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Are there recommendations for some best ones to consider for people in the USA?
And maybe other considerations - like if all you want to do is access things like porn and pirate Torrents and Lemmy, is it safe for a reputable company to have a credit card number on file? And if not, then that opens up a whole new layer of complexity that people are going to have to wade through.
Mullvad if all you want is a VPN but it's worth checking out Proton's privacy suite.
Calendar, password manager, aliasing services, etc.
Probably not what you want for the effort, but I've been running a Digital Ocean droplet out of Amsterdam for years, $6/mo.
Spun up a Debian instance, followed directions for an OpenVPN setup, failed, came back at it 2 weeks later, never had to touch it again. Been long in IT, but I'm no Linux graybeard. Their tutorials are spot on if you can follow directions. I did it drunk. LOL, I'm not even sure how to login anymore, just pay the bill!
Now if I want VPN, I start OpenVPN, wait 5 seconds, I'm in Amsterdam, good to go.
My very not scientific understanding is that using a VPN to a remote server is like throwing your internet traffic into a blender with everyone else using that server. So isn’t this the one time it’s better to not self host so your traffic is mixed into a much larger pool of other VPN traffic? Or am I missing something.
Proton has a free tier VPN that doesn't allow torrenting (though it might still work). If you need torrenting, you will need to pay for the VPN host. Mullvad VPN accepts crypto, you could do cash to crypto and be harder to trace. Evaluate your threat model before accepting advice from internet strangers.
But shouldn't people be massively suspicious about a free VPN, like selling user data? Why do they offer a free tier in the first place?
It's "freemium". They give you a free tier in the hopes that you upgrade to a premium one eventually.
Proton is the one that I keep hearing about, so it seems worth learning more about it:-).