I currently use HMA to circumvent regional restrictions for Netflix et. al. and that’s been working out perfectly fine for me. I switch it on when I need to “look American” and otherwise rarely use it. I tend to be very “wired in” in the sense that I use all sorts of cloud-based services between my various devices and I use social media extensively for work. For the most part I have no problem with leaving an online footprint with my day-to-day web-browsing and actively like some of the targeted ads I receive from places like Google.
That all being said, all of these privacy scares in the media and tech blogs lately have gotten me a little more concerned about being able to be somewhat anonymous when I want to be. For instance, I’ve recently started playing around with XBMC and though I typically like to purchase my media legitimately, I’m a little miffed that I can’t use my iTunes purchases on it (outside of music) and their don’t seem to be any services that allow me to buy movies and TV shows DRM-free. As such, I thought I’d complement that with some torrenting but I’m super paranoid despite the fact that I live in Canada where that isn’t quite as much of an issue (though likely will be in the nearish future).
I’ve gone ahead and set up a Crunchbang install through virtual box and it is running fine through my current HMA VPN (I load the VPN, start the VM, and it connects automatically through NAT) and showing the VPN’s IP rather than my own. I’ve also run all the recommended tests on the sidebar and everything is coming up the way it should be. I’ve even got Tor running on top of that for general browsing when I want to remain anonymous. Because I’m feeling particularly paranoid, however, I’ve decided to purchase a 1-year subscription to PIA given that HMA has a poor reputation for handing over user-data and PIA seems to be the general recommendation for that. Given that I’ve still got about six months left of my HMA subscription I thought I might even try to chain them together for extra redundancy.
ANYWAY … a lot of people seem to recommend purchasing your subscription through bitcoins or other anonymous currencies but that seems like a fair bit of work for someone who just wants to download the occasional torrent off a public tracker or browse with some degree of anonymity when I want to. Given these circumstances, is it really that necessary to set up a bitcoin account just for this?
tl;dr
Will I be shooting myself in the foot buying a PIA subscription with my credit card if I’ll only be using it for public torrent trackers and the occasional private browsing within my virtual machine, or am I being overly paranoid? I’m not sharing government secrets, downloading or distributing anything that should put me on a gov’t watch list, or anything messed up like that - I just want to be able to torrent in some degree of peace. Summary:
-I live in Canada
-Anything “sensitive” will occur inside of a VM under a user account with a fake persona and where I will not be logging into anything that could tie it to my real life. What happens in the VM stays in the VM (aside from dumping media to my media server).
-My regular browsing and day-to-day activity will still take place on my regular (non-VM) Windows install.
-I already use HMA but am concerned about their reputation in this regard.
For torrents and region bypassing I don’t think there is any reason to bother with anonymous payment
HMA logs, so it would be useless anyways, PIA does not, but if someone really wants to get to you that badly then they will most likely find a way regardless of how you payed for it
I saw no reason to mask the purchase of my VPN. I use PIA, not to engage in illegal downloading, but because my internet provider, Time Warner, throttles my connection speed for some sites like YouTube. I use the VPN 100% of the time and although it decreases my overall speed, I notice it makes for a smoother internet experience. I do use it to switch regions though.
It’s not illegal to use a VPN, and it doesn’t violate any terms of use on Time Warner Cable, so I saw no reason to try to hide the fact that I’ve purchased one.
I love reading books. I love watching films. What I don’t love when I’m reading the latest thriller, or watching World War Z, is having someone breathing down my neck, monitoring what I’m doing, and where I’m going. I don’t have someone taking note of my eating habits, and I don’t have someone following me on the rare occasions that I go out.
Now…Bearing all that in mind, why the devil should I tolerate that from governments? Irrespective of whether I’m doing something illegal or not, it’s really no one’s business but my own unless I’m physically or mentally harming someone.
I use PIA as well and have been extremely happy with it. I’m currently on a 30 down 5 up connection and even when I use the VPN I get the exact same speeds. Granted, things may be a bit slower in reality than what the speed test is telling me, but it’s worth it imo.
To be quite honest, though, I’m not so sure that paying for a VPN is going to hide my identity, or keep me safe given what’s been uncovered lately (here’s looking at you, NSA). Are VPN’s really keeping us safer from these NSA deals?
This option is only really worth it’s weight if you tie it to a throwaway cell phone. To make any online purchases with those credit cards you have to register your phone number / address. It’s something to be aware of if you go the prepaid route.
There are cases in which governments require even reputable VPN’s to begin logging a particular user’s activities
In such cases it would be much quicker and easier for the government to get the IP of your actual ISP from the VPN provider. I’m sure they would ask them to turn up logging as well anyway, but once they have identified your ISP you are no longer anonymous.
So whether you pay in bitcoins or not makes no difference if they can see which IP you connect from, unless you connect to your VPN using TOR.
of course, google will have all the information associated with your account including perhaps your search history and gmail account, but certainly the non-vpn’d IP address you used to sign up and access the service. If google has it, the NSA probably already does. maybe just pick up a burner phone paid for in cash.
I can’t remember if i needed an address for voice or not…
I signed up to get free wifi calling on my phone so i could downgrade to a data-only plan and still have calls and text. And i still pay more than the europeans do for full service plans
