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Ask Slashdot: Trustworthy Proxy Services?

Posted by Soulskill on from the carrier-pigeons-are-reliable dept.

gusoline writes "Since I'm now living in Brazil (originally from the U.S.), I'm looking for a reliable, trustworthy proxy service I can use to both access services I've used for a long time (Pandora, Netflix, etc.) and services I want to try out (Spotify). Since I'm not looking for illegal downloads or to hide what I'm doing, I'm less concerned about anonymity than I am about region restrictions, reliability, latency, and security of passwords and traffic through their network. I'm OK paying for services that deliver what I want (including the Proxy service itself). Any suggestions from the Slashdot crowd?"

18 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. your-freedom.net by unity100 · · Score: 2

    works well. even with wow or other games. has lots of choices. paid, free options.

    --
    Read radical news here
  2. Profit by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1) Buy cheap US VPS
    2) Set it up yourself so you know exactly what is being logged
    3) Profit.

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    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:Profit by mcelrath · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's what I was going to say. This can be had for as little as $20/month, and you can do anything you want with it.

      Note however that the asshats at Hulu, Pandora, etc have been using a lot of dirty tricks to figure out of you're using a proxy. Currently Hulu does not work, even with a proxy. You will probably need to run a VPN. I think they're using some flash trickery to make a secondary verification that you're not using a proxy. It's a lot more than just the IP address of the originating request. There are a few HOWTO's out there that describe setting up proxies for Hulu that are a year or two old. They no longer work. (I've tried)

      So, to sum up, simply buying a proxy service (from anyone) will likely not work with many services. You're better off with a VPS over which you can run a VPN. Of course, you need the technical ability to set that up...

      --
      1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
    2. Re:Profit by nzac · · Score: 5, Informative

      Go to http://www.lowendbox.com/ 20 dollars is a rip-off. For just a proxy you should be able to get away with bugger all RAM and storage. Transfer speed might be a bit slow though 10Mbps wont cut it for streaming.

    3. Re:Profit by chimpo13 · · Score: 2

      Using google as a mostly blind search doesn't equal the advice you'd get from /. What you've seen and what's recommended here (even with the grain of salt) are different things.

      I'm using IAPS (intl-alliance.com). It works ok. Facebook knows it's a proxy and sometimes won't refresh when other things do. $105/year. I'm not sure if it's worth it, but it's the choice I made. Saudi laws are very strict but it was stopping me from Rolling Stone magazine (reading Matt Taibbi's blog/columns) that got me off my ass.

      --
      riding round the world on an old motorcycle
    4. Re:Profit by JMJimmy · · Score: 2

      uhh you don't need a VPS to watch BBC. ModifyHeaders extension in Firefox works just fine.

  3. Trust yourself by hectorh · · Score: 2

    Get yourself a server in the US and install your own proxy... Won't cost you more than $100/month.

  4. Incorporate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Welcome to the 21st century, where corporations are allowed to globalize -- but not people!

  5. AWS by Thing+1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Depending on your preference, create a Linux or Windows machine on AWS in a US presence, and then do your work from there.

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    1. Re:AWS by icebraining · · Score: 2

      IP over SSH is very inefficient, though. OpenVPN or sshuttle would probably give you better throughput while keeping your traffic encrypted.

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
  6. WiTopia by liquidhokie · · Score: 2

    http://www.witopia.net/

    Pick your country and protocol. Works with the BBC, Hulu, Vimeo, Pandora, Netflix, probably just about everything else. Of course, you have to pick a US proxy for Hulu, a British proxy for the BBC, etc.

  7. Anonymizer by bahamat · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm biased because I'm the senior systems engineer at Anonymizer, but I recommend us.

    Anonymizer Universal is an IPSEC/L2TP VPN, support for Windows, Mac OS X and iOS (we don't support Android, but it works. We don't supply instructions because Android is a moving target).
    Total Net Shield is SSH tunneling+Apache proxy. Supports anything with an SSH client.
    Take your pick. In either case we don't log traffic.

    Traffic egress is from the U.S. and your IP address changes every day.

    1. Re:Anonymizer by Bob9113 · · Score: 2

      Traffic egress is from the U.S. and your IP address changes every day.

      Have you thought about partnering with some foreign peers? I'd love to pay one bill each month and have proxies in half a dozen countries.

      --
      Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  8. Linode.com by Pirow · · Score: 3, Informative

    Full control of what's logged and what's going on, if you use less than 200GB you can get away with paying less than $20/month for their entry level VPS, you'll get your own IP address so it's very unlikely to get blacklisted (as that seems common with a lot of the more popular proxy/VPN providers). You'll need to setup everything yourself, but you get a lot more control, you essentially have your own server to play about with and it's not much more expensive than move VPN providers.

    Before I setup my linode I was using overplay.net who were okay, but they were often quite slow and I did have issues with blacklisting on certain sites and every so often the server I was using would go down.

  9. overplay.net by kju · · Score: 2

    I'm a happy customer of overplay.net. For US$ 9.95 you get access to VPN servers in 48 countries, with multiple servers in many cases.

    I can't say how secure my data is with them but it works reasonably well with OpenVPN and mostly fast as well.

  10. VpnPop.com by Vexo · · Score: 2

    I've been using VpnPop.com's OpenVPN service for about 6 months now. A good distribution of endpoints, very fast bandwidth, and low prices. Right now I'm registered for the 0.5 Mb/s full-duplex at $3-some a month, but I'm often able to get speeds of up to around 2MB/s (yes, B).

  11. I live in China, and solved this a while ago by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2

    Strong VPN. Great service, fast VPNs, lots of VPN options, and streams just about anything everywhere. Punches through the Great Firewall of China (here in Shanghai and elsewhere throughout China) with ease. Pretty cheap, too - worth it to get my fix of Pandora, Hulu, and Netflix!

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    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  12. Re:illegal downloads by iamacat · · Score: 2

    It's this kind of thinking that will make movie studios bankrupt. Otherwise law abiding people are copying stuff because IP laws have been terribly abused. If movie copyrights were around 10 years and penalties for copying were in line with petty shoplifting, a lot of us would be turning violators in. Is it really constructive at this point to pick on people who are trying to be honest by using an authorized service when they could just hit Pirate Bay?