Recommended VPN services
 

Ive bitten the bullet and signed up for the elite package for a year. Will report on how it goes in uk and in africa over the summer.

First signs encouraging - everything that was not working in starbucks on the free version is ok now, once i have switched location back to the uk.

Now I get the advertisement - always the same one that pops up as a newly opened webpage.

I haven't switched it on so often since I started getting the pop up webpage; if it links in automatically (and it does that sometimes) I just switch it off.
That whole aspect of switching itself on means that in some way or other it is monitoring what I do on this computer and that made me "stop and think".

My sole use for it so far has been to secure the data between my computer and the router so I haven't tried accessing many webpages while connected via hotspot shield.

I'm not keen on Starbuck's coffee but their mugs are good!
Try Costa next time?

It is strange how the chosen location of the hotspotshield router should make such a difference in the quality of encrypted access.

I refuse to pay Costa prices. I can live with £1.55 for a filter coffee from Starbucks and its on my way to work!

A handy review of VPN for 2016 - changing rapidly
 

Try to use tunnel bear which provides free limited version. The speed performance is really great, but still 500 Mb a month is too little for me. I’m an instagram lover and need to get more traffic for posting. So, I've decided to choose paid package. Here is a link to it detailed review https://www.bestvpnrating.com/service/tunnelbear

tunnelbear from Canada
 

I've recently switched to using TunnelBear - so far, so good and no intrusive adverts.
I am using the free version because I only need it to secure dodgy public access wifi sources that cannot be trusted.

Tunnelbear does well in the annual review of VPNs for 2017 = a bonus.

Good enough for me
 

Thanks for the link; however, I can't see too much to read in that particular web page - what it does lead to is another web page https://www.bestvpnrating.com/free-vpn
which goes on to discuss the pros and cons of "free Vs paid for" VPNs with an emphasis on "there is no such thing as a free lunch".


Tunnel Bear is rated 3rd in their top 10 list - good enough for my purposes.

Come to think of it, most recently I have been using my phone service provider while overseas because,
A. it has attractive pricing for using it, with roaming costs amounting to pennies for all that I do while travelling.

B. it has become a PITA to log on to wifi services in places such as France ( which is still in a state of emergency that has been going on for years is the probable reason): they all want to harvest your personal details and I really can't be bothered.

I work in computer security so dabble in this area a fair bit.
It's good to know that some of these VPN providers are highly dubious to say the least, especially those that are totally free etc

I can recommend (with no guarantees!) ProtonVPN based in Switzerland. They have free and paid versions, I use the paid version and its very fast and reliable on Linux and OS X.
https://protonvpn.com

You should also, imho, consider moving away from gmail etc and into their email solution ProtonMail that has mailbox/end to end encryption so that nobody but you can read its contents, email to other users is end to end encrypted etc. Works very well... you can use @pm.me as your email address etc
https://protonmail.com

And whilst I'm here, use Signal rather than text messages, WhatsApp etc - absolutely nothing stored about your messages in their systems, end to end encryption, disappearing messages etc
https://signal.org

Encryption lesson over ;)