[mirimir]

For several years, I've been recommending AirVPN, Insorg, IVPN, Mullvad and PIA. So at this point, I can say that they've all been around for several years, and I've heard nothing bad about them.

Ones I have heard bad things about are EarthVPN, HideMyAss, Proxy.sh and PureVPN. And although I've heard nothing bad about ExpressVPN or NordVPN, the fact that they've bribed so many review sites to recommend them annoys me.

And yes, I have written stuff for IVPN.

[kmonsen]

I signed up for ExpressVPN before visiting China due to all sites recommending this (I badly wanted Google maps and Google to work). ExpressVPN does not work in China so either something changed very recently or a lot of people have been bribed to lie.

I would not trust ExpressVPN anymore for anything.

[atr_gz]

ExpressVPN works well in China, although there was a week in March where it was very spotty. I'm using it right now.

I agree that it's annoying how many review sites are getting paid to recommend them, but the service actually has been good for the last year.

I've tested several VPNs here, including Mullvad and Nord. ExpressVPN has the fastest speeds by a quite a bit.

However, self-hosted is much faster still. Unfortunately, it's less reliable.

[11430C3E]

"Works in China" as an unqualified statement is useless, equally "ExpressVPN does not work in China."

Are you in Beijing or Shanghai? Are you on China Telecom or China Mobile? Are you using the Sweden 2 or the Hongkong 3 server? Every permutation of those variables can have a different answer, and that answer can change from day-to-day.

My experience is that in southern provinces and bigger cities it is _more likely_ to work at any given time. But things change.

> However, self-hosted is much faster still. Unfortunately, it's less reliable.

Using a CN2 VPS is definitely a :racecar: in my experience. I primarily use shadowsocks instead of a proper VPN because moving to a different port when the interference starts is usually sufficient.

[atr_gz]

I disagree that the statement is useless, but here's some more info for you. I use China Telecom and China Mobile. Haven't tried China Unicom.

ExpressVPN has a message on most of their apps saying to use Tokyo 1, HK 4 or 5, Los Angeles 5, or UK Wembley when in China. I have used all of those servers, although HK 4 and 5 are the fastest.

I've used Shadowsocks and ShadowsocksR for my VPS. Switching ports will work for a while, but I've always found the server will get blocked eventually, possibly due to "active probing" as defined in this paper[1].

This person[2] suggests hosting a website from your Shadowsocks server as a cover, but I haven't tried it yet.

[1]https://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2015/papers/p445.pdf

[2]https://medium.com/@phoebecross/bypass-gfw-china-2019-dc5959...

[nij4uyr]

wow man thanks. I'm reading your Privacy Guides and they're quite quality materials!