1y ago

What cloud vps server host do I use?

What cloud VPS host is the best for privacy and security? I want to self host stuff for myself some tools. Mental Outlaw make a video last year about self hosting your own VPN with a service called Vultr but back in December vultr added to their TOS that they own what you host and a bunch of other scary stuff. So I don't trust Vultr anymore. I don't see recommended vps hosts on privacyguides website. So what do you guys think I should use to self host various things like a VPN, Nextcloud, and so on.

19 comments

You can also get an old PC without a gpu and hook it up to a domain via dyndns or similar. Or just wireguard to it. You'd have higher upfront costs, but very small running costs, so it will be worth it at some point and you fully controll the data on it.
- Electricity isn't free and nor is your time, you are never going to beat commercial VPS hosters on price.
  
  Looking at my bills, my cluster server costs me ~15€ per month in electricity.
  It has:
  4x6 arm cores
  4x6 GB RAM
  8TB HDD storage
  3TB nvme storage
  As soon as you link me a VPS offer with comparable specs, but lower monthly cost, I am switching.
  
  That's a load of crap. Anything you have to subscribe to will turn out to be more expensive than owning at some point. And even if that was not the case, the monetary value that you give your data is what should determine how much you should pay, up front or over time.
  
  If one forgoes contracts and is trusting, anybody can host their private files on my private, self-hosted servers. But only if it's sensitive documents. Like the stuff you wouldn't want to host at a standard online host.
  Completely free, aint that just a sweet deal?
  Personally I find time and money tertiary to privacy and would pay 10 times the standard rate for a truly secure host.
  Unfortunately they don't exist so I learned to self host encrypted servers with VPN access on private infrastructure.
  Beat use of time and money ever.
Run a home server and VPN to it through a VPS if needed, so they see nothing. E2EE everything.
No one has mentioned Njalla. I haven’t used their server offerings, but they are probably the best for privacy.
https://njal.la/servers/
- I think ADTAQ is exactly what I am looking for and $10 a tb is a very good deal. If they are the "Anti-Walmart" of VPS's then I am sold.
You need to trust your provider. If you choose a bigger one, chances are you are a bit safer. Those kind of providers make big bucks on companies, so if they harm the trust of their customers they are out of business. You could try to choose software which implements E2EE and zero-trust to be safer, but those are not available on all software categories. VPS providers have access to all your stuff. So it's all up to you which provider you trust. I would prefer a bigger name too some obscure little basement hoster.
The best thing to do is not trust your vps. You can use different credentials than those you normally would, connect through a vpn to obscure your identity (questionably useful depending on how you paid) and use public/private key pairs where no private key material or certificates end up on your vps.
I’m not sure of a true “zero trust” method to secure a virtualized computer when someone else has lower level software access and physical control over the hardware it’s running on.
Check out Njalla, Kyun, 1984 Hosting and OrangeWebsite. I think they all accept crypto payments (including Monero!) BitLaunch is a reseller for Linode and Vultr that allows you to pay with crypto, and hostingbydesign is a Hetzner reseller that doesn't require KYC.
Hetzner has a pretty decent privacy policy afaik.
I would look into aruba vps; i remember it being decent; but dont take my word for it.

19 comments