I am interested in improving my privacy lately. I am even about to substitute my smartphone with a feature phone. All that said, I used to use a VPN service but I am not really sure about the privacy the VPN companies offer. I remember that a long time ago I used to manually set up VPN servers in Windows, way before the VPN comapanies starting offering subscription based services.
By digging arround I found that VPS can be better for my needs than a VPN as i usually connect to only a region of the world and I am not interested in switching to my actual region all that often.
Any help will be appreciated.
PS: I use a Win 10 PC .
Thanks for the answer. I am in a weird situation, I live in Spain and I am an immigrant and I speak English since I was 5. It frustrates me to see al shows in Spanish and all dubbed or subbed, for example, on Crunchyroll, I don’t even get the subs in English because of my region.
I am basically trying to change my region to USA or so. Most services here have the catalogue drastically lowered(Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Crunchyroll,…) so basically is no bother for me to have my region changed constantly as I have no incentive to have my actual location.
I wanted to change my region with the router using ExpressVPN but my router is OEM and it hasn’t the options necessary in settings for me to do so.
I have 1Gb internet so even if it got reduced to half it doesn’t bother my navigation but what I want is stability and to have the speed reduction to have a lower impact.
From what I learned, a VPS offers a higher level of stability but I may be wrong. I am more of a hands-on guy than a guy that likes to depend on others to do stuff for them.
Bear in mind, streaming sites often check the ip blocks of VPS /hosting companies, so you might still fall foul of geo blocking.
Iirc, some VPN’s do shenanigans to keep ahead of the block lists.
Not guaranteed, just something one might run into
I was about to preface that as with all privacy service providers, they are all answerable to their own respective country’ government but that doesnt seem to be your concern as to why you want to run a VPN.
The thing is, streaming services are required observe and respect whatever licensing deals that are in the country of the hosting servers. They are obligated to block VPN and subsequently, VPS IP addresses as part of the deal of serving media content to the country.
What you want is a service that provides a residential IP address exit. Im not sure exactly which VPN/VPS service provides that. All I know from experience is that ProtonVPN can provide streaming for Netflix for some countries (US, Canada, Japan, UK, etc) with that streaming feature but it isnt reliable at times especially if you use something like a pfSense router WITH other devices also using Netflix at the same time.
It is best to use and stream to a single dedicated device only or at the very least no concurrent use of streaming services when in a VPN. They can catch you if you watch Netflix on the go in your mobile phone and someone else watches on your home TV that is behind a VPN. I think the app will attempt to look for devices running the Netflix app and it must be on the same network and same WiFi SSID/MAC address on your accounts in your other devices.
Thanks, this is great info. I am looking to use a VPN service on my PC only and my Smartphone will basically stay home whenever I go out and I will use a feature phone. I left all big social networks long ago(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, never been on Tik-Tok) except for Youtube. A few days ago I realised that Youtube deleted one of my comments because I referenced to a podcast that Joe Rogan did and I only said that is an interesting listen. My comment was literally deleted in seconds. I got a little bothered by it and I decided to leave the Google environment as much as I can. I will only leave it on my Android Phone as i cannot do anything about it but the phone stays at home. I am sick of being tracked and I they don’t offer anything that I cannot get somewhere else, even if it is a harder work to get to it.
I don’t use Netflix since they made the changes to bypass VPN security and as I said, the catalogue of things I like to watch on the main platform in my country is limited so in a month I literally go through everything they have to offer.
Thanks for the info.
I used the AWS process from the Video that was posted and I can say it works for my needs.
I tried Crunchyroll and Funimation and they worked. On Prime video I got a prompt that some content may not be accessible from my location but I could access it all as far as I can tell.
The speed hit was quite severe but I had a lot of headroom and it doesn’t bother me. And latency is better than on Express or Proton, weird.
Thank you guys again, you were of great help.
VPSs can offer more control and customization than VPNs, which can be great if you’re connecting to only a specific region and don’t need to switch regions often.
Another option to consider is a dedicated server. With a dedicated server, you’ll have full control and ownership over the server and its resources, making it a highly secure and private solution. It’s a great option if you need to host your own VPN or VPS or if you’re looking for a highly secure solution for your privacy needs.
At the end of the day, the best solution for you will depend on your specific needs and preferences
