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Future Publishing <strong>Australia</strong>,<br />
PO Box 1077, Mount Street, North Sydney, NSW 2059<br />
Tel: 02 9955 2677 Fax: 02 9955 2688<br />
SUBSCRIPTION ENQUIRIES: Please call Magshop 13 61 16<br />
Email: apcmag@futurenet.com<br />
Web: www.apcmag.com<br />
EDITORIAL<br />
Editor-in-Chief Dan Gardiner<br />
Chief Sub-Editor / Journalist Carmel Sealey<br />
Senior Journalist Paul Taylor<br />
Senior Journalist Shaun Prescott<br />
Journalist Joel Burgess<br />
Journalist Stephen Lambrechts<br />
Journalist Sharmishta Sarkar<br />
Journalist Harry Domanski<br />
ART/PRODUCTION<br />
Creative Director Troy Coleman<br />
Senior Designer Nykke Coleman<br />
Designer Sharnee Swinnerton<br />
CONTRIBUTORS<br />
Graham Barlow, Jonni Bidwell, Matt Bolton, Josh Collins,<br />
Sean Conway, Alex Cox, Anne-Marie Coyle, Alan Dexter,<br />
Cat Ellis, Lindsay Handmer, Matt Hanson, Kenny Hemphill,<br />
Cliff Joseph, Andy Kelly, John Knight, Jeremy Laird,<br />
Chris Lloyd, Gary Marshall, Meikleham, Bo Moore,<br />
Howard Oakley, Nick Odantzis, Nick Peers, Les Pounder,<br />
Phil Savage, Mayank Sharma, Alan Stonebridge,<br />
Zak Storey, Nathan Taylor, Alexander Tolstoy,<br />
Mark Wilson, Darren Yates<br />
SENIOR MANAGEMENT<br />
Managing Director APAC Neville Daniels<br />
COMMERCIAL<br />
Sales Director Paul Marttila<br />
paul.marttila@futurenet.com<br />
ABOUT THE MAGAZINE<br />
<strong>APC</strong> is published by Future Publishing <strong>Australia</strong>.<br />
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is correct, please check prices and specifications before<br />
purchase.<br />
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ABOUT FUTURE<br />
Future Publishing <strong>Australia</strong> is part of Future plc. Future<br />
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How to choose<br />
a good VPN<br />
<strong>APC</strong>’s editor explains what you need to look<br />
for when selecting a VPN service provider.<br />
<strong>Australia</strong>’s much-maligned<br />
metadata retention laws<br />
are now in full effect,<br />
meaning your ISP (and<br />
your phone-service provider) is<br />
obliged to collect and store certain<br />
pieces of information regarding<br />
your digital communications —<br />
including things like who you’ve<br />
sent messages to and what websites<br />
you’ve visited. That data will be<br />
kept for two years and can be<br />
accessed by approved government<br />
agencies without a warrant.<br />
That’s a development that’s seen<br />
a surge in demand for VPNs in<br />
<strong>Australia</strong>. VPNs protect you from<br />
this ‘dragnet’ approach to metadata<br />
collection by cloaking all your online<br />
activities — when you’re connected to<br />
a VPN, all your internet traffic is first<br />
routed through your VPN provider’s<br />
external network — effectively<br />
meaning that only that VPN provider<br />
knows what sites and services you’re<br />
connecting to.<br />
But with hundreds of options<br />
available, finding one that’s good can<br />
be tough. If you’re mostly concerned<br />
about privacy, picking an overseasbased<br />
provider is a fairly safe first<br />
step. Once you’ve got some on your<br />
shortlist, we’d recommend checking<br />
the rather exhaustive chart at That<br />
One Privacy Site (thatoneprivacysite.<br />
net/vpn-comparison-chart), that<br />
includes a rundown of where each<br />
VPN is headquartered, what logging<br />
laws it complies with and even some<br />
limited speed-testing.<br />
The problem with overseas-based<br />
global VPNs — even the ones that<br />
lease local <strong>Australia</strong>n server<br />
infrastructure through which to<br />
route traffic (and theoretically give<br />
users faster and fatter speeds) —<br />
suffer from varying performance.<br />
That can happen if a VPN becomes<br />
too popular and doesn’t add more<br />
servers and bandwidth. We’d suggest<br />
not signing up for extended plans<br />
and sticking with month-to-month<br />
subscriptions — unless you’re happy<br />
to accept the risk. Regardless, before<br />
choosing a VPN, you should always<br />
sign up for a free trial and, during<br />
that period, frequently test your<br />
speeds using Speedtest.net.<br />
If you want to go with an Aussie<br />
company, which can help guarantee<br />
speeds and service, you need to be<br />
a bit more wary. There’s still some<br />
question over whether VPN operators<br />
in <strong>Australia</strong> need to comply with the<br />
metadata retention laws — and<br />
different companies take different<br />
stances. A literal reading of the laws<br />
seems to imply that only “carriers or<br />
carriage service providers” — ISPs —<br />
need to collect metadata, and as such<br />
some VPN providers don’t, but some<br />
do, so be sure to check. But stay tuned<br />
— we’ll be checking back in on the<br />
VPN category later in the year with<br />
our own review round-up!<br />
DAN GARDINER<br />
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF<br />
dan.gardiner@<br />
futurenet.com<br />
www.apcmag.com 3
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