Long time NordVPN user but I’m sick of the update process on OS X so thinking of switching. Tunnel bear seems to score well with openness according to wire cutter, yes I hear some folks don’t like McAfee. I’ve used Nord in Europe with success so wonder what works best in 2020. Nord has the price advantage of having, in the past, 3 year deals for $80 or so.
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And for those who scoff at the idea of a VPN I think ones chances of data loss are far higher at a local coffee shop than a gov request for your data at the VPN company. So sure the scoffer is probably a seasoned techie but you think some not so tech savvy person knows exactly what apps or pages encrypt data or what sloppy coders are sending clear text across the inter webs. I know a lot of older Wordpress sites are not using HTTPS, sure bad design but still it’s a necessary tool.
Wirecutter chose Tunnelbear as one of its two favorite VPNs. (The other is Mullvad, which Firefox chose to partner with for its forthcoming branded VPN service.)
Should be fine.
I’m two years into a 3-year prepaid VPN subscription to PrivateInternetAccess, which has decent speeds and worldwide nodes and privacy policies. (IIRC I paid $90 for three years, via some limited-time special.) I’m on the East Coast of the USA and the latency times are good.
The only issue I’ve had is that the fastest node for me, called ‘US East’, typically resides in London(!) which has made for automated security blocking me when connecting to my bank or trying to make some purchases, so I now just avoid that node.
I’ve used PIA, Nord and Express in the past couple of years.
For my needs Express has been the best, I use it to (legitimately) access radio / tv back home when I travel and it’s flawless for that. Whereas the other two were hit and miss, though to be fair to PIA they never claimed to offer it. Nord was hit and miss.
All three had fine speeds.
OS X apps I would order, Express, PIA, Nord.
Where Nord is slightly better for me was that it had nice Linux terminal app I can run on a raspberry pi at home, the others required scripting OpenVPN directly and also the number of active connections it allows.
I used tunnel bear for the free option many years so my thoughts on that are probablu way out of date.
Slightly OT but I’m wondering what the process is that makes it onerous and is there a way to automate it?
As far as VPNs go, I use EncryptMe (formerly Cloak) and like it very much. It has nice support on iOS for Shortcuts too, and some basic AppleScript support on the Mac so I can automate it there too.
