IVPN Blog

IVPN | System and Network Administrator | Remote (UTC-1 to UTC+3) | Full-time | https://www.ivpn.net

IVPN is a privacy-focused consumer VPN service in operation since 2010. We have high ethical standards, regular security audits and a stellar reputation among security and privacy analysts. This year we are launching multiple new services to complement our VPN offering.

We are looking for a System and Network Administrator with the following responsibilities:

- maintaining and ensuring the high availability of our network of hundreds of servers, including VPN gateways

- interfacing with ISP's to resolve upstream network issues

- provide tier 2 and 3 support to our customer support team for issues relating to infrastructure

- consolidating infrastructure, unifying monitoring and aligning operational practices across the business.

The position is fully remote with high level of autonomy: maximum freedom, minimum meetings.

What we expect:

- 5+ years experience managing Linux servers including bare-metal.

- Strong understanding of TCP/IP, UDP, SSL/TLS and other related Internet protocols

- Experience working with a configuration management tool e.g. Ansible, Puppet, Salt.

- 5+ years experience with Python, Go or other scripting languages

- Interest in infosec, specifically with regards to public key cryptography, firewalls and Linux server hardening.

You can email me if you have any questions about the role: viktor at ivpn.net. If you are ready, you can apply here:…

So who is this article aimed at? If you intend to torrent, you're not going to roll your own on a VPS that is going to forward DMCA notices right back to you. DO and AWS are not cool with operating as high-transfer seedboxes and will be fairly expensive. If you're trying to remain hidden from a nation-state level actor you're obviously not going to use a VPS, but you also have bigger problems than HideMyAss accidentally leaking your ipv6 address. If you're like most people and don't want to pay $$$ a month for a VPS but want to torrent a bit, you just want a straight up regular VPN recommendation which they never provide. "Choosing a VPN is hard", yeah no shit, that's why I was hoping you would provide some value by doing the work for me.

I was in the market recently and ended up going with iVPN for $100/year. Their "18 questions to ask your vpn provider" [1] page is basically a more practical version of this article. Not that I am going to use it, but they also have guides showing you how to created nested and branched chains of tor/pfsense vm clients across countries, if you really did want to hide traffic from a nation state. If putting your trust into a VPN is the issue it's much easier to trust someone that links directly to security forums and openvpn documentation.

[1] https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/18-questions-to-ask-your-vpn-service-provider

https://www.ivpn.net/ also generates a random userid and also accepts cash in the mail (only for large purchases unfortunately). I wasn't able to get mullvad's multihop to work on Android, but iVPN Pro does the trick. iVPN also has a nice server status page that helps you optimize for speed (low load server) or anonymity (high load server) as appropriate: https://www.ivpn.net/status/ They have a weird "anti-marketing" homepage which devotes almost equal space to explaining why you should not buy their product :-P

Perfect Privacy accepts a gift card (more convenient than mailed cash IMO) and has a nifty "neurorouting" feature which aims to be better than standard multihop (claims of speed, at least, I can attest to). They do ask for an email address, sadly, unlike iVPN/Mullvad. Also I just saw this and it looks a bit worrisome https://www.security.org/privacy-guide/perfect-privacy/

Both iVPN and PP let you block various trackers / MANGA corps at the network level.

I like Mullvad but it seems good to support a diversity of providers. Curious if anyone has any dirt on either of those two, or if they can make more recommendations.

Mullvad is probably the VPN with the longest track record of not keeping logs. I find it likely that the vast majority of people who hosted immoral content using Mullvad's port forwarding feature solely used Mullvad for this purpose because of their reputation. After Mullvad discontinued port forwarding, IVPN (probably the second most trusted VPN provider) came out a month later and announced that they were also discontinuing port forwarding [1].

According to Mullvads blog [2] the police raid was related to a blackmail attack in Germany.

[1]https://www.ivpn.net/blog/gradual-removal-of-port-forwarding

[2]https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/2/update-the-swedish-authorities-answered-our-protocol-request/

Yes, I have seen that. There are some examples in a guide that I wrote for IVPN.[0] For example, the lowest-rtt probe for an IVPN server in Reykjavik, IS is in Amsterdam, NL.[1] The minrtt for a probe in Iceland is greater.

However, I'm just looking at signal velocity for the probe with the smallest minrtt. So probes where routing to the server is less direct will just have greater minrtt for a given geographic separation. That is, lower signal velocity. So that doesn't affect my analysis.

0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/how-to-verify-physical-locations-of-internet-servers

1) https://www.ivpn.net/blog/wp-content/img/IVPN-is1.gw_.ivpn_.net-All-Probes-under-4000-km.png

That system a) has a paytrail, b) involves companies that can be coerced / hacked with relative ease, c) is a paid system and d) is quite a bit for average user to handle.

Also, if you're going to stay anonymous, you need something that is extremely hard to misconfigure. I use wireguard on my Android and I've set the VPN to activate automatically, and I only allow connection via VPN, but I'd never imagine any of the apps I'm running are properly anonymized.

Also, since you're apparently working for or affiliated with VPN providers[1], you might want to be more transparent about possible vested interests.

[1] https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/what-is-a-vpn