# Which VPN



## Leyland2012 (Feb 27, 2012)

I am not great at these so have looked at a few but am getting a bit muddled up as to which one to go for.

Anyone got any recommendations?

Cheers


----------



## leesa13 (Jul 7, 2009)

Leyland2012 said:


> I am not great at these so have looked at a few but am getting a bit muddled up as to which one to go for.
> 
> Anyone got any recommendations?
> 
> Cheers


Hi

I use expat telly vpn, I pay €19.99 for 3 months with instant access, they also do other rates. This one has always worked fine for me, no problems at all. Expat Telly - Watch BBC iPlayer from Abroad with our UK iPlayer VPN Service

Lisa


----------



## Leyland2012 (Feb 27, 2012)

Thanks Lisa, I already have iplayer/Ch4OD/ITV OD on an android box but Ch5 cannot be used on it. The box is not connected to the PC so I was looking to have a separate system for it.


----------



## Guest (Jan 16, 2013)

leesa13 said:


> Hi
> 
> I use expat telly vpn, I pay €19.99 for 3 months with instant access, they also do other rates. This one has always worked fine for me, no problems at all. Expat Telly - Watch BBC iPlayer from Abroad with our UK iPlayer VPN Service
> 
> Lisa


I use BoxVpn. Cost from 3 euro per month. For me its perfect because you have a choise of countries with servers. I watch TV from UK and Sweden and its very easy to have both setup and choose from when you need

But there is also free ones, Expatshield is one. But free is free and you can't demand anything if it work poorly

http://boxvpn.com

Anders


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

My experience with Expatshield was not good and I would not advise its use. Although it can work it can be troublesome and constantly blasts adverts opening web pages to do so. It also used to mess with browser settings. Of course it may have improved from when I tried it a couple of years ago.

I use: HideIPVPN which works fine for me.

Pete


----------



## Guest (Jan 16, 2013)

PeteandSylv said:


> My experience with Expatshield was not good and I would not advise its use. Although it can work it can be troublesome and constantly blasts adverts opening web pages to do so. It also used to mess with browser settings. Of course it may have improved from when I tried it a couple of years ago.
> 
> I use: HideIPVPN which works fine for me.
> 
> Pete


There is nothing "free" in this world. Ofc free services have backsides. They must live on something.

Anders


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

Vegaanders said:


> There is nothing "free" in this world. Ofc free services have backsides. They must live on something.
> 
> Anders


Oh dear. I am sorry there is nothing free in your world.

In fact HideIPVPN used to give away 100 subscriptions every month and I was fortunate enough to get one of these.

I could also give you a long list of free items that enhance our lives but here are just a few:
Google search
Google Chrome
Firefox
Google earth
Picasa
LibreOffice
Google translate
Dropbox
Skype
Lots of Microsoft software
Expat Forum

None of these take over my computer and blast me with adverts so there is no downside to them. (Backside is an arse of an expression!!!)



Pete


----------



## Guest (Jan 16, 2013)

PeteandSylv said:


> Oh dear. I am sorry there is nothing free in your world.
> 
> In fact HideIPVPN used to give away 100 subscriptions every month and I was fortunate enough to get one of these.
> 
> ...


I will not say that Google tools are especially free. More and more they try to get you to click on advertising in different forms.

Microsoft have Internet explorer free but most of other software in heavily overpriced

You are right, Skype is free and will hopefully continue to be now when it will be the new Messenger

And taking over computer, I would love to know how much information that Google collect about you, without telling you.

So I still say, nothing is free in this world, someone has to pay

Anders


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

Vegaanders said:


> I will not say that Google tools are especially free. More and more they try to get you to click on advertising in different forms.
> 
> Microsoft have Internet explorer free but most of other software in heavily overpriced
> 
> ...


This is an interesting discussion as we have different perceptions.

You are in right in saying Google collects information about me but as I don't put anything online that I don't want made public, I don't care. They don't, however, suddenly put up a new web page for advertising something over the page I'm looking at as ExpatShield did.

While Google's search obviously has advertising revenue I find none of it obtrusive but value the free search facility. As far as Google Earth, Picasa, Chrome and Translator is concerned there is absolutely no advertising showing. They provide me with awesome facilities totally free.

I don't think that your consideration that some Microsoft software is overpriced comes into this discussion which centres on free software.

LibreOffice is a totally free equivalent to Microsoft Office with no advertising at all as is OpenOffice.

So please explain to me why you feel I am actually paying for this software. No money is leaving my hands whatsoever and I am using a load of superb facilities.

Pete


----------



## Guest (Jan 16, 2013)

PeteandSylv said:


> This is an interesting discussion as we have different perceptions.
> 
> You are in right in saying Google collects information about me but as I don't put anything online that I don't want made public, I don't care. They don't, however, suddenly put up a new web page for advertising something over the page I'm looking at as ExpatShield did.
> 
> ...


Hi Pete!

You agree that someone must always pay. In Googles case it is the people who advertise using Google Adwords. If you click on an advert the company behind it pay Google for the click. Google then pay a part to the siteowner where the advert appear. 

In Microsoft's case it's the what I called overpriced software that pay for the free parts.

And so on...

About not putting anything online that you dont want to share. Google for sure collects all the information about your search interests, translations etc. They then use it to show you adverts that can be interesting for you based on your searches. 

Ebay the same. If you are looking for products on Ebay you will soon get a mail with suggestions on similar products that can interest you.

OpenOffice is an interesting example on how every "free software" has to earn money to survive and develop

Anders


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

Vegaanders said:


> Hi Pete!
> 
> You agree that someone must always pay. In Googles case it is the people who advertise using Google Adwords. If you click on an advert the company behind it pay Google for the click. Google then pay a part to the siteowner where the advert appear.
> 
> ...


Thank you but I do understand how Google gets its revenue but back to your contention that nothing is free. Please tell me how I am paying to use Google's marvellous Earth software which has no adverts and no money is paid by me.

As I said before I don't care about the information Google collects. They are providing me with a wonderful search facility for free. If they want to remember what I searched for I have no problem at all. But where are these adverts you claim they show me? The sponsored ads on the search engine relate to the search and may be useful to me. There are no ads on Chrome, Earth, Translate, Picasa etc. So where are the ads they are targeting at me based on the information they have collected?

Ebay is a commercial business that does nothing for free. When you sell you pay. The fact that they use targeted advertising is neither here nor there, particularly as you can turn it off. The fact that it's not free is why it did not appear on my list.

I don't understand what you are trying to say about OpenOffice at all. But I will remind you that it is a comprehensive suite of programs equivalent to Microsoft Office which contains no advertising and is totally free for anyone to download and use.

But you still haven't explained why I am not getting anything for free from all this free software I am using without a cent leaving my pocket.

Pete


----------



## Guest (Jan 16, 2013)

PeteandSylv said:


> Thank you but I do understand how Google gets its revenue but back to your contention that nothing is free. Please tell me how I am paying to use Google's marvellous Earth software which has no adverts and no money is paid by me.
> 
> As I said before I don't care about the information Google collects. They are providing me with a wonderful search facility for free. If they want to remember what I searched for I have no problem at all. But where are these adverts you claim they show me? The sponsored ads on the search engine relate to the search and may be useful to me. There are no ads on Chrome, Earth, Translate, Picasa etc. So where are the ads they are targeting at me based on the information they have collected?
> 
> ...


About OpenOffice I probably misunderstood you when you wrote that LibreOffice was a advert free very good Office suite and Open Office where not.

Your selected advertising you see on all sites that show Google advertising. If you search for something in Google you can see that advertising on other sites will be close to what you looked for in Google. This will be more and more.. 

Same in smartphones with Android. Google collect info about your whereabouts for some reason, to be able to show you localized adverts in the phone

All this is of course not bad, I only wanted to say that nothing is free, someone pay for it, even if it is not yourself.

I should not really complain, we make quite good money on showing Google Adverts on our different sites, at least enough to keep them up and running

But Pete we can discuss it over a beer instead when we arrive first week in April


Anders


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

I think the difficulty may be that you said "There is nothing "free" in this world.".

I think I have shown that for many of us there certainly is in the fine software I listed.

Perhaps what you should have said is "Someone has to pay for the "free" stuff in this world".

You have now clarified this in your last post, so thank you for that.

It is an interesting discussion and we certainly must continue it in April.

Pete


----------



## Avanti1 (Nov 22, 2011)

*Hide IPVPN*



PeteandSylv said:


> My experience with Expatshield was not good and I would not advise its use. Although it can work it can be troublesome and constantly blasts adverts opening web pages to do so. It also used to mess with browser settings. Of course it may have improved from when I tried it a couple of years ago.
> 
> I use: HideIPVPN which works fine for me.
> 
> Pete


Hi Pete
Thanks for that - I'm still inUK but coming over in Sept and I wondered which of the packages you bought and what it gives you in Cy ?
Thanks


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

Avanti1 said:


> Hi Pete
> Thanks for that - I'm still inUK but coming over in Sept and I wondered which of the packages you bought and what it gives you in Cy ?
> Thanks


I don't actually pay for their packages. I was fortunate enough to get one of the freebies when they used to give away 100 each month. So my package is just a basic fixed VPN to the UK.

This allows us access to any site that restricts non-UK IP addresses. We mainly use it to watch BBC either live or through iPlayer as well as ITV and other channels.

Pete


----------



## Pam n Dave (Jun 11, 2007)

Vegaanders said:


> Hi Pete!
> 
> OpenOffice is an interesting example on how every "free software" has to earn money to survive and develop
> 
> Anders


Anders,

I would be interested to know how OpenOffice earns money, perhaps you could help me understand this.


----------



## Guest (Jan 18, 2013)

Pam n Dave said:


> Anders,
> 
> I would be interested to know how OpenOffice earns money, perhaps you could help me understand this.


Hi!
It was a mistake from me. I don't use it myself and when Pete wrote about it I interpreted it as he now used LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice that now had advertising.

So I sorry for my misunderstanding

Anders


----------



## Pam n Dave (Jun 11, 2007)

Thank you for clarifying.


----------



## MacManiac (Jan 25, 2012)

Back to the topic, we found problems with free VPN services, and decided to go with My Private Network. It costs us £5 a month, and has worked flawlessly from the moment it was set up. It runs on my iMac, my iPad and my iPhone. Once connected it does not seem to affect internet performance at all. Details at https://www.my-private-network.co.uk


----------



## Sequence (Apr 23, 2010)

I was looking into getting one of these also but I find the whole thing very confusing


----------



## PeteandSylv (Sep 24, 2008)

Sequence said:


> I was looking into getting one of these also but I find the whole thing very confusing


Can any of us help clarify what is confusing you?

Pete


----------

