I'm shopping for a VPN providers, and really struggling to find a detailed and non-biased breakdown of the various options. A number of years ago, I recall finding an extremely detailed VPN comparison spreadsheet that had 30+ columns, which were contained criteria by which the VPNs were judged both quantitatively and qualitatively. I can no longer find that table, so I suspect it has been removed, but I did find the less-comprehensive table, below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/edit?usp=sharing
In the thread posted by the owner of this sheet, a few commenters pointed out that the highest rated VPN providers in this table just happen to be the ones that advertise most aggressively and are well-known for buying positive reviews from tech blogs, which are pretty clearly designed to be misleading. I too am suspicious that this table can't be trusted, however I really am not knowledgeable about VPNs, so before passing judgement, I figured I should consult those who know more about it. I also recognize that a strong marketing team and an excellent product aren't mutually exclusive, however I think that generally applies more in markets where economies of scale play a significant role, as does mass-adoption, which fuels loads of well-informed, independent research (ex: the car market and phone market.) That obviously isn't the case with the VPN markets... but I'm still sorta holding out hope.
If I end up excluding this table, I'm not sure where to turn at that point. Shilling is extremely pervasive in the VPN market, so it's tough to trust any one person or any one thread. It's also well established that a few of the large VPNs actually own a number of review blogs, so I can't really trust blogs either.
I guess I'm here hoping to be told that my suspicions about this table are unfounded, and / or that another excellent, unbiased resource for comparative VPN info exists. Any help would be appreciated!
NGL doing something like that is WAY above my pay grade anyway, but I still am interested in the answer to this question, because I've seen the advice to take the 'self-operated' approach before.
It’s not too difficult to setup, but I think people don’t realize that even if your not breaking the law, you may still have to deal with charges and going to court for years before your found innocent. All while dealing with the stress of a jury possibly finding you guilty.
Then you have prosecutors offering plea deals, so then you think do I stand my ground and risk X years in jail? Or do I plead guilty and just go to jail for 2 years?
Good point. This sounds like a vote against going the vps route, am I correct?
With using a VPN for the common user use case (excluding business/work VPNs) you generally don't want to self-host. Part of the reason is that you want your traffic that comes out the other side to be mixed with a bunch of other users. If it's a 1 to 1 mapping i.e., you -> vpn -> web traffic then that can be reversed and traced back to you. If there's many users connected to the same VPN then the "you" and the "web traffic" parts are multiplied by hundreds or thousands of other users with no way to connect the dots. That web traffic might be coming from you or it might be coming from any one of the thousands of other users.
I hope I've explained that clearly.