How to build your own VPN if you're (rightfully) wary of commercial options
While not perfect, either, cloud hosting providers have a better customer data record.
By Jim Salter
In the wake of this spring's Senate ruling nixing FCC privacy regulations imposed on ISPs, you may be (even more) worried about how your data is used, misused, and abused. There have been a lot of opinions on this topic since, ranging from "the sky is falling" to "move along, citizen, nothing to see here." The fact is, ISPs tend to be pretty unscrupulous, sometimes even ruthless, about how they gather and use their customers' data. You may not be sure how it's a problem if your ISP gives advertisers more info to serve ads you'd like to see - but what about when your ISP literally edits your HTTP traffic, inserting more ads and possibly breaking webpages?
With a Congress that has demonstrated its lack of interest in protecting you from your ISP, and ISPs that have repeatedly demonstrated a "whatever-we-can-get-away-with" attitude toward customers' data privacy and integrity, it may be time to look into how to get your data out from under your ISP's prying eyes and grubby fingers intact. To do that, you'll need a VPN.
This is one of those "modertor's privilege" posts: not only does it bring up the (very real) dangers of trusting sensitive data to your ISP, but it introduces readers to the "virtual server" world. I have a (personal) server at prgmr.com, and I highly recommend them: their motto is "We don't assume you are stupid."
Bill Horne Moderator