Most VPN Services are Terrible

VPN Pre-Shared Key matchup Bingo

This mini-rant came on the heels of an interesting twitter discussion: https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/591074055018582016

Provider / "Secret" Key

GoldenFrog / thisisourkey  
GFwVPN / gfwvpn  
VPNReactor / VPNReactor  
UnblockVPN / xunblock4me  
IBVPN / ibVPNsharedPSK!  
Astril / way2stars  
PureVPN / 12345678  
PrivateInternetAccess (PIA) / mysafety  
TorGuard / torguard  
IPVanish / ipvanish  
EarthVPN / earthvpn
NordVPN  / nordvpn

*Honorary mention in the VPN Hall of Shame, on general principle (for blatant sexism and utter insincerity): DoubleHop.me

Moral of the story: Don't believe everything you read on, say, TorrentFreak and PCMagazine. And (crucially) think about your threat model—are you guarding against amateur WiFi snoops at Starbucks or Marriott? Reducing identity monetization profiling by ISPs (ie ad tracking)? Minimizing exposure to government surveillance? Trying to be anonymous online? If the latter, a VPN won't help much.

Citations:

https://www.google.com/#q=goldenfrog+thisisourkey Archive: http://archive.is/qlrLK

http://www.gfwvpn.com/?q=node/224 Archive: http://archive.is/EdpFV

https://www.vpnreactor.com/android_l2tp_ipsec.html Archive: http://archive.is/uwJvk

http://unblockvpn.com/support/how-to-set-up-l2tp-on-the-android.html Archive: http://archive.is/4To5Y

http://www.ibvpn.com/billing/knowledgebase/34/Set-up-the-VPN-connection-on-Android-handsets.html Archive: http://archive.is/srptW

https://www.astrill.com/knowledge-base/50/L2TP-IPSec-PSK---How-to-configure-L2TP-IPSec-on-Android.html Archive:http://archive.is/PZpRU

http://billing.purevpn.com/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=33 Archive: http://archive.is/R4JTi

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/ Archive: http://archive.is/U1bkL

http://torguard.net/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=58 Archive: http://archive.is/iKJjl

https://www.ipvanish.com/visualguides/L2TP/Android/ Archive: http://imgur.com/IQU1mdg

http://www.earthvpn.com/android-l2tp-setup-guide/ Archive: http://archive.is/roKtf