[Zhang Fei]

[What do you think of the VPN “SurfShark”, who are touted by the guy at China Uncensored?]

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My preference is for US-based VPN’s. Any US-based operator who messes around with customer data (i.e. sells it to hackers) will have to deal with the global reach of the FBI. Of the American providers I researched, a couple stand out. AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield is free, but functions on the Google model - they run ads based on your geographical location. And there’s a daily data limit of 512Mb. VPN Unlimited is based in New York and is fairly cheap.

Surfshark is recommended by the China Uncensored guy probably because it works in China. If you need it to work there, it’s probably as good a solution as any. But the murky British Virgin Islands address means it could also be owned by or beholden to the Chinese government.

[BTerclinger]

Thanks. I don’t travel to China but appreciate the heads up about BVI offices.

re your comments on any U.S. based VPN having to answer to the FBI, well... our FBI is pretty stupid and useless these days!

[BTerclinger]

re “But the murky British Virgin Islands address means it could also be owned by or beholden to the Chinese government.”

How does PRC have any control in BVI?

[TheBattman]

From all the research I did when I was contemplating paying for service - the very best VPN (from a privacy perspective) is one that is based in a country that does NOT cooperate with US and other nation’s anti-privacy laws.

Obviously - as the info on ExpressVPN indicates - they are actually a Hong Kong company - thus have tentacles of China wrapped up - so no assurance of any sort of privacy.

A US Based company is still beholden to US laws and subpoena/court order power (including patriot act unconstitutional invasion).

I would have to look back at my notes from over a year ago when I was digging for details about which countries are most VPN friendly.