.
HMA made it very clear that anonymous surfing does not include illegal activity (as far as UK law is concerned), but there is NO WAY that they can spy on you. If you’re trying to hack government organizations and sell children on the internet however, they will be able to find you. Any VPN service who tells you otherwise is BS-ing you.
……….
StrongVPN
One of the leading VPN providers in the business since the 90′s, StrongVPN is a service worth mentioning. There are tons of options, including lite plans, Deluxe plans, packages based on your home country, a wide variety of VPN protocols, and even the choice of dedicated or static IPs (if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it). Live support is great, and of course there’s a money back guarantee. They’ve got a wide variety of country locations (19), and have SSTP/OpenVPN/PPTP/L2TP options for all you standard(and not so standard) operating systems.
……….
12VPN
I am actually using this VPN service right now (Dec 14 2011). Though a newbie can walk in and out and start browsing/downloading anonymously in a matter a minutes, there’s plenty of customizable options for the geeky-user. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really understand all of it – stuff like port forwarding, DD-WRT and Tomato support, advanced routing options, and other stuff. But they do offer a free Viscosity license (worth $9) for Windows and Mac users, have simultaneous login for your mobile devices, and options to upgrade to military grade encryption (4096-bit). Now that’s some serious anonymity!
Alternate Domain for users in China, Oman, and other blocked countries
……….
Information Resources
SpendOnLife.com (Identity Theft Statistics)
……….
Site Navigation
We Recommend
Recent Posts
PureVPN
Most Popular Topics
