I haven’t tried Proton VPN as yet, so don’t have any real views on it. Beyond the limited free account, pricing is on the high side compared to some of the other contenders, but not hugely so. I know ProtonMail has a good reputation among privacy-conscious folks, so you can probably believe their no-logging claims.

Yup, Tunnelbear etc is safer than Hola, and you’ll be able to access anything you can at home (assuming you’ve got a decent Internet connection, of course).

Tunnelbear is probably easier to set up, and they’re both easy to use.

I definitely wouldn’t be using Hola when accessing anything to do with your finances — they’ve been doing some pretty shady stuff recently.

While technically a proxy service (like Hola and others) will let you do all the things you’re talking about, there’s no real reason to use one over a VPN — especially since you can get free VPN accounts with services like Tunnelbear that may well do everything you need while you’re away. If not, they cost very little for the full-service accounts.

We’re off to Vietnam soon and as such access to Social Media (Facebook), communication apps (WhatsApp) and bank privacy (checking online accounts) are all pertinent issues! I also aim to use NetFlix if I can ever find good enough WiFi access!

Will a VPN like Hola cover stuff like this or do I need something a little more ‘professional’ sounding such as the VPNs mentioned here?

Thanks for getting back so quickly!

So, to paraphrase!!
If I use something like TunnelBear, it is more security-safe than Hola.
And, if I use TunnelBear, I will be able to use sites like USA NetFlix in Vietnam, use FaceBook and also check my bank account whilst over in Vietnam too.

I don’t mind paying a fee as, I’m only there for the month; in your opinion which is better (safer and easier to use), TunnelBear or Witopia?

Thanks again!

Good (and geeky) question Chris.

While a website using HTTPS (and there are a lot more than there were a couple of years ago) is good, it’s still not 100%.

First, there are still many sites that don’t use HTTPS (as you mentioned).

Second, some sites use HTTPS for the main login, but not afterward. This is something that sites sometimes do to lower overhead on their servers, but it can potentially put your information at risk.

So given those two things, I would definitely still recommend using a VPN. It just takes one bad bit of code to put you at risk, and that’s too much to leave to chance.

I’ve had this problem with some sites too! So far I’ve only used free VPNs (mostly Hotspot Shield), so I wonder if the paid ones don’t have this problem? Would love to hear others’ experience with that.