I had TorGuard for years, but the service just got more and more questionable over time. I stopped using it a handful of years back.
I’ve more recently looked at them again, and their VPN-router product is just a whitelabeled device you can buy elsewhere that they did the trivial install of their VPN software on.
Their actual VPN speeds are fine, certainly better than I’ve heard AirVPNs are, but you either get thrown in the pool of exit points that are all very well identified as malicious VPN exit points (so everyone blocks you), or you pay to upgrade to an individual “residential IP” exit point. That gives you a completely unique exit point so the minimal VPN “blend into the exit point crowd” simply won’t exist anymore, and it’s questionable what reputation those “residential IPs” might have (I’ve gotten blacklisted IPs from my direct ISP before, IP reputation is everything).
The service claims it has no/minimal logs, but they also have a privacy policy that seems to allow a good bit of data collection now (if I remember correctly).
If you’re trying to use it for geo-unblocking, a residential IP option might work for you. If you’re trying to use it to keep your privacy from your ISP, you might very well be trading one bad actor for another. If you’re trying to use it for hiding P2P activities it will probably function well, but I can’t speak about how well they’ll actually protect your privacy from DMCA requests (if that might be relevant to you).
Hard pass on their privacy policy. They have to collect lots of identifying data to do financial transactions in the US, and they don’t currently sell that data, but:
In connection with, or during the negotiation of, any merger, sale of company stock or assets, financing, acquisition, divestiture or dissolution of all or a portion of our business, or
They’re a startup that just had a huge Series A in 2021. If they’re at all successful they’ll almost certainly get purchased by a mega bank that primarily wants all that sweet sweet private data that’s been getting collected but not shared all along.
Tell me you either don’t love in the US, or don’t understand what a credit score is, without telling me…
Every time you open a credit card, you get a “hard credit check”. You get one(?) freebie a year, then it starts significantly dropping your credit score. Having a larger amount of unused credit available to you will slightly increase your score, but having too many less of credit (e.g. >5) will significantly harm it.
All that said, credit scores are a scam, but do affect your ability to get a car or home loan, or rent a place to live.
For the $5 first payment, they have a partnership with Snikket who will setup and administer a private XMPP server for you. It’s included in the price if service and is retained for as long as you maintain a server. You can use it for any XMPP thing you want, and have as many users on it as you want.
WARNING: This varies by domain TLD. Some TLDs require public whois information because the country that owns the TLD has dictated it. Just pay attention when creating/obtaining new domains.