How to make your own personal VPN in under 30 minutes

[tarekma7]

VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, are a popular way to stay safe online. When you connect to a VPN, all outgoing network traffic is funneled through an external server. Your internet service provider can't tell what sites you visit (only that you're using a VPN) or inject content into webpages. VPNs are also commonly used to bypass blocked websites and to stay safe on public Wi-Fi networks.

Unfortunately, using certain VPN providers can be just as dangerous as going without a VPN in the first place. Many popular providers will log connection details of users, which can then be sold to third parties. Some insecure services also leak connection information, leaving you just as unprotected as you would be without a VPN.

Even though there are a few excellent VPN choices available on the market, hosting your own VPN server is another option. It takes a little bit of work to set up, and it's not the best option for everyone, but there are several benefits. For this guide, we'll set up an OpenVPN server on a Linode VPS, which costs $5/month. While you can absolutely host a VPN from a PC at home (even a $30 Raspberry Pi can do the job), you'll get the highest-possible speeds and virtually no downtime from a remotely-hosted VPS. You also won't have to worry about hardware failures, and you have multiple region options.

Should I host my own VPN?

There are advantages and disadvantages to making your own VPN server. Here are the main points to keep in mind when deciding what to do.

Advantages

You're in control of your data.
It's usually cheaper or on-par with paying for a VPN subscription.
You can use the VPN server for other things, like hosting a website or Nextcloud installation.
Websites and services that ban VPNs probably won't detect yours, because it won't be on an IP block list. This doesn't apply to Android apps, since they can detect when any kind of VPN/proxy is being used.

Disadvantages

Anonymity isn't possible, since the VPS host will have your name and payment information.
Your total bandwidth will be limited. Linode gives you 1TB/month, but you effectively get 500GB, because the data has to go from the origin to the VPN and then from the VPN to you.
You won't get special features that some VPN services provide, like malware/tracker blocking, unless you have the technical knowledge to set them up yourself.
You can't easily switch between different countries/locations.

Set up a Linode VPS

First we need to create a VPS, which is the Linux virtual machine that our VPN server will run on. There are many different VPS providers, but Linode is a good general option that isn't too complicated, so that's what we'll be using (note: this is not a sponsored/promotional post). DigitalOcean is another popular option.

First, go to Linode's website and create an account, if you don't have one already. That's our referral link, which will give us a small credit when you join — we host Android Police and APKMirror on Linode. You'll need to enter billing information. Once you make it to the dashboard, click the 'Create' button and select 'Linode,' or go directly to this link. This is where you'll pick what hardware your server will have, and where it will be hosted.

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[Sasha]

Useful information, Tarek. Thanks for the post.