• Overcome censorship in countries like China, Iran, UAE, etc.
• Access blocked and geo-restricted websites
• Watch Hulu.com, Pandora.com, ABC.com, BBC.co.uk from anywhere
• Protect yourself from snoopers at Wi-Fi hotspots, hotels, airports, corporate offices and ISP hubs.
• Hide your IP address for your privacy online

IPREDator

World’s most famous BitTorrent network ThePirateBay launched in June 2009 its own VPN service. Unlike any other VPN service, IPREDATOR assures that no user activity logs of any kind are stored. The VPN service was designed to give you a private and 100% secure internet access. It uses 128bit encryption to make sure that no one, not even your IPS, is able to peek in your data transfers.

The name of the service mocks the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) legislation which empowers copyright holders to get personal details of file-sharing users from ISP’s.

>> IPREDator

HideIpVPN

HideIpVPN was launched in September 2009 and it’s a very popular VPN service, according to Hide-IP-Tools.com. The service hides your IP address (using VPN technology) and exposes UK or US IP addresses instead of your real one. This allows you to unblock a lost of restricted sites and protect your online privacy.

One of the most appreciated features of HideIpVPN service is that it offers 100 free accounts each month.

>> HideIpVPN]

AceVPN

Ace VPN is a VPN service that you can use to privately and securely surf and download on the internet without leaving a trace and/or being tracked. Besides the free version that is by invitation only, Ace VPN offers a premium service for $5/month. AceVPN allows P2P traffic only for premium accounts.

AceVPN requests their users to limit the upload and the download speed to 100kbps so that it does not affect other users on the network.

>> AceVPN

ItsHidden

ItsHidden is a free VPN that works on BitTorrent (BT) traffic including uploading and downloading transfer. Thus, it’s useful for users who torrent traffic been throttled by their ISP, or users who need to hide for anti-piracy organizations from sharing copyrighted materials.

>> ItsHidden

TheFreeVPN

TheFreeVPN is a free service that lets users surf the web privately also allowing them to bypass internet censorship. Unfortunately, it comes with a price: annoying ads. You can choose from 3 US servers (one special for watching Hulu), 3 UK servers and 1 Canada server (this is the only free Canada VPN that I know!).

>> TheFreeVPN – No longer available in the list of VPN services 2009.

HideMyAss

HideMyAss Pro VPN is one of the best VPN services 2009 as it is an easy to use application which anonymously encrypts your entire internet connection. The tool automatically works with any application or protocol including p2p/bit-torrent.

>> HideMyAss

12vpn

12vpn is a reliable VPN service with three server locations for OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP setups, based in the UK and US. What I like most about 12vpn is that you can switch servers, if you wish, by logging in to your account area and selecting another, but 12vpn maintains that it auto-selects the best choice for you based on your location.

>> 12vpn

OpenVPN

OpenVPN uses the OpenSSL library to provide encryption of both the data and control channels. It lets OpenSSL do all the encryption and authentication work. Thus, it allows OpenVPN to use all the ciphers available in the OpenSSL package. It’s a little more challenging to set up that PPTP but with the right tutorials an average computer user should not encounter any problems.

What is an OpenVPN VPN provider?

OpenVPN VPN providers use the OpenVPN protocol to connect users to VPN servers. Every provider uses its configurations to set up the connections, depending on the desired level of encryption.

How do the VPN providers integrate OpenVPN?

There are two ways OpenVPN can be integrated. The first one by using the OpenVPN user interface and predefined configuration files provided by the VPN service. Thus, when you subscribe to such a VPN service, you need to download some .opvn files that will be used by the OpenVPN UI to connect to the desired servers. The advantage of this approach is that you may use several VPN services from the same interface and connect to a large variety of servers.

The second approach is to integrate the OpenVPN connection library in custom build apps. Thus, you don’t need to install OpenVPN yourself. It will be done silently by the app installer. The advantage offered by such apps is that you may switch between different VPN protocols (for example from OpenVPN to PPTP, L2TP or SSTP).

My recommendation is to go for the second type of providers if you are a regular VPN user and you plan to use one service at a time. However, for users with special needs (lots of locations and IPs), the OpenVPN UI can be a more straightforward alternative.

List of OpenVPN VPN providers

Finally, here is the list of several OpenVPN based VPN services (alphabetically ordered):

The advantage of such an account is that the servers used are not overcrowded and it is more likely to get decent speed and quality. Moreover, most of the free VPN that have US IPs (including Hotspot Shield) is blocked by Hulu. So, it’s possible to get free accounts that can be used to unblock all kinds of restricted websites, including Hulu.

I have performed a research and found 2 VPN providers that offer free accounts in exchange for some promotion for their service: HideIpVPN and AceVPN.

Free accounts from HideIpVPN

HideIpVPN is a new VPN service that offers US and UK accounts. If you are a blogger, a webmaster, you have a Twitter account with many followers or you are a recognized member of some online forum you can get free UK/US VPN account from them. All you have to do is to write a review of the service on your website, blog or forum and here you are.

Here are the requirements:

• The review must be written by you and not copied from other websites.
• The blog must have at least PageRank 2
• The review must contain a link (dofollow) to hideipvpn.com.
• The length of review content should be between 150-400 words.
• The review can be in any language

If you are interested or have other promotion ideas you can contact them at contact [at] hideipvpn.com. Before you write the review they can offer you a trial account.

More details you can find here.

Free accounts from AceVPN

AceVPN is a VPN service that offers US (Colorado, Illinois, California) and Europe (UK, France) VPN accounts. In order to get free VPN accounts, you need to meet conditions similar those of HideIPVPN.

If you are a webmaster, blogger or a recognized member of some online forum, you can write about AceVPN on your website, blog or forum to get an invite to Ace VPN service for FREE.

Requirements:

• The content must be written by you and not copied from somewhere else
• You can put the review on the index page or any other secondary page. The write up should remain on the site as long you are using the FREE VPN service
• The review must have a direct link (dofollow) to any page on acevpn.com
• The write up must be at least 150 words
• The write up can be in any language

More details you can find here.

Have you been able to get free VPN accounts? Are they useful? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Important! Both services have restrictions related to the P2P/torrent traffic. So, if you are interested in this it is not used to write a review.

Update: ibVPN also offers free VPN accounts for bloggers and newsletter subscribers.