A word of caution

Note! When you connect to the internet through the RiseupVPN you are bypassing any firewalls on your local network. Your computer will get its own IP address on the open internet. This is great, because that way your computer can communicate freely with others without getting blocked. However, bypassing the local firewall also means that your computer is more vulnerable to attack. Therefore, you should enable a firewall on your computer.

Choose OpenVPN or PPTP

There are two options for connecting to the Riseup VPN: OpenVPN or PPTP.

OpenVPN PPTP
Security High: OpenVPN creates a very secure connection. Medium: Although commonly used, PPTP is weaker than OpenVPN.
Speed Fast: OpenVPN is speedy. Slower: PPTP can be less efficient than OpenVPN.
Flexibility Flexible: Many options allow you to get through firewalls. Inflexible: Often blocked by ISPs and firewalls, sometimes unintentionally.
Usability Difficult: The OpenVPN client can be buggy and frustrating. Easy: Support for PPTP is already built into your operating system.

Choose a VPN Server

Choose one of these when specifying a “gateway” or “vpn server”:

[insert vpn-servers]

Setting up OpenVPN

OpenVPN is faster and more secure than PPTP. Also, some ISPs, corporate offices, or public Wifi networks will attempt to block access to a VPN. If you are on a network one of these networks, your best bet is probably OpenVPN: it is very difficult to block. However, be warned: OpenVPN is much more difficult to set up and get working correctly. We recommend that you try PPTP first.

In a nutshell

Although each client is different, there are five values that must be configured in your OpenVPN client:

Optional configuration options:

Detailed tutorials

Setting up PPTP

PPTP is already built-in to your desktop computer and can be easier to set up. You do not need to download or install any special software. Although PPTP has several security vulnerabilities, it is probably more than adequate for most situations. If you have reason to believe that a determined attacker is specifically targeting your communication, such as a government or large corporation, you should definitely use OpenVPN and not PPTP.

Having said that, Riseup uses PPTP in the most secure way possible: we require very long VPN secrets and we accept only the more secure and up-to-date types of PPTP connections.

Generating a VPN secret

We cannot use normal riseup passwords for connecting via PPTP. Instead, you must visit user.riseup.net and generate a VPN Secret. You will use this VPN Secret in place of a password when configuring PPTP.

In a nutshell

Detailed tutorials

Tor and the Riseup VPN

If you are thinking of running a Tor Exit node on the Riseup VPN, please read this. There is nothing wrong with running a Tor Exit node on top of the VPN, however it can cause a problem that we’d like to avoid.

Tor exit nodes are listed regularly in block lists. This is due to heavy abuse that happens over Tor, so there are lists that are automatically created for every Tor exit node that registers itself on the network. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that the block lists block the entire network, not just the single IP that you are using. This causes problems for other services, such as sending mail.

Fortunately, there is a way around it, its just a matter of changing your Tor exit policy so that certain ports are not allowed. It seems as if these block lists only list Tor exit nodes that enable certain well-known ports that are used for abuse. According to one of the block list operators a tor exit node is added to the block list if it uses the default exit policy because there are a few ports in the default policy that are problematic, these ports are: 6660-6670, 6697, 7000-7005

This can easily be changed so you do not allow these ports through your Tor exit node by changing your torrc as follows:

ExitPolicy reject *:6660-6670 
ExitPolicy reject *:6697 
ExitPolicy reject *:7000-7005

and then restarting your tor daemon.