Please Rec best VPN Internet service/company for Italy
 

Leaving for Italy for 2-months - and I'm going to need to pay bills online, and would prefer if the business emails I send didn't give away that I'm in Europe - Also wouldn't mind access to HBO Go on my Mac laptop and new iPad.
I tried to Google the solution - before going ahead and posting another dumb question, but a little knowledge is dangerous: I came up with VPN service through Hide My Ass, (yep, that's the name) - but the website page is Greek to me http://www.vpnground.com/Hide-My-Ass-1009-details.html - and it left me more confused than ever.

Is there anyone out there who has used a VPN and can recommend a company -& Specific Level of Service - that I'd need to secure my financial info, not rub the fact that I'm in Italy in my clients' noses - and watch the final episodes of THE NETWORK?

Thanks - as always!

What are you taking with you in the way of laptop, ipad, iphone, or whatever to get online?

What makes you think anyone's going to know your whereabouts? I use my notebook to send emails and make bank payments all over the place, including Europe, and no one knows where the heck I am!

I guess I'm not getting this....

You won't be able to access HBO Go in Europe. Maybe with a VPN, if it can make the system think you are in the states, but I have not experience with any myself. Always seemed like overkill.

Oh - and as StCirq says, I'm not sure what would give it away that you are in Europe, unless you use the location services...which are really helpful if you want directions to a restaurant, or your hotel, etc. You can set individual services to "off" (like Facebook) so that it doesn't proclaim that you have checked into the Roman Follies Olde Time Bath House...but your emails -- if you email from gmail, for example, will still come from gmail.

When I travel with the company issued laptop, I use the corporate VPN.
When I travel with my personal computer, I use Witopia's Personal VPN Pro.

Some observations on VPN protocol:

1. PPTP. Available from most suppliers. It fails in many places because the end point internet providers, such as your hotel, often block this protocol. I think it is pretty useless.
2. L2TP/IPsec combination. Natively supported on many platforms. I use this combo on my Android phone. I have been able to get through all hotel supplied Wifi servers.
3. SSL. I use this protocol on my PC. So far it always succeeded in going through hotel Wifi.

If you can trust that all your privacy communication take place under https:// or something similar, then you don't need VPN for the privacy concern part. However, many sites give ambiguous indications such as http:// and claims it switches to https:// when you hit "ok" to send privacy info. For those sites, I use my own SSL to make sure at least the over the air harvesting of personal info are made harder through encription.

Some sites, such as GMAIL, uses https:// as default. Hotmail requires preference changes to use https:// for all activities.


The location concern part:
Some sites are pretty insistent in sending you to country specific sites. VPN prevents this type of redirection if you cannot figure out the option or the site forces you to redirect you to a country specific site.

Google does this, but they have a special site to prevent this type of redirection:

http://support.google.com/websearch/...=en&answer=873

VPN issue:
Because many user's IP address originate from the same VPN server, bot detection tend to tag you as a potential bot and make you go through capcha exercises.

The thread is almost two years old (and bumped by a spammer) but to answer this:

<i>What makes you think anyone's going to know your whereabouts?</i>

Headers. You can see the path the email took to get to you.

cireen, which VPN service do you use?

The thread's a year older, but I am another witopia user.

"What makes you think anyone's going to know your whereabouts?"

As sparkchaser indicates, the headers contain the addresses of the routers the packets pass through. The first router will give your location - not exactly, but close. The MAC address of your device will indicate what kind of device it is - that's why iPad users get ads for mobile apps. - a VPN won't hide that but will replace the router addresses with its own.

Using a VPN isn't just about disguising your location (which stops google etc. from thinking you speak French), it keeps anyone else in your hotel/cafe/wherever from eavesdropping on your traffic, as it will be encrypted from your device to the VPN's servers. If you're going to access your bank accounts while traveling, you'll be a lot safer using a VPN.

thursdaysd: <i> The MAC address of your device will indicate what kind of device it is - that's why iPad users get ads for mobile apps. - a VPN won't hide that but will replace the router addresses with its own. </i>

FYI, your MAC address (aka "hardware address") is NOT sent out over the internet when you are browsing websites - it is hidden behind the firewall of whatever network you are on.

(A MAC address is kind of an ID code unique to your device; only your local router sees it.)

Websites cannot easily determine what kind of device you are using. However, your browser has a signature called "user agent" it sends to web servers, and servers can use the user agent to guess at what kind of device you are using. For example, a viewer of my website this morning had a user agent of "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12D508 Safari/600.1.4" . From that I can guess they are using an iPhone, but the user agent can also easily be faked - the person could be using Firefox on a PC and faking the user agent, and I'd never know.

And just to add one more post to an ancient thread:

Another VPN option while traveling in Europe is to setup your own VPN service running on your router at home. This is what I do. When I am traveling in Europe, I connect to my home VPN, and then internet services and websites I connect to think I am at home. It is incredibly cheap to setup (there is no monthly fee - you already pay for your home internet service) - just a new router to buy, at worst. But it can be complicated to setup for a non-techy person. Have a techy friend set it up for you once, then never pay for it again!

Andrew - doesn't that require you to leave the router at home up and running? I travel for months at a time so that's not going to happen. And I am happy to say I haven't looked at an IP header in years, but I certainly thought they included the MAC address, which identifies both the manufacturer and the type of device.

Yes, that does require you to leave the home router up and running. I suppose if you travel for months at a time, you also have your home internet service disconnected? If so, you obviously can't use it for VPN service, either. But if you are paying for internet while you are gone, what's wrong with leaving the router on? It consumes maybe 6 watts. The cost of keeping your internet on while you are away is much more than the cost of running your router...

Yes, IP headers do contain a MAC - but it gets replaced by each forwarding device's MAC as it gets passed along. Your original MAC is long gone by the time it gets to the destination.

And what if I'm relying on the home router and we have a power outage? Someone does keep an eye on my house, but he doesn't go by every day. Much safer to use witopia, which also lets me use addresses outside the US if I want to.

"Your original MAC is long gone by the time it gets to the destination."

Makes sense. I spent most of my time at the edges, not in the middle.

the best way is to use a paid reliable VPN service for Mac, iPhone, iPAds etc. I am using a VPN service and it completely changed my life and solved my problem whenever I travel I have no issues accessing my favorite content due to geo-blocking or other content privacy issues.

Can you please recommend a "paid reliable VPN"?

@jangita - did you bother to read the whole of this thread or just the last post?

Once again, for the lazy, witopia.