11 October 2015
The Australian Government’s data retention laws started on Tuesday 13 October 2015. This means the government will now require your ISP and telco to record your internet and call records for access by many government agencies. You can take steps to protect your privacy.
So, how do you protect your privacy from the watching eyes of the Australia Government? You can’t completely unless you go dark and turn off your mobile phone. You can at least protect your internet records from government spies by using a virtual private network (VPN) to hide your real records from both your internet service provider (ISP) and the government.
There are many VPNs out there but their prices and speeds vary a lot. Below are some VPNs we’ve just tested to show you how fast a connection you can get through a VPN. We tested on a 100 Mb/s NBN which, without a VPN, was getting 91 Mb/s.
No VPN connection speed:
Private Internet Access (PIA) ✓
PIA is the fastest and second most expensive of the VPNs that we tested. It also has the simplest desktop apps to use with apps also available for Android and iOS.
PIA costs:
US$39.95 per year at:
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-vpn/australia
or
US$59 for two years at:
https://stacksocial.com/sales/private-internet-access-vpn (no coupon needed)
VPN Unlimited
VPN Unlimited is the second fastest and very affordable VPN we tested. It has a lifetime subscription (no monthly or yearly fees) so is great value for money. VPN has apps for the desktop, Android and iOS.
VPN Unlimited costs US$39 for a lifetime subscription here:
https://stacksocial.com/sales/vpn-unlimited-lifetime-subscription (no coupon needed)
VpyrVPN
VyprVPN is the third fastest but both the most expensive (by far) and cheapest VPN we tested. How can that be? VyprVPN’s cheapest subscription service is $80 a year and up to $120 a year for its premium service. VyprVPN does however have a limited free service with 500Mb of data per months (that’s okay for some private surfing but not for heavy users nor downloads).
You can get VyprVPN here including desktop, Android and iOS apps:
https://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn/australia-vpn-data-retention
∗IPinator VPN ✓
IPinator is the fourth fastest (just pipped by VyprVPN) but by far the cheapest VPN we tested. That means it gets our gong as the best value of the VPNs we tested.
IPinator VPN costs only one payment of US$14.99 for a lifetime subscription! What a bargain! IPinator has apps for the desktop and Android but does not yet have an app for iOS. You can get the special deal here:
https://stacksocial.com/sales/ipinator-vpn-lifetime-license (no coupon needed)
TigerVPN
TigerVPN was the slowest VPN we tested. Although it is quite affordable with a one-off US$29 lifetime payment, it’s not as good as the cheaper IPinator. The desktop app is also buggy (crashes every time we close it on Windows 7 and 10). There is an app for Android but no app for iOS.
You can get the TigerVPN lifetime deal at:
https://stacksocial.com/sales/tigervpn-lite-lifetime-subscription (no coupon needed)
Some other untested VPN deals are:
proXPN VPN: Premium Lifetime Subscription for US$39 (no coupon needed)
https://stacksocial.com/sales/proxpn-premium-lifetime
VPN Land: Lifetime Subscription for US$24.99 (no coupon needed)
https://stacksocial.com/sales/vpn-land-4-yr-subscription
CyberGhostVPN for EUR45 per year
http://www.cyberghostvpn.com/en
I would like to add some info. I joined ibVPN TotalVPN plan for four years through a stacksocial coupon, actually I posted it on OzBargain so I got my VPN for free due to referrals 😀
Anyway, I am on iiNet in Melbourne, My ADSL2+ gets about 11MB/sec down and 1MB/sec up. They have special P2P servers so I tried a few, http://www.ibvpn.com/product/server-list/
Speedtest to Melbourne (Telstra)
P2P~Luxembourg 14ms 9.22mb down and 0.78 up (had the least load on the server list)
P2P~Sweden Server 14ms 7.63 down and 0.79 up
P2P~Hong Kong 361ms 4.3 down 0.50 up
P2P~Toronto 456ms 3.63 down 0.42 up
P2P~Lithuania Server – horrible 700ms ping
I will take the 20% performance hit regarding my downloads and uploads, as long as the ping is still fast enough to not affect my web browsing too much.
As you can see, hong kong is pretty horrible as I assume is is overloaded with Chinese users. I just sent an email requesting more Asian servers.
I wish there was a way I could set my VPN to only activate through one app and not my entire computer. I wish my web browsers were not affected.
Also you might want to look into the best software in case your VPN drops. I grabbed this from iBVPN:
The solutions that we found will basically drop your internet connection as soon as the VPN server drops, making sure that no data will be leaked. Here they are:
VPNwatcher (for Windows)
Another method is offered by WatchDog and the solution is for OpenVPN (only for Windows).
VPNNetMon (for windows).
VPN LifeGuard