Riccardo Serafini tapionx

Don't use VPN services.

No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.

Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.

A Russian translation of this article can be found here, contributed by Timur Demin.
A Turkish translation can be found here, contributed by agyild.
There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.

Trashing the Vodafone Station

How to replace the Vodafone Station with your very own router

Vodafone forces its customers to use their modem/router, the "Vodafone Station": using any other router is impossible because authentication is being done via a custom PPPoE setup.
In the PPPoE packet there is a field named Host-Uniq which is used to separate packets from different PPPoE sessions: Vodafone requires the Station serial number to be put in this field as authentication.

Hardware setup

A Linux router with root access is needed to replace the Station with. With an xDSL connection a modem with a custom firmware like OpenWrt has to be used, most likely one based on a Lantiq SoC.
For a FTTH internet connection then every machine with at least two gigabit ethernet interface and a decent CPU will do it.

	#!/bin/bash

	# compiled from https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux/debian/#/debian-jessie-80-64-bit

	sudo apt-get update
	sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
	sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates -y

	sudo sh -c "echo deb https://apt.dockerproject.org/repo debian-jessie main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list"
	sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://p80.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-keys 58118E89F3A912897C070ADBF76221572C52609D

	history.replaceState && history.replaceState(
	null, '', location.pathname + location.search.replace(/[\?&]message=[^&]+/, '').replace(/^&/, '?')
	);