Secure Your Vpn

The ever-sceptical Jonni Bidwell is here to cast doubt on the highly profitable VPN business, and show you how you can do better…

-  By Jonni Bidwell

Consumer VPNs (virtual private networks) are big business. Indeed, if all the sponsored product placement and affiliate linking is anything to go by, then just a few bucks a month will bring you great security, privacy and other nebulous benefits, while at the same time making you magically appear as though you're in a country of your choosing.

What those implorations to sign up don't tell you is that while you're holidaying, safely, in this faraway IP block, your traffic (albeit partly encrypted) is all visible to the VPN provider. It might care more about your monthly subscription payment than what you're using its service for. And it might well implement a 'no-log' policy, which would save space and money. But they effectively have the same insight into customers' traffic as those customers' ISPs did, up until the point it all vanished into a single VPN connection.

We're not saying all VPNs are bad. Linux Mint is sponsored by Private Internet Access. NordVPN has a Linux client. Even Mozilla has its own VPN now (although if you use Firefox you've probably already heard about it). It's just it's difficult to prove that they're good. So why not run your own? We'll show you how to use the latest WireGuard technology to route your traffic through your home, or the region of your choosing via a Virtual Private Server. And if you don't trust your ISP or VPS provider, we'll look at Tor – the gold standard for privacy.