Howdy VPN is a confusing service, to say the least. The free VPN doesn't offer anything close to a traditional VPN provider at first glance – and the more I dig, the more I'm convinced that you should leave Howdy VPN alone. Keep reading, and I'll explain why it can't compete with today's best VPN services.
HowdyVPN: the basics
First off, let's go over the basics. Who is behind Howdy VPN? Unfortunately, I don't know.
Combing through the terms of service, privacy policy, and disclaimer only told me that the company is seemingly based in the Netherlands – or is at least subject to Dutch law. Beyond that, there’s not much more to know. The website itself is registered in Indonesia and you can reach out via a single Gmail address, but that's all I could find. It's not a great start.
I was expecting to find a traditional VPN provider, but as soon as I landed on the Howdy VPN website I realized I was looking at something entirely different. The website is light on details, but offers a few services you wouldn't expect to see side-by-side with each other.
Figuring out who Howdy VPN is for isn't straightforward, either. The VPN offers free networking services – which means there's a free VPN and a free VPN service, free RDP service, and something called "Find SNI", which initially perplexed me.
Each page offers virtually no information about what these tools do. Instead, they're bloated with loads of unrelated Chat-GPT-generated text about cryptocurrency and VPNs. Needless to say, this isn't very user-friendly. If you're not already aware of what these tools do, Howdy VPN won’t be of any help to you whatsoever.
Howdy VPN: features
Howdy VPN's selection of features worries me – it's like the VPN is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. So, with that in mind, I decided to take a closer look at the VPN tool.
There are actually two on offer – Howdy VPN and "Trojan VPN", which immediately rang some alarm bells. Upon closer inspection, I can see why it's called this, but it's still worrying.
Howdy VPN offers two free VPNs. The default VPN is available for seven days from the point you sign up for it, with unlimited bandwidth and a "no-logs" policy that I'm not entirely confident in.
The "Game" VPN provides lower latency at the cost of reduced maximum speeds and is available for thirty days instead of seven. Either way, you'll see a list of servers you can scroll through to see where each is located and the total number of users connected to the server.
Once you've clicked through, you'll be presented with an options menu that allows you to set your username and password for the VPN, along with something called an "SNI" or "Bug Host". I'll dig into this more when I cover the SNI finder but, for now, clicking through the remaining options generates an OpenVPN config file that you'll then need to load into a third-party client.
Howdy VPN doesn't actually offer a VPN client of its own – and I think it's a little misleading to call it a VPN provider.
Then, there's the Trojan VPN based on TrojanGFW, an obfuscation service designed to evade deep packet inspection by tunneling your VPN traffic through an HTTPS tunnel. I was suspicious, seeing as Howdy VPN also offers "free RDP" services, that this was a Remote Access Trojan service, but it's relatively harmless. There's a quota system in place of a timed lockout, so when you sign up for a Trojan VPN server you'll only get around 30 GB or so of data before your account details stop working.
The VPN service requires you to visit a separate site that doesn't seem to be working, so I can't comment on it. Howdy VPN does have a bunch of additional servers with a bunch of obfuscation guarantees, including RDP servers that let you connect to a remote desktop to use as a proxy host.
However, the tool that really caught my eye was the "Find SNI" option.
Howdy VPN: Find SNI
There's hardly anything on the Howdy VPN website about what Find SNI is or what it does. In fact, the provider is weirdly coy about the tool, stating:
"We know you need this, but we can't show it to just anyone to make sure it will last longer so you'll have to figure out how to use this feature."
The Find SNO tool itself gave me a list of partially censored host names and, upon clicking through to one, I was presented with a captcha. Completing the captcha uncensored the host, giving me a full hostname and data about whether the IP associated with it was accessible, and a set of HTTP response headers. Weird. Really weird.
I managed to put two and two together after some digging and found what Howdy VPN was actually offering as a website. To give you the relevant context, I need to touch on bug hosts and how ISPs connect you to the internet.
When you connect to an ISP, your account is granted access to the World Wide Web – so long as you have a valid subscription. If you avoid paying your ISP bills for long enough, it'll cut off your internet connectivity. However, because your ISP does want you to pay your bills (and pay them as soon as possible), the username and password tied to your router will still be valid – it's just that your internet has been restricted so you can only access your ISP’s home page. All the requests you make to other hosts are processed by your ISP and dropped.
You'll see something similar if you try to access the internet without a data plan on mobile data, or if you're accessing a paid public router. Only certain websites are accessible without a subscription. I'll call these "zero-rated" websites, but they can be all sorts of different pages available for different reasons: think public health sites, government portals, and CDN hosts.
The important thing to note is that your ISP will allow you to connect to them without paying a subscription.
Here's where it gets tricky. The "SNI" I've been talking about is the Server Name Indicator and a key part of the TLS transaction that tells the server you're connecting to which website you want to visit. This makes SSL certification bookkeeping easier for servers that host multiple sites on the same IP, but that's not why we care about it today. Remember, you're advertising which hostname you want to connect to ahead of time. The ISP will read it and authorize your connection if it's to a zero-rated site, or drop the traffic otherwise.
What sites like Howdy VPN allow you to do is create a TLS connection through an SSL VPN that spoofs your traffic – making it seem as though it's heading to a zero-rated website through the SNI indicator before being sent on to the real destination by the VPN server. This is a massive violation of your ISP’s ToS by the way, if not outright illegal.
In the context of offering completely free VPN and VPS servers, I have no doubt that there's something weird going on here.
There's no third-party audit to validate Howdy VPN's privacy policy and, as a result, I'd have to assume that it's logging your traffic by default. In fact, there's no mention of what happens to the data that's passed through the free VPN servers – and I think this is a total failure to make explicit what it is you're giving up in return for the free service.
Howdy VPN: verdict
When I dug a little deeper into who actually providers Howdy VPN, I found two more websites: fastssh.com, which hosts most of the tutorial content for Howdy VPN on a separate blog space, and sshkit.com, which offers similar services.
There's a whole web of free VPN and SSH services associated with each other that all seem to do the same thing, all seemingly kept alive by aggressive website marketing popups and ad marketing agreements with Google.
As far as I can tell, it all falls under the ZXC brand, which operates several websites from the same hosting cluster in Indonesia. I can't say whether ZXC is just monetizing additional excess server capacity or up to something more nefarious – but if everything I've covered so far hasn't been enough to put you off, then let me make it clear: don't use Howdy VPN.
The complete lack of transparency surrounding the site, alongside some really suspect services and a total disregard for normal monetization practices, means I wouldn’t touch the service with a ten-foot pole. Plus, it looks like you can only sign up for Howdy VPN via telegram, which is the icing on the cake.
I'd instead recommend that you check out a legitimate VPN service that won't sell your data as soon as you fork it over – like NordVPN.
NordVPN is the polar opposite of Howdy VPN in about every way I can think of. You'll get top-not encryption that'll keep personal data out of the hands of snoopers, an audited and airtight privacy policy, and some of the fastest speeds I've seen a VPN hit. Plus, if you're in the market for a streaming VPN, NordVPN leads the pack – and you can try it for yourself with its 30-day money-back guarantee.
Alternatively, if you'd rather stick to a free VPN, there are much better options out there. Proton VPN (designed by the minds behind Proton Mail) is a privacy-focused service that offers unlimited data with no catches; no ads, no tracking, just a really, truly, free service. The caveat is that you'll only have access to servers in three locations, and it's not as fast as other premium providers, but Proton VPN's free tier is more than enough for anyone wanting to shore up their digital security as they go about their day-to-day browsing.
AngelVPN is a relative newcomer to the VPN industry, having only established its presence in the last two years.
Still, while it lacks the extensive history of industry giants like NordVPN and ExpressVPN, Angel VPN has carved a niche in a very competitive marketplace as a budget provider with power.
In this review, I'll showcase the surprising strengths of AngelVPN, such as its speed and unblocking capabilities, as well as a few issues you'll want to be aware of being committing to a subscription.
About AngelVPN
AngelVPN, established in 2022, is headquartered in London. The UK isn't an ideal place to host a VPN company, unfortunately - after all, it's one of the primary members of the Five Eyes data-sharing alliance.
This raises several questions about how well AngelVPN is able to deal with law enforcement requests and targeted spying from intelligence agencies.
I'll get into the details a little later, but his potential government interference combined with a less-than-stellar privacy policy means that AngelVPN might not be your ideal provider if you want to prevent third-party snooping in an overzealous surveillance state.
On a more positive note, AngelVPN has servers in 67 countries, and more than 80 locations, and even boasts coverage across 13 points in America.
Normally, I'd say this puts AngelVPN squarely in the middle bracket when it comes to server networks, but I noticed a few interesting locations in the server list.
In addition to plenty of spots in Europe, like the UK, France, Italy, and Germany, there are a few lesser-covered regions listed, including Russia, China, Brunei, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands. This kind of spread is pretty rare, so if you need a VPN that can unblock content in these locations, AngelVPN might be worth a look.
(Image credit: AngelVPN)
AngelVPN pricing plans
Like most VPNs on the market today, AngelVPN offers a monthly subscription plan and some discounted long-term plans which significantly reduce the price.
A monthly plan costs $9.95. This is fairly cheap for a top-tier VPN but no extra features are bundled into the subscription – you just get the VPN.
Going for the 6-month plan knocks the price down to $3.33 per month for a total cost of $19.99. While this represents a 66% reduction in the monthly cost, buying the 12-month plan only reduces the cost by another 6% or so for a monthly cost of $2.83 and a total of $33.99.
Each AngelVPN plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee that allows you to test out the service before you commit to a subscription.
I was a little worried when I checked out the Terms of Service on the app and saw that it said no refunds would be processed, but after confirming with AngelVPN staff, and processing a refund based on the money-back guarantee, I'm happy to say it’s a legitimate promotion.
AngelVPN also supports a range of payment processors. In addition to the usual credit and debit card providers, there's support for Paypal, GooglePay, and a range of cryptocurrencies through BitPay, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
Privacy and security
AngelVPN is a mixed bag when it comes to privacy. There's nothing to complain about on a technical level – and, in fact, AngelVPN scores above-average marks in terms of VPN protocol support.
The Windows desktop app uses IKEv2 by default, which is a little unusual but definitely not a negative. IKEv2 is known for providing fast, high-security connections, but it's usually favored by MacOS and iOS devices.
There's also WireGuard support, as well as OpenVPN over both UDP and TCP. All three of these protocols are battle-tested and open-source, so you shouldn't have any concerns connecting to the internet.
I put AngelVPN's kill switch through its paces, too, in a series of stress tests designed to see if data would leak while the VPN is disconnected. I'm happy to report that it performed well in all cases. One caveat is that the kill switch only works while the VPN is connected. If you choose to disconnect manually while the client is open, it won't protect you.
One of the primary concerns I encountered with Angel VPN pertains to its privacy policy. Despite claiming to be a strictly no-logs provider, a closer inspection of its privacy policy reveals that it retains several significant data points that could potentially compromise your anonymity. These include details such as the user's city, ISP, connection timestamps, and the specific server being accessed.
While Angel VPN states that it does not record the contents of user connections, the retention of such information could still potentially lead to user identification if a third party was able to access the data, especially in the event of a request by law enforcement. Given that AngelVPN is headquartered in the UK, which has a less-than-stellar privacy reputation, it's entirely possible.
I raised this issue with AngelVPN's support staff. In response, they indicated to me that they have intentions to commission a third-party audit of both their privacy policy and server architecture in the near future. This is a positive step forward, as an independent audit will provide clarity on how AngelVPN captures data and potentially lead to revisions in its privacy policy.
However, it remains to be seen how this audit will impact its approach to user privacy. If online anonymity is your main concern, it may be worth holding out on AngelVPN until its privacy policy is updated following a third-party audit.
Netflix and global stream unblocking
AngelVPN works with every streaming site I tested, including Netflix in several regions (America, Japan, Canada, and the UK), Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, as well as regional streaming services such as BBC iPlayer, ITVX, and All 4.
In all cases, accessing the streaming service was instant. No buffering, no stalling mid-way through an episode, and no lockout screens. AngelVPN boasts that its services are optimized for IPTV, and it's evident from its performance that it's able to keep up with some of the bigger VPN providers when it comes to unblocking and streaming.
AngelVPN performance
AngelVPN impressed me with its performance – especially when you consider that it's a cheap VPN. To test its speed, I connected to the UK London server using a 100 Mbps connection, with the actual speed test being carried out by Ookla Speedtest.
Connecting over OpenVPN gave me download speeds of 63.85 Mbps and upload speeds of 20.89 Mbps. These speeds are more than enough to connect to a 4K streaming service without buffering or lag – even with other users on the same connection.
The only real complaint I have is that connecting or changing servers using AngelVPN took slightly longer than I expected, but your mileage may vary.
AngelVPN apps
AngelVPN is available on all major platforms, including Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. Rather surprisingly for a smaller VPN provider, there's also a Linux client with a full GUI that works as well as the other desktop clients.
The desktop app itself is pretty unremarkable. It's functional, but there's nothing here that would wow anyone who’s used a VPN before. It's simple and easy to set up, with a minimalist design that requires just a single click to get online. The P2P servers are clearly marked when you check out the location list, which is nice, but it'd be better to have a separate P2P tab.
AngelVPN customer support
AngelVPN's support is also better than I would've expected. The support staff stole the show – all of my queries got quick responses via the 24/7 live chat system and email. Each agent I chatted with was polite and knowledgeable, willing to have an in-depth discussion with me about both the scope of the VPN's streaming support as well as the shortcomings of its privacy policy.
Apparently, AngelVPN prides itself on having highly visible support channels and, as such, maintains an active presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I like email tickets better, but if you've got a different preference, AngelVPN has you covered.
The AngelVPN support library is pretty extensive, too, and has Quickstart guides for all platform applications. The apps aren't hard to use, but it's great to see each function clearly documented in the support library, as well as an FAQ section that covers questions about billing and AngelVPN’s service, too. There's even a guide on how to retrieve your credentials for OpenVPN if you want to set up your own third-party app.
AngelVPN alternatives
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN is a great pick for unlocking geo-restricted streaming content such as Netflix, DAZN, Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock. With a huge server network covering over 100 countries, it's one of the most expansive VPNs on the market. No matter where you're connecting from, ExpressVPN's ability to bypass geo-blocks ensures you'll be able to access a wide range of content from different regions. This is all powered by its proprietary Lightway VPN protocol, which delivers high-speed connections for uninterrupted streaming. ExpressVPN also guarantees a strict no-log policy, which is regularly audited by KPMG to demonstrate that ExpressVPN really doesn't hold on to your data.
NordVPN
NordVPN is another exceptional choice if you're looking for top-tier security and high-speed performance. In addition to its ability to effortlessly unblock content worldwide, NordVPN integrates cutting-edge security measures to safeguard you from online threats. With its innovative Threat Detection integrated scanning service, NordVPN continuously monitors incoming traffic for non-malware files, providing proactive alerts to preemptively protect your device. NordVPN also comes with Meshnet, which operates as a decentralized network that enables peer-to-peer communication and file sharing without relying on traditional centralized servers. It's all powered by NordVPN's high-quality VPN tunnels, so you can chat and send files safely in the knowledge you're protected by the highest standard of encryption.
Surfshark
Surfshark has a flexible subscription policy, allowing you to safeguard an unlimited number of devices under a single account. It's also got an extensive suite of tools designed to enhance the VPN for additional security. With Surfshark One, you get a comprehensive three-pronged solution to protect yourself from viruses, malware, data leaks, and privacy threats. Surfshark Antivirus shields your devices from viruses and malware with real-time protection and customizable security features. Then there's Surfshark Search, which allows you to perform web searches in complete privacy, free from ads, logs, and trackers. Finally, Surfshark Alert notifies you of personal data leaks in real time, helping you prevent potential damage before it's too late.
Private Internet Access
Private Internet Access easily matches the speed and power of other top vendors. It's one of the only top-tier VPN vendors in the industry to offer a fully-featured Linux client with a GUI, offering the same experience as AngelVPN but with more features. It also offers unique features such as anonymous purchase options for dedicated IPs, enabling access to sites that commonly block VPNs. Its "MACE" blacklist also effectively blocks ads, trackers, and malicious sites, further enhancing your privacy. If that wasn’t enough, PIA's commitment to a strict no-logs policy has been proven by several third-party audits and in court.
AngelVPN review: Final verdict
AngelVPN is a budget provider that punches above its weight in key areas. While it's not quite as feature-rich as Surfshark, or as globe-spanning as ExpressVPN, it's a quality VPN posed at a price that won't break the bank. If you're trying to watch IPTV or streaming services while abroad, you could do a lot worse.
However, if you're looking for a rock-solid VPN that comes with some extra security capabilities you won't find anywhere, I recommend you give NordVPN a shot.
TechRadar rating: ⭐⭐⭐½
How we test VPNs
Beside using the top recommended VPNs for our daily activities, we also conduct a thorough analysis of the top 30 VPN services every 6 months to keep track on how the software compares with other providers as new developments come in.
We start by reviewing each provider's website to double check if its claims and offering changed. We also look for any tracking cookies on the site and if/when they activate to see if the service tracks people using the site.
We then install and use each VPN service across a wide range of location servers and devices to see how they perform across the board. We go through all the settings to make sure all the features work as promised, while playing around with encryption protocols.
Our reviewers actively challenge the software, too, in the lookout for any flaws. For example, we purposely make the VPN connection drop so that we can test if the kill switch does its job of preventing data leaks correctly.
From speed connections and streaming unlocking results, to customer support and app usability, we regularly make sure to test every aspect of the software that could affect the experience of our readers.
As issues arise during our testing, we make sure to investigate these even by digging into the source code or the contents of its RAM if necessary. Head to our dedicated VPN testing methodology page if you want to know more.
I’m usually quite suspicious of free VPNs, especially ones with such bold claims about their privacy stance. Usually, all it takes is a visit to their privacy policy to find that the VPN is subsidized by intrusive data-scraping or, even worse, ads inserted directly into your browsing traffic. When I saw that Amnezia VPN advertised itself as a free service, I immediately started looking for the catch.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that Amnezia VPN seems to be taking a totally different approach. It’s an open-source solution built by a Russian team in collaboration with Privacy Accelerator, an organization dedicated to funding and developing privacy tools for use inside Russia. Without diving too deeply into the politics, Russia’s increasingly hostile stance towards free speech necessitates the use of the best VPNs around to communicate without worrying about prying eyes reading over your shoulder - or worse.
About the company
The Amnezia team released a completely open-source and decentralized VPN solution to combat Russia's harsh censorship. It isn’t decentralized in the Web 3.0 sense of the word, where everyone contributes their bandwidth to a single VPN network, but decentralized in the true sense of the word: there is no “Amnezia network”.
Let’s get this out of the way: Amnezia is not a one-click VPN solution. In fact, the Amnezia team doesn’t host their own servers at all. They’ve instead released a VPN product that allows you to deploy your own customized VPN server on the hosting site of your choice. While they recommend several known hosting providers, including Amazon AWS and Digital Ocean, you’re entirely free to pick whichever host you want. In theory, you should even be able to host a VPN off of your domestic internet connection.
So, if Amnezia doesn’t host a VPN service for you, what does it do? Well, Amnezia takes a lot of the difficulty of running a secure VPN server out of your hands. If you’re worried about a third party reading the data you route through a VPN, Amnezia lets you take back control by running your own VPN server. As long as you trust your host, you’re in complete control of how your server works.
Amnezia VPN pricing
Amnezia is completely free—that’s free as in free speech, and the client and server source codes are available on the GitHub repository for anyone to download. You don’t need to pay a penny to download the product and you’re able to modify and redistribute it as you wish.
Amnezia is also licensed under GPLv3, which means that it’s a breach of the license to use the Amnezia code as the basis for your own paid white-label VPN service. Other than that, you’re free to do anything you like with the code as long as you continue to distribute it with a GPLv3 license and don’t charge users.
The Amnezia project is funded by a combination of donations from various sources and contributions from non-profits through the Privacy Accelerator project. If you’re interested in chipping into the project, you can subscribe to the Amnezia Patreon or donate through Bitcoin, Monero, or Payeer.
Does Amnezia VPN offer privacy?
The real appeal of Amnezia is unparalleled control over your data. Even the most bullet-proof VPN solutions require you to trust your provider to protect your data from external hackers and their own employees. With Amnezia, you can pick the server host you have the most confidence in, and keep the administration of your own VPN server entirely in-house.
I particularly like how Amnezia handles DNS leaks. If you’re using a VPN while browsing the web, and if your DNS requests are still going through your ISP’s DNS servers, you’re actively disclosing the domain of every website you visit to your ISP (and thus, the government). Amnezia solves this issue by providing an interface allowing you to install your own DNS server on your hosting of choice, minimizing the amount of data you leaking while browsing.
Plus, Amnezia isn't interested in keeping, collecting, or storing logs, claiming:
"You have full control over your data. The app does not collect or transmit any statistics, logs, or other information about users or their data."
(Image credit: Amnezia VPN)
Amnezia VPN protocols
When you’re installing Amnezia, you’re presented with a choice of server settings based on the severity of censorship in your country. It's pretty much just a novel way to pick the protocols installed on your VPS by default, but, it's nice to see that it’s couched in language a non-specialist will understand.
Disclosing that you’re under extreme censorship will install OpenVPN over Cloak, medium censorship uses a hardened version of WireGuard, and low censorship will install default WireGuard.
Choosing to install your own VPN protocol instead lets you choose between default OpenVPN, OpenVPN over ShadowSocks, and IKEv2. All of these protocols are highly secure but differ in terms of connection speed and how obviously they appear as VPN traffic when analyzed.
IKEv2, OpenVPN, and WireGuard are all easily detected by basic deep package inspection (DPI) techniques and, as such, are only offered for the sake of encrypting your data. Any ISP looking to block your VPN traffic will shut down the connection to your VPN server, even if you’re also running an obfuscated VPN service. Instead, I’ll look at Amnezia’s obfuscated protocols and how well they hold up.
Without access to Russia or China’s internet routers, it’s difficult to truly tell how well a VPN protocol holds up under scrutiny. With that said, there are multiple techniques you can use to identify VPN traffic and it’s possible to make educated guesses about how governments track VPN usage.
The most obvious one is comparing against a list of known VPN servers. This could involve using the VPN service and enumerating endpoint IP addresses assigned to you, or accessing a third-party IP database of known VPN addresses. It’s not a comprehensive solution but it’s a good start for any authoritarian government. It works against commercial VPNs, but Amnezia skirts this problem by letting you host your own VPN—any hosting site could be a VPN, and it would simply be unfeasible to block every hosting site without making the internet completely unusable.
Want to learn more?
Curious about VPN protocols? Or want to figure out which one is your match made in heaven? Check out our guide to VPN protocols.
An ISP could also block the default port numbers for VPN protocols. OpenVPN and WireGuard both connect to a fairly unique default port, but this isn’t a particularly effective solution. By changing the port to something another ubiquitous web service uses (such as 443 for HTTPS), you can ensure your VPN traffic can’t be blocked at the port level without forcing an ISP to block the other services associated with that port, again, making the internet completely unusable.
Both of these techniques are somewhat rudimentary and don’t address the actual problem: DPI. OpenVPN and WireGuard traffic can be identified by looking at the structure of the packet headers, which have a distinct set of bytes. You can try this out for yourself by opening up WireShark and capturing some traffic with WireGuard open. You’ll see that the first byte in the WireGuard header is either “01”, “02”, “03”, or “04”, each corresponding to a type of WireGuard packet, followed by three bytes of “00”. A DPI program can match these bytes to instantly determine whether this is a WireGuard packet without reading the inner contents. From there, it’s as simple as null-routing the destination of the packet, and now your WireGuard connection no longer works. A similar concept applies to OpenVPN.
This means there’s a flashing arrow over every VPN packet you send that says “Hey, I’m a VPN packet!”. It’s not hard for your ISP to capture this information. Amnezia employs some interesting ways to avoid classification, but let’s finish discussing the ways an ISP can identify VPN traffic with the most nebulous, and least understood method: behavioral analysis.
The frequency, size, and destination of individual packets can be aggregated to create a statistical profile of a user’s internet traffic. Then, this reveals information about the stream of traffic, even if it's encrypted and obfuscated. Neural networks can be trained to accurately identify OpenVPN traffic with over 90% success rates. The entropy of an encrypted message can be analyzed to decipher which file type it might be, too. These are just the techniques we’re aware of, but many DPI vendors use black-box software to analyze traffic and this is especially true of ISPs in repressive regimes.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Security is always an arms race, even when it seems dismal for one side. Amnezia offers several different obfuscation methods with different levels of success against DPI. OpenVPN over ShadowSocks is the most well-known... and least effective. It creates an encrypted connection to a SOCKS5 proxy server, allowing you to run a VPN over the connection which doesn’t show any tell-tale signs of VPN use.
Unfortunately, the behavioral analysis I talked about earlier exposes ShadowSocks. It’s hard to find concrete details on how China blocks this system, but chatter amongst VPN circles suggests it’s fallen out of use and authorities are starting to use it to identify connections. This is backed up by the existence of SSAPPIDENTIFY, an academic project published by Xidian University, China, which seeks to classify types of ShadowSocks application traffic by using neural network classification. There are also suggestions that ShadowSocks is now vulnerable to active probing, whereby an ISP will send crafted traffic to a suspected ShadowSocks server and analyze the response to determine whether it’s really a ShadowSocks server.
Thankfully, ShadowSocks now supports plugins that enhance the usability of the project as an obfuscation tool. Cloak is the most important one offered by Amnezia, as it drastically reduces the protocol's vulnerability to active probing methods while continuing to masquerade as HTTPS traffic not easily identified by traditional DPI methods. Cloak does significantly downgrade the speed of your internet connection, but it’s worth it if you’re extremely concerned about the security of your internet traffic.
Finally, we get to Amnezia’s custom implementation of WireGuard: AmneziaWG. It’s important to note that AmneziaWG is not Amnezia’s recommended solution for extreme censorship, which is OpenVPN over Cloak. Instead, AmneziaWG is a hardened version of WireGuard that removes several key aspects used to identify WireGuard using traditional DPI methods. It changes the header values from the static ones I outlined earlier to random values, which makes it harder for DPI to identify the WireGuard packet. WireGuard packets also have a static size of 148 bytes, but AmneziaWG appends junk data to the start of a packet to randomize the packet size, making packet matching harder. Finally, the initial session connection is disguised by sending junk packets at the start of the connection. Honestly, it’s unclear if this would make a massive amount of difference to traditional DPI methods but potentially confuse statistically-based behavior analysis.
You should note that all of these obfuscation techniques add additional overhead when using WireGuard proportional to how much junk data you’re adding on a per-packet basis. All of these metrics are customizable from inside the Amnezia app, so you can balance obfuscation against speed until you find a sweet spot that confuses DPI while keeping your connection usable. While I don’t have a Russian or Chinese ISP to test against, it wasn’t possible to create a set of rules in WireShark that could accurately characterize AmneziaWG traffic without prior knowledge of user settings. Amnezia’s own testing in these regions suggests that any regime that outright drops unfamiliar UDP traffic will filter out AmneziaWG traffic, so where possible you should probably stick to the slower OpenVPN over Cloak protocol. However, for regimes with less advanced DPI, such as Iran, Egypt, and Turkey, it may be a viable solution. Your mileage may vary.
Amnezia VPN setup and configuration
Amnezia makes server administration surprisingly simple, too. You set up a VPS server on your account and provide details to the Amnezia app, which you’ll have set up on your phone or desktop. Once the app logs into your VPS provider for the first time, it sets up the relevant public key infrastructure and OpenVPN key-pair necessary to authenticate you securely in the future. The client then connects by SSH and automatically installs and configures the Docker software required to run your VPN connections.
Each time you start a new VPN protocol connection, your Amnezia client boots up a new Docker instance with randomly generated SSH keys. This approach has two major benefits: any data left behind by your VPN instance is removed from the server after your connection is terminated, and any new instances have completely fresh credentials. If you’re worried your key has somehow been compromised, you can tear down your Amnezia instance and start a new one in just a few moments.
After you’ve started up an Amnezia instance, all admin is taken care of inside the app. Installing new protocols on your server, sharing your access credentials with others, and adding new servers to your client only takes a few taps. It makes tweaking your VPN service shockingly easy and I’m impressed with how seamless this process is. It’s clear that Amnezia’s team put thought into creating a user-friendly product that’s still powerful enough to provide effective security while browsing.
Amnezia anti-censorship tools
Amnezia also recently announced the launch of its anti-censorship tool, available in Russia, Myanmar, Iraq, and Kyrgyzstan, at no extra cost.
These four countries have been hit particularly hard by censorship, making it increasingly difficult for citizens to access sites and services like Facebook, X, WhatsApp, and TikTok. It's easy to take these platforms for granted, but they're vital sources of information, allow folks to keep up with current events, and a means to stay in touch with friends and family.
Amnezia's tool allows access to sites that'd otherwise be inaccessible, thanks to censorship.
In March 2022, Russia blocked independent media outlets covering the Ukraine war, including the BBC and Deutsche Welle, as well as popular social media platforms. Amnezia worked alongside Russian human rights activists, Roskomsvoboda, to release the first version of the service.
In 2021, following a military coup, Meta services were blocked in Myanmar. Fortunately, the Amnezia service arrived in the country in April 2024.
Kyrgyzstan blocked TikTok back in April 2024, though citizens can now regain access to the app via Amenzia.
Amnezia introduced its tool into Iran in May 2024, too, using the AmneziaWG protocol—a necessity, given that all standard VPN protocols are blocked in the country.
Performance testing: How fast is Amnezia VPN?
Ultimately, your speed and streaming capability will vary massively depending on which host you use and how far away you are from it. For this reason, it’s hard to come up with meaningful numbers, because your experience is absolutely going to be different from mine.
What you should keep in mind is that Amnezia is not an ideal solution for unblocking content streams such as Amazon Prime or Netflix, as these providers are constantly on the lookout for non-residential access to their streams and block those IPs accordingly.
Amnezia VPN review - final verdict
It could be said that there’s nothing fundamentally innovative about Amnezia VPN—after all, what’s stopping you, a tech-savvy internet user with unfiltered website access from registering a VPS subscription and installing some open-source VPN software yourself?
If that’s your takeaway from Amnezia VPN, you’re missing the point. Not everyone has the knowledge or resources to set up a micro-VPN service securely, but everyone should have access to a free and unfiltered internet. It shouldn’t be an exercise in gatekeeping, where only the most well-read and capable internet users can duck past censors. Privacy tools need to be easy to use to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. This philosophy is baked into Amnezia’s design all the way through. You can even share your VPN client information with other users through the app so it’s possible to run a single VPN server for several of your friends and family with relative ease.
Amnezia embraces this philosophy wholeheartedly with a simple interface and clear, concise support material that walks you through the installation process in plain English. I can’t speak for how the site reads in Russian, but I can only assume it’s similarly well-written. The source code for both client and server has been independently audited by 7ASecurity, which published several exploits of varying severity that the Amnezia team has patched. This approach to transparency is really refreshing from a VPN provider.
The only significant issue I can see with Amnezia is that you’re handing over your server credentials to a third party, which automatically administers a server for you. Normally, this is a setup I’d balk at. However, the Amnezia app and server are both fully open-source. You can browse the source code line by line for yourself if you need convincing that Amnezia isn’t malicious.
I can only think of one other solution that’s attempting to do something similar to Amnezia, and that’s Outline VPN from Jigsaw, a Google technology incubator dedicated to technology projects that intersect with online anonymity and freedom of speech. It uses ShadowSocks to tunnel a ChaCha20 encryption stream, but it’s not as pointedly designed to evade DPI as Amnezia is, nor is it nearly as user-friendly. Although Outline is also open source, Jigsaw’s proximity to US defense projects makes me somewhat uncomfortable so when it comes down to it, I’d bet on the rag-tag group of Russian privacy advocates in the long run.
In 2024, Kanary is one of a number of the best data removal services, which play a fundamental role in keeping your personal information out of the wrong hands, such as data brokers that buy and profit from data.
For the uninitiated, data removal services come in a few different forms but their task is essentially simple: scan the web for your personal data (think address, email, phone number, and so on) and, either automatically or manually, remove that data from data brokerages, social networks, search engines, and so on.
There are a lot of companies that offer such services, and today we're looking at Kanary, one of the most well established and reliable services on the market.
We'll get into the nitty gritty below, but Kanary offers a free trial (which then turns into a free tier subscription) and two paid tiers of its data removal services that offer different levels and specifications, including the ability to add custom domains and emails to speed up removals.
In 2024, keeping your online data safe should be of paramount importance, and we recommend checking out the best VPNs, the best password managers, and the best antivirus software to help prevent anything untoward happening.
We also recommend checking out rival data removal services like DeleteMe, Mozilla Monitor Plus, and Surfshark Incogni to make the best choice for your needs, be that a wider range of data brokers targeted or a corporate plan.
As we mentioned above, Kanary offers two paid tiers and, at the moment, a fairly generous 14-day free trial that includes three removals, which will then turn into a free tier subscription if a user decides not to pay.
The Premium tier is split into monthly and yearly payment plans, albeit with one difference: the monthly plan does not include free custom domain and email to speed up removals.
Kanary charges $16.99 per month or $179.88 per year, which translates to $14.99 per month, but that will, of course, be billed yearly. Each tier lets users add family members, for $7.49 per month on the yearly plan and $8.49 on the monthly plan.
Finally, Kanary offers an Enterprise plan, which costs $179.88 per year per user and adds a ton of different features that we'll get into below.
These prices are fairly towards the high end of the range for data removal services, although the addition of a limited free tier and, on top of that, a 14-day free trial are nice perks that can at least offer a feel of the services, and remove at least some data from brokers and other online services.
Kanary has a really helpful explanation of how its service works on its website, and we'll break down the main themes here, on top of some other notable features.
Upon becoming a Kanary member, the service begins scanning the web to identify where your data is located and who has been storing it. That process can take anywhere from two to 14 days, and includes removing users from Google Search, and asks for your preference on data on Facebook and other websites.
Between days four and 14, Kanary is still scanning the web and removing any data automatically that falls within its scope. On day 15 (or maybe sooner), Kanary will generate a dashboard to show removals, pending removals, and its overall progress.
By day 30, Kanary says there should be around a 60% removal success and the software will continue to rescan and check for your data out there. Users can initiate a new scan sooner than 30 days, but Kanary recommends waiting for the dust to settle first.
Between day 31 and 45, Kanary estimates there will be an 80% removal success rate, as the service focuses on the "toughest removals" and its support team investigates websites that are not responding to removal requests. By day 90, you will likely be looking at a 95% to 100% removal success rate as Kanary's software and its staff work their magic.
Beyond the 90 days, Kanary will continue to scan every month and resurface old exposures to fix them promptly, and users can track pretty much everything on the main dashboard.
It's pretty much simple, and we found Kanary to work as advertised. The company publishes a helpful website on its Privacy & Security philosophy that offers a lot of details for those interested.
Kanary also offers a tier for businesses, which provides a pretty similar set of features to the personal plans but with some additions geared towards enterprise.
The high-end service comes with 256-bit encryption and multi-factor authentication, the ability to set up accounts within five minutes, and dedicated support, to make sure that your needs are met quickly and easily.
Kanary works by searching and removing content related to employees at a business, like it does with personal data. You can find out more about its enterprise tier on its website.
Like its peers, Kanary offers a good range of support documentation, including a helpful blog with tips on everything from Google data removal to deleting popular social media services like Instagram and LinkedIn.
There's also an FAQ with a lot of basic questions about how the service works, and the company publishes a long list of all of the websites Kanary removes from.
On top of that, Kanary offers email support, as you would expect.
There are a number of high quality data removal services available right now from a range of companies, some independent and some part of larger organisations.
DeleteMe, for example, is a veteran of the data removal game having been launched in 2011, and includes a lot of great features, including support for up to 750 data brokers (albeit with some available on on expensive plans). The company charges $129 per year for its basic plan.
Mozilla Monitor Plus, too, is a great option that is developed by the same people as Firefox, meaning you can rely on its quality and robustness. Monitor Plus costs $8.99 per month.
Honourable mentions should also go to Surfshark Incogni, PrivacyBee, IDX, and Hello Privacy, all of which offer data removal services to a high standard and are worth checking out to match your specific needs.
In our testing, Kanary worked well and deserves to be up there alongside the best data removal services around in 2024. With the crisis of data brokers and the abundance of personal data we (accidentally) leave across the web, there has never been a better time to get a handle on your online footprint.
It's worth checking out Kanary's competitors like DeleteMe and Mozilla Monitor Plus, especially if you have a specific use case in mind, or to just make sure you're getting the best value.
Covering hundreds of data brokers, plus Google, Facebook, and other social networks, Kanary is a solid option, and the $16.99 per month tier, while not cheap, offers a wide range of features.
DeleteMe is one of the best data removal services out there right now, helping you keep your personal data from data brokers and other internet parties easily.
In 2024, making sure your personal data is safe is hard, which is one of the reasons we recommend using a password manager, antivirus, and a VPN, and with the prevalence of social media, data brokers, and most jobs requiring an internet presence, it's a hard world out there.
Responding to this situation, data removal services have sprung up, letting users quickly and painlessly remove their data from Google, social media, and the internet at large with the click of a few buttons.
One of the leading services, and the subject of this review, is DeleteMe, a US-based service that deals with name, age, location, email, addresses, and much more, stored by over 750 data brokers across the US.
DeleteMe says the service completed over 50 million opt-out removals by 2022, after its parent company Abine launched DeleteMe in 2011, long before most people had ever heard of a data broker.
The service has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and now, of course, TechRadar Pro, a sign that your data is safe and secure with its experts.
Let's dive into the DeleteMe data removal service review.
As we mentioned above, DeleteMe is sadly only available in the US right now, meaning that users in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere will be missing out.
The company offers plans across one or two years, with the latter being cheaper on a per monthly or yearly basis, and for one or two users.
One year and one person costs $10.75 per month, billed as $129 per year, while one person and two years costs $8.71 per month, billed as $209 over two years, or $104.50 per year.
For two users, the price naturally rises, to $19.08 per month, or $229 per year as billed, for one year, or $14.52 per month, or $349 across two years.
Which level you chose depends on your needs, and it's worth reiterating that all of these planned are billed annually, so the true cost to use DeleteMe is $129. Of course, they are paying a team of experts to do the work, but that might be too steep for some users.
DeleteMe works by using four simple steps: users submit their information (think age, location, emails, phone numbers, and so on), which is then searched for by the company's experts. For some data, DeleteMe requires a government or state ID.
After that process, DeleteMe then sends you a detailed report (see an example) of your data from across the whole internet, which might be a little disconcerting, but it's better to know than not.
Once you've received the report, DeleteMe then begins scanning the internet for your information and deleting it, before continuing the scan and delete every six months for the term of your year contract.
DeleteMe removes data from over 750 data brokers, and there's a complete list of them on the website. In today's surveillance age, data brokers are one of the key ways that dangerous (and harmless) actors can obtain your data. It's worth noting that some competitors cover more data brokers.
The process means that almost everything is handled by the company itself, which is a big bonus and part of the reason that the $129 cost is there: paying for expert data removal specialists isn't cheap.
DeleteMe has a really useful dashboard that shows a range of information and, as you use the service over months and years, analytics for how your data is faring out in the big bad world. The service shows you how many data brokers have your data, and the number of removal requests, among other things.
Finally, one neat feature is that users can make custom requests for removals to DeleteMe, whose experts will then assess the request and carry it out, a nice touch.
Alongside being able to remove personal data, DeleteMe also has an enterprise level that is used by Google, Pinterest, ProPublica, Yahoo, and other big US brands to help stop executive and employee exposure.
DeleteMe helps with the data of public-facing employees, executives and board members, and individual contributors to your business.
Pricing is available on application, so if you're representing your business make sure to get in touch with DeleteMe.
DeleteMe offers a fully fledged online portal with tons of information to help users across a huge array of topics. Everything from password changes to pricing, two-factor authentication, data security, and more is covered.
In addition, DeleteMe also publishes some really helpful DIY Opt-Out Guides, in the interest of ensuring that all users – and not even just DeleteMe users – can help keep their personal data out of the wrong hands.
There are extensive guides on removing data from an array of different data brokers, as well as general guidance on best practices, all written by experts. It's a really handy resource, even if you don't ultimately get DeleteMe.
DeleteMe has competition from a wide array of services, including the likes of Mozilla Monitor Plus, Kanary, PrivacyBee, and OneRep.
VPN provider Surfshark, which might be a familiar brand, has a service called Incogni that can do a similar job to DeleteMe, but starts at $12.99 per month, and doesn't need to be paid for a full year before signing up. The service is also available outside of the US, including in the UK, the EU, and Canada.
We recommend checking out as many services as you can to find the right fit, especially if your needs are more specific and niche.
DeleteMe, released in 2011, is one of the most long-running and well-respected data removal services out there, and with good reason. Across its personal and business editions, the service delivers everything you want in a quality package.
Having experts on hand to help sift your data, and the tools available to find tune the kind of data you want removed, is really handy, and ensures that a) a machine won't muck something up and b) your data is in safe hands.
While having to pay yearly is a slight drawback, and reports are only generated every quarter rather than monthly, DeleteMe is a comprehensive service for removing your data from data brokers.
The market for virtual private networks (VPNs) is huge, and it can be difficult to figure out which services are reliable and which are better off avoided. Some VPNs are mediocre, most do the job without having any stand-out features, and a handful really knock it out of the park.
With this in mind, I'll be digging into OysterVPN (and whether it's worth your money.) I've been researching and reviewing VPNs for years, now, so you can rest assured you'll be getting first-hand info from a hands-on testing process (and not just the usual marketing blurb you can find on OysterVPN's website yourself.)
For a VPN that's only been on the block for a few months, OysterVPN is massively impressive—and definitely one to keep an eye on. With some adjustments to its toolset, the inclusion of WireGuard, and better performance, OysterVPN could be well on its way to giving the best VPNs a run for their money. For now, however, there are still plenty of snags to iron out.
OysterVPN features
OysterVPN is situated in Ireland and owned by Oyster Digital Solutions Ltd. It's a new-ish provider that kicked off its VPN services in early 2023 and, hopefully, this means that it's on the cutting edge of cybersecurity technology.
Ireland isn't part of any Western intelligence pacts, like the notorious 14 Eyes Alliance, so I'm also pretty confident in the provider's privacy policy. However, Ireland does impose mandatory data retention laws—so OysterVPN's no-logs policy has to do a lot of heavy lifting.
OysterVPN currently hosts 150+ servers in 17 countries, most notably:
Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Singapore
Netherlands
USA
UK
This is a decent spread of locations, especially across Europe and Asia, but it’s nowhere near the extensive list of locations you would get from a top-tier VPN. Functional, but not amazing.
It's great to see OysterVPN offering split tunneling, which gives you full control over which apps are covered by the VPN connection. The downside is that it's only available on the Windows and Android apps, which is disappointing, considering that top-tier providers now offering split tunneling for MacOS.
Keep in mind
Split tunneling is handy if you want to stream content from one location and browse in another, but it's better to switch it off if you put your privacy first.
Fortunately, OysterVPN's split tunneling works well. It's easy to specify which apps and sites use the VPN connection and whether you'd rather have the VPN cover your entire connection.
Torrenting with OysterVPN is seamless, too. I didn't encounter any issues while hopping from server to server, which suggests there’s a full P2P service enabled across all of them. The same goes for P2P gaming across Hamachi—it was a breeze.
OysterVPN pricing plans
OysterVPN has a single payment tier that allows you to choose how long you want to subscribe for. The monthly plan costs $9.99 and includes 3 free months upfront, which is pretty awesome.
The monthly plan is on the pricey side, given the lack of server locations, but OysterVPN's yearly plan is more modest at $2.50 per month. Alternatively, if you feel like making a bigger commitment, OysterVPN lets users make a one-off payment of $49.99 for lifetime access to the service. This works out at $0.42 a month—that's not bad at all, but it is a limited time offer.
No matter which subscription you pick, you'll be covered by a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can put the provider to the test without risking a penny.
Unfortunately, there’s no free trial or free VPN tier, so you’ll have to purchase OysterVPN if you want to give it a shot. The provider only accepts major credit cards and PayPal, too, meaning there's no option to pay via Bitcoin. This is going to disappoint folks who want to really shore up their privacy.
All OysterVPN plans offer five simultaneous connections—which isn't massively generous. However, it will allow you to protect all of your favorite devices. A family household can easily have upwards of ten gadgets (including mobiles, PCs, consoles, and more), so if you're looking for unlimited connections, you're better off with Surfshark.
(Image credit: OysterVPN)
Privacy and security
OysterVPN comes with most of the features you need to maintain your digital privacy. There are four VPN protocols to choose from: IKEv2/IPSec, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, and OpenVPN. I recommend steering clear of L2TP and PPTP, seeing as they're not secure, and sticking with IKEv2 or OpenVPN. Both of these picks offer industry-standard security and reliable speeds.
I was disappointed to see that OysterVPN doesn't offer WireGuard, though. It's a relatively new VPN that combines the tight security of OpenVPN with the speed of IKEv2, all while maintaining a much smaller resource footprint. Given that OysterVPN touts itself as a modern VPN, there's no excuse not to offer WireGuard. Ideally, I'd like to see the service ditch its outdated protocols and welcome WireGuard to the fold.
OysterVPN passed all of the IPv4, DNS, and WebRTC leak tests I put it through. It’s reassuring to see that OysterVPN really will preserve your privacy while you’re browsing online, given that there are so many leaky VPNs out there. The only real issue I found was that IPv6 wasn’t supported, but as long as you disable this service, you'll be alright.
Furthermore, thanks to AES-265 encryption, you can be sure your traffic is encrypted in a way that won’t expose your data. It’s the same technology baked into SSL, which is trusted by every major institution on the internet.
Similarly, OysterVPN’s kill switch worked well. A kill switch makes sure that if your connection to the VPN drops, you won’t immediately default back to your ISP’s internet connection and accidentally leak your original IP. While it might be a little inconvenient, it’s an essential part of preserving your privacy with any VPN. I put OysterVPN's kill switch through a series of disconnection scenarios and it didn't disappoint.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that OysterVPN also offers DNS-level ad-blocking. Most of us use an ad-blocker these days, to banish those annoying pop-ups and invasive ads, but OysterVPN augments this functionality by putting a stop to malware and preventing it from being downloaded to your computer by blocking the connection on the network. In practice, this worked pretty well, but I still noticed a few ads here and there. This isn’t a dealbreaker by any means, as the feature is still extremely useful.
Logging policy
OysterVPN claims that it's a no-logs service—most VPNs do. It's difficult to verify this without a third-party audit, however.
In theory, OysterVPN could have a server architecture set up using disk-less servers that operate entirely in RAM. Actual details about its implementation, and how it achieves zero-logging, are scant at best, and Ireland has mandatory logging requirements.
So, if you can't take any chances with your privacy, I'd recommend sticking to audited services like ExpressVPN and NordVPN.
Netflix and global stream unblocking
Streaming with OysterVPN was painless. It takes a whole lot of dedicated manpower (and server capacity) to keep up with Netflix’s policy of banning VPNs, but I was able to check out US and UK content without a hitch.
Accessing Hulu, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, and DAZN was just as straightforward—and that's an impressive spread of services. I was even able to access the WWE network, and OysterVPN claims it’s also able to unblock a wide range of additional sports platforms including UEFA, the Premier League, and the NBA. I haven’t tested this for myself, but given how well OysterVPN unblocked everything I did try out, I have no reason to doubt this is the case.
I didn't experience any major issues with lag or buffering, which is awesome news if you're in need of a tip-top streaming VPN, but streaming in 4K during busy periods did push OysterVPN to its limit. I'll dig into the details when we delve into the provider's performance, but overall, streaming with OysterVPN was adequate.
(Image credit: OysterVPN)
OysterVPN performance
OysterVPN has held its own so far but, unfortunately, it slips up where speed is concerned. Don't get me wrong, it's more than capable of handling day-to-day browsing—it's HD streaming that causes strain.
Using a 100 Mbps connection at 10 am, I connected to a UK server and captured 43.98 Mbps download speeds and 12.11 Mbps upload. That's respectable, but these numbers dropped dramatically when I ran my tests again at 6 pm.
The biggest dip in performance came when I switched to a US server. Download speeds clocked in at 11.59 Mbps and upload speeds at 3.79 Mbps. This wasn't enough to stream 4K content from Netflix US without significant buffering. I found similar speeds connecting to Hong Kong, at 8.91 Mbps down and 3.65 Mbps up.
So, while OysterVPN offers decent speeds if you’re connecting to a nearby server, long-distance connections tank its performance. That means that OysterVPN might not be your perfect pick if you're in the market for a reliable Netflix VPN that'll unblock geo-restricted content.
OysterVPN apps
Things improved when I switched my attention to OysterVPN's apps, however. There’s an install app for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android, and the Windows and MacOS versions also have their very own installation wizards that make set up a breeze. If you're a mobile user, just head on over to your app store to find OysterVPN.
The service can also be set up on a range of routers, and there's browser support for Chrome and Firefox via add-ons.
Sadly, you won't find any native Linux support. Relying on OpenVPN configuration files and a third-party client makes OysterVPN look a little outdated, but there are, at least, a handful of articles that'll guide you through the process.
(Image credit: OysterVPN)
OysterVPN customer support
OysterVPN's customer support is pretty solid. I got in touch to clarify some of their marketing information and got a response almost instantly, which is surprising. I couldn’t find a phone number for their support staff and couldn’t get their live chat to work, but if they respond to emails this quickly, it's not going to be a huge issue.
The FAQ follows suit. It's not particularly expansive, but the available guidance is straightforward, easy to follow, and covers a range of topics. Its installation guides are clear, too, but there's not a lot of information about what to do if something goes wrong.
Alternatives
With so many VPNs to choose from, you're not tethered to OysterVPN—especially if you don't want to compromise on speed and security. Below, I've outlined some of my top picks.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN is my #1 VPN overall, and boasts a stacked roster of features. Plus, you'll be able to take your pick of more than 3,000 servers in 94 countries. ExpressVPN unblocks just about every streaming service you can imagine and can keep up with other resource-intensive tasks, like gaming, torrenting, and video calls. Its reputation for ironclad security is well-deserved, too, thanks to robust encryption protocols, a strict no-logs policy, and advanced features like a kill switch and DNS leak protection.
NordVPN
NordVPN is another favorite of mine, and a powerhouse in the VPN sphere, that's committed to safeguarding your security. It packs military-grade encryption and a strict no-logs policy, as well as a handy Double VPN feature for folks who really want to fly under the radar. NordVPN is also the fastest VPN I've ever tested, ensuring smooth browsing, streaming, and downloading experiences that won't be interrupted by any buffering hiccups.
Surfshark
Surfshark is an awesome pick for folks on a budget—it's the best cheap VPN available. That doesn't mean it's lacking in features, however. With Surfshark, you'll get awesome speeds ideal for HD streaming, a CleanWeb tool that'll banish ads, malware, and trackers, and an audited no-logs policy. Surfshark is also one of a handful of providers to offer unlimited simultaneous connections, so you can secure a whole household of gadgets with one subscription.
Proton VPN
Wrapping up my recommendations is Proton VPN. Developed by the team behind Proton Mail, a renowned encrypted email service, ProtonVPN follows a similar philosophy of protecting user data. The service utilizes robust encryption protocols and offers a range of advanced security features, like Secure Core, which routes user traffic through multiple secure servers to prevent interception. ProtonVPN has a standout free VPN, too, although it's more limited than its paid alternative. Still, it's a great way to try the service before committing to a long-term plan.
OysterVPN review: Final verdict
OysterVPN isn't a bad VPN by any stretch of the imagination. It does what it needs to do, and fairly cheaply at that. Its biggest problem is that there's nothing that makes it stand out in a highly competitive market, and it’s somewhat lacking in server location and speeds.
These are totally fixable issues, however, and I have a feeling that OysterVPN is going to get better and better over time. In fact, for a VPN that's only been operating for a few months, it's already impressive.
Still, there are better-established VPNs with more servers, better speeds, and a wider feature set than OysterVPN. ExpressVPN and NordVPN are the cream of the crop (that tick all of the right boxes), and I'd recommend checking them out if you want a premium and polished service.
TechRadar rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Subscribe if:
✔️ You want to unblock a ton of content: OysterVPN had no trouble bypassing geo-blocks to access the likes of Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Hulu. ✔️ You're a mobile user: whether you're an Android or iPhone loyalist, OysterVPN has easy-to-use apps for your device. ✔️ You want a broad spread of servers: OysterVPN might not have a ton of servers, but the ones it does have are scattered across key locations.
Don't subscribe if:
❌ Speed is your priority: unfortunately, OysterVPN can't compete with the industry's top names when it comes to performance, especially when connecting to distant servers. ❌ You're on Linux: with no native Linux support, you'll need to jump through some complex hoops to get OysterVPN up and running. ❌ You need live chat support: I couldn't find OysterVPN's live chat, which might be a problem if you need quick answers to pressing problems.
How we test VPNs
Beside using the top recommended VPNs for our daily activities, we also conduct a thorough analysis of the top 30 VPN services every 6 months to keep track on how the software compares with other providers as new developments come in.
We start by reviewing each provider's website to double check if its claims and offering changed. We also look for any tracking cookies on the site and if/when they activate to see if the service tracks people using the site.
We then install and use each VPN service across a wide range of location servers and devices to see how they perform across the board. We go through all the settings to make sure all the features work as promised, while playing around with encryption protocols.
Our reviewers actively challenge the software, too, in the lookout for any flaws. For example, we purposely make the VPN connection drop so that we can test if the kill switch does its job of preventing data leaks correctly.
From speed connections and streaming unlocking results, to customer support and app usability, we regularly make sure to test every aspect of the software that could affect the experience of our readers.
As issues arise during our testing, we make sure to investigate these even by digging into the source code or the contents of its RAM if necessary. Head to our dedicated VPN testing methodology page if you want to know more.
Security vendors often save their best features for Windows, leaving mobile users feeling a little short-changed. Fortunately, that's not the Bitdefender way, and Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android is actually more powerful than some of the desktop competition.
It scans your apps for malware, for instance. Protects you from phishing and other malicious sites. Monitors texts and chat messages for dangerous links. Shields your internet activities with a limited VPN. Locks apps to prevent others viewing sensitive data. Raises the alert if your details appear in a data breach. And tracks or remotely locks your device with Mobile Security's built-in anti-theft tools.
The app does its best to look cheap at $1.25 a month for year one of the annual plan. But beware: it renews at $2.08 a month, and keep in mind that this only covers a single device.
If you've lots of hardware to protect, you can get Mobile Security bundled with Bitdefender Total Security. This offers full antivirus and many other tools for any mix of five iOS, Android, Windows and Mac devices for only $5 a month in year one, $8.33 on renewal.
The only catch here is the VPN, which limits you to 200MB a day, and doesn't support choosing a location (it automatically selects your nearest server.) But that could be enough for casual use, and it's more generous than some (Panda's free VPN allows 150MB a day, Avira's 100MB.)
Upgrading to Bitdefender's unlimited Premium VPN costs $6.99 billed monthly, or $2.92 on the annual plan. These are fair prices, but there are faster and more capable Android VPNs around. If web privacy is a priority for you, check our Best Android VPN Apps guide for more.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: Getting started
After a hassle-free install, Mobile Security ran its first scan, checking our system and apps for threats in a speedy 30 seconds.
Mobile Security's dashboard appeared moments later. If you've ever used another security suite or app you'll recognize the layout: the main area of the screen displays your current device status, while a sidebar gives you quick access to Mobile Security's many features.
There's a lot to explore, but work through the various functions individually and you'll find most are straightforward to use.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: Malware Scanner
Mobile Security doesn't just check your apps for malware when you manually run a scan: it also monitors every app as it's installed, and raises an alert if it spots anything dangerous.
We tried this with a test app, and Mobile Security popped up an immediate warning.
Results from the big independent testing labs suggest these are very accurate recommendations, too. We checked the most recent AV-Test, AV-Comparatives and MRG Effitas Android reports, and they each placed Bitdefender Mobile Security in first or equal first place for malware protection.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: Web Protection
Bitdefender's Web Protection blocks access to phishing and other malicious sites, reducing the chance that you'll be caught out by dangerous links in your inbox or social feeds.
We tested Bitdefender’s web protection by seeing how it performed when faced with 100 brand new malicious URLs from phishing experts OpenPhish [https://openphish.com/]. Bitdefender blocked 96%, which is a great result, but not quite the best we’ve seen. The company was just a touch ahead of Norton’s 95%, for instance, but Avast blocked 100% of our test URLs in its last test, for instance, while Avira blocked a full 100%.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: Bitdefender VPN
Connecting your device to Bitdefender's Hotspot Shield-powered VPN is easy. Tap VPN, then Connect, and in a couple of seconds it's up and running, protecting your web traffic from snoopers. Speeds were reasonable in our tests, and connections proved stable, with no unexpected drops.
The problem? It's extremely basic. As we write, you can't choose a location, switch protocols, adjust settings or reconfigure how the VPN works in any useful way. If you only need the core VPN essentials, this might be acceptable. But if you're looking for anything even slightly more advanced, it's likely to leave you disappointed.
Bitdefender clearly realizes the problem, and Mobile Security for Android will soon be updated to use the regular stand-alone Bitdefender VPN app. That's good news, as it gets you many more VPN features (ad and tracker blocking, choice of protocols, split tunneling, more.) But if the VPN is your priority, it's a reminder that you could simply ignore Mobile Security and just install the Bitdefender VPN for Android app, instead.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: Account Privacy
Bitdefender's Account Privacy feature scans a list of data breaches for as many email addresses as you need, and raises the alarm if your details have been exposed.
We tapped 'Account Privacy' to try it out. The app sent a code to the email address to verify that we owned it, then displayed an alarmingly lengthy list of breaches where our address appeared.
This isn't quite as useful as it sounds. Although our list included 19 breaches, only four were dated 2020 or later, and the most recent of those was from February 2021. If you follow the standard advice to change your passwords occasionally (and we do, of course), this isn't going to tell you much at all.
There is still value here. Maybe your list will be more relevant, and you can sign up to get alerts when new breaches appear. But the reality is you can do this for free anyway at haveibeenpwned.com, no need to install Bitdefender Mobile Security or anything else.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: App Locker
Bitdefender's App Locker enables protecting others from launching specific apps and perhaps viewing sensitive details. It's very useful if you'd like to pass your device to a friend or family to use the phone or browser, say, but don't want them to have full access to everything else.
It's an effective system, and far more usable than some lockers. Although by default App Locker prompts you to manually unlock every protected app, every time you launch it, for instance, you can also have unlocking one app automatically unlock all the others until your screen turns off. Far more convenient if you're just worried about someone picking up your device.
There are stacks of surprising bonus features, too. It can use a random numeric keyboard, reducing the chance others can read your pin by watching your finger movements. It'll snap a photo of the user after three failed PIN entries, and can then upload the pics to your Bitdefender account so you can view them from other devices. It's all very well put together, and adds real value to the app.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android: Anti-Theft
Bitdefender Mobile Security also includes some Anti-Theft features, which cover most of the ground you'd expect.
Remote Location support may allow you to track your device from Bitdefender's website or other apps, for instance. And if it doesn't, the app can snap a photo of the thief after three failed attempts to unlock the device, perhaps giving you more clues.
If your device really has been stolen, you can remotely lock it or even wipe its contents and reset to a factory state. Or if you've just mislaid it somewhere, a 'Scream' command plays an audio alert to help you track it down.
There's nothing new here, and if you've a number of Android devices, you could get very similar features and more convenient reporting with Google's Find My Device for free.
We found Bitdefender's Anti-Theft tools worked as advertised, though, and if you're planning to install and manage Bitdefender on a number of devices, it could be more convenient to have Anti-Theft available for all your hardware from the same dashboard.
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android:
Bitdefender Mobile Security for Android is a powerful security tool which gives you rock-solid protection from a host of security threats. Okay, the VPN is very basic, but we wouldn’t expect any better price, and overall Bitdefender Mobile Security is a great Android choice.
Bitdefender Internet Security may be Bitdefender’s entry-level Windows internet security suite, but it’s absolutely stuffed with features: real-time malware protection, anti-phishing, parental controls for desktops and mobiles, a secure browser, tracker-blocking, a limited 200Mb a day VPN, anti-spam, it’s all here. Factor in Bitdefender’s consistently excellent protection rates and Bitdefender Internet Security could be the ideal security suite for your PC; keep reading and we’ll take an in-depth look at everything it has to offer.
Bitdefender Internet Security is the company’s entry-level security suite. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Pricing
Bitdefender Internet Security is priced from $39.99 to protect a single Windows device for a year ($59.99 on renewal.) Many entry-level suites are priced around $30-$40 for year one, but they typically cover far more hardware. Avast One Silver and Norton 360 Standard both support three devices, for instance, and they can be Mac, Android or iOS, as well as Windows.
Value improves hugely if you’ve a lot of PCs to protect. Bitdefender Internet Security’s 10 device license costs only $94.99 a year, and if you’ll use all 10, that’s only $0.79 to protect each device for a month: a real bargain.
If you need a full VPN, don’t rule out Bitdefender Premium Security. It adds Mac and mobile device support, an unlimited VPN and a password manager, yet is cheaper initially than Bitdefender Internet Security at $79.99 in year one, and still reasonably priced at $159.99 on renewal.
Bitdefender Internet Security isn’t the cheapest product around, then, especially if you only need to protect a single PC. But the features you get are top quality, and if you can use a 10 device license, the suite looks like a much better deal.
Bitdefender only hassles you with alerts when it’s really, really necessary. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Ease of use
If you’re looking for antivirus software you can install and forget, Bitdefender Internet Security has a lot of appeal. The app installed easily for us, then moved to the background and made most of its decisions entirely automatically, keeping any technical hassles to a minimum.
Other providers often have a very different user experience. Present Avast One with an app it doesn’t recognize, for instance, and it’ll launch a scan and leave you waiting for up to 15-20 seconds before you can continue. By comparison, Bitdefender might ask if you trust the app, but mostly it sorts out the issue for itself.
Try Avira antivirus and you’ll get notified with pop-up alerts for every threat, which can become annoying (a malicious web page opens lots of dangerous links, for instance.) Bitdefender displays the first alert, but doesn’t bother you with the rest. The information is still available in a Notifications page, but you don’t have to look at it unless you’re interested.
It’s easy to find your way around the Bitdefender Dashboard. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Interface & use
Bitdefender Internet Security opens with a simple dashboard offering one-click access to its most useful features: quick scan, system scan, the VPN and the secure browser, Safepay.
In theory you can customize the dashboard with your own shortcuts. But in practice, there are only two other items you can add, in the Password Manager (only a trial) and the Data Shredder. The dashboard would benefit from more flexibility, such as the ability to pin your own custom scans (more on those below.)
There are plenty of other tools and options available, and Bitdefender organizes those with icons in a left-hand sidebar: Protection, Privacy, Utilities, Notifications, Settings. If you need to control the Anti-Tracker, for instance, click Privacy, and you can edit its settings, or turn it on and off with a click.
Bitdefender hasn’t changed the core of its interface for a very long time. That’s a pity, because as we’ve discussed, there is room for improvement. But at its heart the interface is generally easy to use, and it’s likely you’ll find the functions and features you need without any difficulty.
Bitdefender Internet Security has all kinds of ways to scan your system. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Antivirus scanning
Bitdefender offers a strong range of scan types covering all kinds of situations.
Quick Scan runs a brief check which inspects the most commonly-infected areas only. This took a reasonably short 8:14 on our test system, falling just a little to 7:36 on the second scan.
System Scan is a deeper analysis which crawls your entire storage device and explores everything it finds. That takes much longer for the first scan, but drops hugely afterwards as Bitdefender only scans new or changed files.
To test this, we scanned 50GB of application files. The first run took 37:44, a little behind Avast (35:40) and Norton (32:01.) The story changes on subsequent scans, though, with Avast taking 34:53, Norton falling to 3:48, but Bitdefender completing in just 90 seconds.
Rescue Environment is a bootable scanner which lives on your hard drive and removes even the most stubborn of threats. It’s a great tool and the ability to launch it from your Bitdefender app is a major usability plus (Avira and many other vendors expect you to download, set up and run their boot scanners separately.)
This is all very configurable, too, with options including the ability to build your own custom scans and schedule them to run automatically, perhaps overnight or whenever you’re not around.
Bitdefender is tested by all the top antivirus labs. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Antivirus lab test results
Although we put every antivirus app we review through our own series of tests, we also pay close attention to results from the big antivirus testing labs.
We follow nine tests from labs including AV-Comparatives (Real-World Protection, Malware Protection, Android, Anti-Phishing, Performance), AV-Test (Windows, Android), MRG Effitas (360° Protection Testing) and SE Labs (Endpoint Security Home).
As each site has its own scoring system, we use a special algorithm which converts the various figures into an overall score from zero to 10.
Bitdefender score appears in the latest reports for eight out of our nine core tests, making this a strong all-round test of its abilities. But Bitdefender’s combined score was a little disappointing at 9.92, earning the company seventh place in our charts behind the likes of Avast (9.97), ESET (9.94) and Avira.
Looking at the individual tests, Bitdefender was a little below par in both the AV-Comparatives and AV-Test’s Windows reports. The differences are small, though, and not always about protection; AV-Test found Bitdefender blocked 100% of test threats, for instance, but marked the company down for reducing device speeds a little and falsely flagging 5 legitimate apps.
Bitdefender isn’t leading the way with the independent labs right at this moment, but the margins between providers are tiny, and it’s not far behind. Where Bitdefender has scored in the past is for its consistency over the long term - it won 2023’s ‘Outstanding Product’ at AV-Comparatives but the sheer number of awards won across all its tests - and we’ll be watching to see if its normal market-leading performance returns soon.
Bitdefender has some of the best ransomware protection around. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Anti-ransomware
Defeating ransomware isn’t just about spotting known threats as they’re downloaded. A good antivirus needs multiple other layers of protection, such as using behavior monitoring to detect even brand new threats before they can do any harm.
We tested Bitdefender by running our own custom ransomware simulator. This defeated Avira, but Bitdefender killed our simulator before it could damage a single file.
That’s not the end of the story. Bitdefender’s Ransomware Remediation can automatically protect ransomware-encrypted files, recovering them once the infection was removed. The technology has worked faultlessly in previous reviews, giving Bitdefender a major advantage over other security vendors.
The latest MRG Effitas Ransomware tests also brought positive news. Bitdefender, ESET, Microsoft and ThreatDown all blocked 100% of test threats, earning them an equal first place. That’s another great result, and more confirmation that Bitdefender is one of the best vendors around for battling ransomware.
Bitdefender blocked almost all our test phishing sites. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Anti-phishing
The best security tools don’t just detect and block web threats as they appear: they prevent you ever reaching them in the first place. That’s why we’re always very interested in an app’s ability to keep you safe from phishing and other malicious websites.
Antiphishing doesn’t get much attention from the labs, but AV-Comparatives did run a small test on the feature last year. Bitdefender led the pack with an excellent 96% protection rate, just ahead of Avast (94%), AVG (94%), ESET (92%) and Avira (88%.)
We ran a test of our own, and attempted to access 100 brand new phishing URLs on a Bitdefender-protected system. The protection rate was identical at 96%, but Bitdefender didn’t lead the way this time. Avira topped our anti-phishing chart with 100% protection, while Avast managed 99%, and Norton scored 95%.
Top benchmark PCMark found Bitdefender didn’t slow us down (much). (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Performance impact
We expect a quality antivirus to offer reliable and accurate malware protection, but that’s not all. The best apps deliver their protection without slowing down your device, raising endless false alarms or otherwise causing daily hassles.
AV-Comparatives’ Performance Test measures the performance impact of 16 antivirus apps when browsing websites, downloading files, installing and launching applications, and more. Bitdefender had a little impact on application launch times, but was still very fast overall, and received AV-Comparatives top Advanced+ award.
Our own tests with the excellent PCMark 10 benchmark found barely any performance impact from Bitdefender and although our boot times lengthened a little, they’re still comparable to similar apps. Our test system took 65 seconds to fully load Windows and 81 seconds to fully load a collection of apps, for instance; Bitdefender increased this to 73 and 100 seconds, but that’s almost identical to Avast’s times of 72 and 102 seconds.
Overall, our tests suggest that although Bitdefender isn’t quite the most lightweight of antivirus apps, it has less performance impact than most, and didn’t cause us any significant speed issues.
Bitdefender can open sensitive sites in secure browser SafePay for maximum privacy. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Safepay
Many security vendors offer some form of ‘privacy browser’, but typically you can get much the same result by installing a few well-chosen extensions, or a third-party freebie like Brave Privacy Browser.
Bitdefender Safepay is a secure browser which protects you both from web dangers, and malware which might have smuggled itself onto your own system.
The protection starts by Bitdefender recognizing when you’re accessing a sensitive site. When we visited a banking site, for instance, an alert prompted us to open the website in Safepay (it can automatically connect to the VPN, too.) Sounds like a small point, but that one idea reduces the chance that you’ll forget to turn Safepay on.
The other major Safepay plus is it’s isolated from every other process on your system. Malware can’t capture your keystrokes or record screenshots of what you’re doing (we tried with commercial and custom tools of our own), and the virtual keyboard prevents even hardware keyloggers from recording your activities.
Put it all together and Safepay offers way more protection than other privacy browsers, making it one of the highlights of Bitdefender’s range.
Bitdefender VPN looks good - but beware the tiny 200MB a day data allowance. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: VPN
Bitdefender Internet Security includes the free version of Bitdefender VPN. The paid edition is an excellent service with quality apps using the Hotspot Shield network, but, unfortunately, the freebie is so restricted that many will find it unusable.
You only get 200MB of data a day, for instance. We opened desktop Outlook and a few other applications on a Windows laptop, but just left them running without doing anything ourselves on the device,, and the background traffic alone used 70MB of data over the next hour. The free Bitdefender VPN is only suitable for light use.
The other big issue is you can’t choose your location. Hit Connect and Bitdefender VPN automatically selects whatever it thinks is the best server for you (the closest or the fastest, most likely.). That means there’s little hope of unblocking anything, and, if the VPN chooses a location in a neighboring country to you, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Still, if you only need a VPN very occasionally, perhaps to securely access your email on public Wi-Fi, the free Bitdefender VPN just might be enough. And, if you can live with the data and location limits, there’s a lot to like here.
Bitdefender VPN can warn you to connect whenever you access a banking or shopping site. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: VPN Features
Bitdefender’s Windows app takes up a lot of screen space, thanks to a large and mostly pointless map. But it looks good, and provides a lot of information: your current IP address, the session length, the data you’ve used, and more.
Using the VPN is easy - just hit the blue Connect button - but connection times were relatively slow for us at around 6-8 seconds (the best apps typically take under two seconds.)
Speeds were acceptable at 60Mbps+ on a 70Mbps connection. That’s adequate for browsing, or a short period of low-quality streaming (30 minutes of standard definition YouTube watching needs around 180MB, for example.)
Useful settings start with a strong choice of secure protocols, including WireGuard, OpenVPN and Hotspot Shield’s Hydra. Quality ad and tracker blocking enhances your privacy online, and we found the effective kill switch immediately blocks your internet access if the VPN drops.
Split tunneling support allows you to select apps which bypass the VPN and use the internet directly. That could help cut your VPN data usage and stretch that 200MB a day just a little further.
A very clever Auto-Connect option can automatically connect to the VPN when your device starts, if you connect to unsecured Wi-Fi, when you access specific domains (your business network, say), even if you visit a particular category of website: banking, online payments, health, and more.
There’s even an App Traffic Optimizer, which can improve speeds of up to three apps by giving them priority for your available bandwidth. That won’t help much with the free version - the more apps you use, the faster your data will disappear - but we have to applaud Bitdefender’s technical expertise.
(Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Webcam and microphone protection
Bitdefender Internet Security includes video and audio protection, a feature which can prevent apps accessing your webcam or microphone without your permission.
Bitdefender says the suite blocks untrusted apps by default. We tested this by running our own custom webcam hijacker app, and Bitdefender realised there was a problem, displayed a notification, and our app couldn’t access the webcam until we clicked ‘Allow.’
We ran a safe but little-known command line tool to record microphone audio. Once again, Bitdefender handled the situation well, allowing the app to access our microphone but using a notification to keep us informed.
Although most top suites have similar tools, they don’t always work as well. If Avast One asks permission for an app to access your webcam, for instance, and you close that dialog box without giving an answer, Avast allows access anyway. Bitdefender is more secure because it blocks dubious apps until you specifically hit the Allow button.
If you don’t like the default settings, Bitdefender provides various ways to customise your protection. You can turn notifications on or off, for instance; block browsers from accessing your webcam, or even block webcam access entirely if you’re sure you’ll never need it.
(Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Firewall
Bitdefender’s firewall watches the network connections made by your apps, decides which apps can get online and which can’t, and works to protect you from network scans and attacks.
If you’re a networking novice and that’s already more than you want to know, that’s fine: the firewall makes all its decisions automatically, so you can safely leave it alone (or forget it even exists.) But if you’re the more technical type, there are potentially useful features to explore.
An ‘Application Access’ list showed us which processes had accessed the internet recently, for instance, handy if you’re monitoring what’s happening on your system.
The Rules page listed the apps Bitdefender allowed online, and any it was blocking. You can change these rules or add new ones yourself, perhaps to prevent specific applications from connecting to the web.
Useful options provide various ways to configure the firewall to suit your needs. For example, if you’re looking for maximum security, you can have the firewall only allow traffic for known trusted processes. That might break a lot of applications (which is why Bitdefender intelligently decides which apps are safe by default), but it does make your system more secure, and could work for some people.
Bitdefender’s Spam Filter uses several techniques to keep your inbox junk-free. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Antispam
Bitdefender’s Antispam tool is a simple spam filter that works for local email clients only (Outlook, Thunderbird, anything which sends and fetches emails via SMTP and POP3.)
The feature isn’t going to be relevant if you access your email in a browser, or you’re using Gmail or some other top provider. The likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft already do a decent job of filtering spam. If you get email from your ISP or a hosting provider, though, and they don’t provide spam filtering, then Bitdefender Antispam may be useful.
In theory, the feature should be easy to operate. Turn Antispam on, and it automatically scans incoming emails,moving anything sufficiently spam-like into your Junk folder. You can customise the results by building block and allow lists, or enabling one or two generic junk-blocking tricks (stop all emails encoded with Asian characters, for instance.)
In practice, it wasn’t quite that simple for us. Antispam should have added a toolbar to our Outlook, but we didn’t see it. Investigating, we found Outlook had disabled Antispam because it was taking too long to load. That’s disappointing, but it was easy to re-enable, and a quick test showed the filter working as advertised.
Overall, Bitdefender Antispam could be handy for some users. If you really need a local spam filter, though, something like MailWasher gives you more features with even its free version.
Take charge of what your kids are doing online with Bitdefender Parental Controls. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Parental Controls
Bitdefender Internet Security comes with a built-in parental control system to keep your kids safe from the worst of the web.
A decent feature set includes content filtering, screen time limits, device usage scheduling, location monitoring and more.
The service is managed from the company’s Bitdefender Central web dashboard, where you’re able to set up protection and monitor what’s happening on each of your kid’s devices.
Although the Bitdefender Internet Security license protects up to five Windows devices only, those rules don’t apply to Parental Control. These work on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, and you can install them on as many devices as you need.
Parental Control works on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices. (Image credit: Future)
Installation varies depending on the device. Desktops are relatively simple, mobile devices more complex, as you have to set up various permissions.
IOS setup is particularly complicated because the content filtering and app blocking relies on Apple’s built-in parental controls. For comparison, Bitdefender’s Android setup guide lists three main steps; the equivalent iOS document has six, and the Apple Family Control guide potentially has another 23.
Apps installed, the next step is to create a profile for each child. This is quick and easy - enter your child’s name and birth date, and choose an icon - but Bitdefender does a little more work, using your child’s age to automatically configure which web content they’re allowed to you.
If you’re in a hurry then you could apply that profile to any device your child uses. You’ll probably want to fine-tune Bitdefender’s options to best suit your own children, though, and there are plenty of interesting options to choose from.
Allow or block access to web content by up to 43 categories. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Content Filtering
Bitdefender’s Content Filtering allows you to block web content by an impressive 43 categories, covering inappropriate topics (porn, drugs, guns), social media, online shopping and more. We tested this and it worked correctly, blocking the specified types in all browsers.
This approach often blocks at least some sites you’ll feel are safe, but it’s easy to add exceptions so you can block YouTube and TikTok, say, but allow your child to watch their favorite Netflix kids shows.
Bonus features include the ability to enforce safe search at search engines and YouTube, reducing the chance that your child can find inappropriate content.
The content filtering isn’t tamper-proof, and there is at least one way to bypass Bitdefender on Windows and browse whatever you like. It’s not straightforward and there’s no chance that young children will discover the trick by accident, but teenagers are more likely to find the workaround (or be told around it by more technical friends.)
Choose just how long your kids can use a device per day. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Screen time limits
Bitdefender’s Parental Control provides several ways to define just how long your kids can use your devices.
You can manually set a total device usage time for each day of the week, though only in 30 minute increments. Your kids can request extra time from their device, or you can add extra time as a reward, or if they need it for some important reason (finishing homework, maybe.) But again, you can only add time in 30 minute blocks, which is a little restrictive.
A separate Focus Time supports creating a simple schedule. If you want your kids to do their homework in the evening, for instance, you could set up Focus Time to run from 7:30-8:30pm, and only allow them to use web search or educational apps during that time. While that’s useful, we’d like the option to set up multiple Focus Time blocks per day.
You’re also able to define two periods of time when device usage won’t be allowed: Bedtime and Family Time. That’s important, but again, you’re limited to one block of time in each case. That’s not much use if you want to set up two or three Family Time blocks for meals.
(Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Location monitoring
The Parental Control system allows you to view the current location of your child’s mobile device (there’s no location support on Windows or Mac.) Just open the Bitdefender Central web dashboard, choose your child’s profile and click Locate to see the device location on a map.
What you don’t get is even the most limited form of geofencing (the ability to raise an alert if your child leaves or arrives at a particular area.) Some security suites deliver far more. Norton 360 Deluxe, for instance, can create multiple Favorite Locations - home, school, grandma, the local park - and display notifications as your kids move from one to the other.
(Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Reporting
Bitdefender Parental Control not only limits what your children can do online: it also logs their activities to help you find out more about what’s going on.
Access your child’s profile from the Bitdefender Central web account and you can view stats including their internet use over the past one, seven or 30 days, and the apps, website categories and websites they’ve used most often.
The ‘Prevented content access’ panel lists any content that Bitdefender Parental Control has blocked. That’s useful, and not just to check whether they’re trying to break the rules. If Bitdefender is preventing access to a kid-safe site then you’ll see it listed here, and can quickly create an exception to make sure it’ll be accessible the next time they visit.
Bitdefender Internet Security: Will Parental Controls work for you?
Bitdefender Parental Control has a lot of features, but these aren’t always available on every platform. Sometimes this is understandable (location monitoring is on mobile devices only), but others are a surprise: kids can only request more time on Android and iOS, for some reason.
The system isn’t as powerful as the top specialist parental controls applications, either, which are typically more configurable, with better content filtering tools and the ability to raise location alerts when your child arrives at (or leaves) key places.
If your needs are relatively simple then Parental Control could still be useful. That’s especially true if you’ve devices on several platforms, as you can manage them all from the Bitdefender Central web dashboard.
If your devices are all on a single platform, though, especially iOS, we would recommend checking out the built-in parental controls options first. Or if you need lots of functionality, check our Best Parental Control guide to the top competition.
Bitdefender Internet Security shares many features with Bitdefender Antivirus Plus. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: More features
We’ll complete this review by running through some additional features that Bitdefender Internet Security shares with Bitdefender’s starter product, Antivirus Plus. We’ve only space for a summary here, but check the full Bitdefender Antivirus Plus review for more details.
Is your device configured for maximum security? Vulnerability Scan tries to find out. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Vulnerability scan
Bitdefender’s Vulnerability Scan checks your device for various issues which might make it open to attack: missing updates, weak passwords, dubious Windows and browser security settings, and more.
Sounds good, but this didn’t help us much, incorrectly reporting that our Wi-Fi network had no password and highlighting a couple of very minor technical issues. Avast and Avira did a better job of identifying issues on our review system.
The password manager is available as a mobile app and Chrome, Edge and Firefox browser extensions. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Password manager
Bitdefender includes a password manager on its feature list, but this turns out to be only a three-month trial. That still beats Avast, who dropped its own password manager a few years ago, but it can’t match Norton, who still includes a password manager with even its starter Antivirus Plus package.
We signed up for the trial, and were happy to see Password Manager was available on desktops via Chrome, Edge and Firefox extensions, with mobile apps for Android and iOS.
The option to import passwords from browsers or your current password manager should get you up and running quickly, at least in theory. Bitdefender didn’t correctly import all of our Dashlane logins, though, so it might not always be so simple.
We found some issues with the tool in real-world use. Importing data from Dashlane didn’t work if we had multiple accounts for a website; it didn’t always automatically enter our email address on login forms, and it had occasional problems capturing our credentials from complex forms.
But there are plus points, including a secure password generator, highlighting of weak or reused passwords, and a check to see if your email address appears in any data breaches.
Bitdefender Password Manager might be suitable if you only need the password basics, especially if you get the full version for free as a part of Bitdefender Ultimate Security or Bitdefender Premium Security. But we wouldn’t pay for it, and if you’re looking for a powerhouse password manager with every possible feature, check our Best Password Manager guide for better ideas.
(Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: Anti-tracker
Bitdefender’s Anti-tracker is a Chrome, Edge and Firefox extension which prevents intrusive trackers from collecting data on your online activities.
The technology blocked an impressive 93% of sample trackers, but that success came at a price: it broke some websites, preventing key features from working. There are ways around this - you can tell Anti-tracker not to block anything on these troublesome sites - but that’s perhaps more hassle than it’s worth.
You might be more lucky, though, so Anti-tracker is well worth a try. And if it doesn’t work out, no problem, you can disable it with a click.
Use File Shredder on sensitive files and they’re gone forever. (Image credit: Future)
Bitdefender Internet Security: File shredder
Bitdefender’s File Shredder is a simple tool which securely deletes files by overwriting them multiple times. Use File Shredder on your most sensitive documents and even if someone has full access to your device (you’ve sold it, or it’s stolen), they won’t be able to undelete or recover that dara.
The feature worked for us, but it’s not very configurable, and there are far more powerful file wiping tools available for free. File Shredder’s ease of use is a plus, though, and we’re glad it’s included in the package.
Bitdefender Internet Security: Final verdict
Bitdefender Internet Security is a capable entry-level security suite that mostly does a great job of keeping your PC safe. We’re just not sure the parental controls, firewall and webcam add quite enough to justify the upgrade from Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, though, especially when many other entry-level suites protect Macs, Android and iOS devices, as well as Windows.
If you’re happy with Bitdefender Internet Security’s PC-only protection then it could still be a decent choice, but Bitdefender Premium Security looks the best value product in the range to us, with apps for desktops and mobiles and an unlimited VPN, too.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is a Windows malware-hunting powerhouse which includes all the antivirus basics, and also packs in more protective layers and features than many security suites. Top-notch ransomware protection, reliable tracker-blocking, effective anti-phishing, a limited 200MB a day free VPN, one of the most secure browsers around, and that’s just the start. Fair prices and excellent protection rates make this one of the best PC security tools around; keep reading and we’ll tell you exactly why.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Pricing
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is the company’s lowest-priced desktop antivirus. It protects up to three Windows devices for $44.99 in year one, $59.99 on renewal. A 30-day trial gives you a chance to check out the app before you buy.
Bitdefender Internet Security (next up in the range) adds a firewall and parental control. That lifts the price to $59.99 in year one, $84.99 on renewal.
If you’ve anything other than Windows hardware to protect, Bitdefender Total Security could be a better deal. Not only does it include the firewall software and parental controls, it also throws in device optimization, and - crucially - protects any mix of up to five Mac, Android and iOS devices as well as Windows. And yet, it’s only a little more costly than Internet Security at $69.99 in year one, $99.99 on renewal.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
If you’re after maximum power, Bitdefender Ultimate Security includes absolutely everything: antivirus and security functionality for up to ten devices, a full and unlimited VPN, and a complete identity theft protection package with up to $2 million insurance. The price is much higher at $119.99 in year one, and $239.99 on renewal. But the full VPN alone has a lot of value. Sign up for even the most basic NordVPN package and you’ll pay $68.85 in year one, $112.35 on renewal.
These are fair prices, but depending on the mix of features you need, there could be better deals around. Avast One’s cheapest paid plan, Avast One Silver, protects all platforms, has a more generous free VPN (5GB data a week vs. 200MB), includes a firewall and blocks webcam hijacking, but it’s only $35.88 in year one, $79.99 on renewal.
The Norton antivirus range is another one worth a look. Norton 360 Standard covers up to three mobiles or desktops, has antivirus, a full VPN, 2GB cloud backup and a password manager, but is priced at only $39.99 in year one, $94.99 on renewal.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Easy to use
If you’re looking for an antivirus you can install and forget, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus has a lot of appeal. The app installed easily for us, then moved to the background and made most of its decisions entirely automatically, keeping any technical hassles to a minimum.
Other providers often have a very different user experience. Present Avast One with an app it doesn’t recognize, for instance, and it’ll launch a scan and leave you waiting for up to 15-20 seconds before you can continue. By comparison, Bitdefender might ask if you trust the app, but mostly it sorts out the issue for itself.
Try Avira antivirus and you’ll get notified with pop-up alerts for every threat, which can become annoying (a malicious web page opens lots of dangerous links, for instance.) Bitdefender displays the first alert, but doesn’t bother you with the rest. The information is still available in a Notifications page, but you don’t have to look at it unless you’re interested.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Interface
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus opens with a simple dashboard offering one-click access to its most useful features: quick scan, system scan, the VPN and the secure browser, Safepay.
In theory you can customize the dashboard with your own shortcuts. But in practice, there are only two other items you can add, in the Password Manager (only a trial) and the Data Shredder. The dashboard would benefit from more flexibility, such as the ability to pin your own custom scans (more on those below.)
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
There are plenty of other tools and options available, and Bitdefender organizes those with icons in a left-hand sidebar: Protection, Privacy, Utilities, Notifications, Settings. If you need to control the Anti-Tracker, for instance, click Privacy, and you can edit its settings, or turn it on and off with a click.
Bitdefender’s Explorer integration gives you an easy way to access features without launching the full dashboard. Just choose your preferred files, folders or drivers, and you can scan (or securely delete) them directly from Explorer’s right-click menu.
Bitdefender hasn’t changed the core of its interface for a very long time. That’s a pity, because as we’ve discussed, there is room for improvement. But at its heart the interface is generally easy to use, and it’s likely you’ll find the functions and features you need without any difficulty.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Antivirus Scanning
Bitdefender offers a strong range of scan types covering all kinds of situations.
Quick Scan runs a brief check which inspects the most commonly-infected areas only. This took a reasonably short 8:14 on our test system, falling just a little to 7:36 on the second scan.
System Scan is a deeper analysis which crawls your entire storage device and explores everything it finds. That takes much longer for the first scan, but drops hugely afterwards as Bitdefender only scans new or changed files.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
To test this, we scanned 50GB of application files. The first run took 37:44, a little behind Avast (35:40) and Norton (32:01.) The story changes on subsequent scans, though, with Avast taking 34:53, Norton falling to 3:48, but Bitdefender completing in just 90 seconds.
Rescue Environment is a bootable scanner which lives on your hard drive and removes even the most stubborn of threats. Just launch it from the dashboard, reboot when you’re prompted, and Rescue Environment hunts down and removes any threats. It’s a great tool and the ability to launch it from your Bitdefender app is a major usability plus (Avira and many other vendors expect you to download, set up and run their boot scanners separately.)
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
A scheduler allows you to run scans automatically. That’s good news, though it’s not as flexible as some of the competition. Avast allows you to choose which days of the week need a scan (Monday, Wednesday and Friday, say); Bitdefender can run as a scan every day, or the same day every week, but that’s it.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
On the plus side, Bitdefender has an excellent Custom Scan feature which allows you to create new scan types for different situations. Looking for speed? You could create something which checked running processes, RAM and the Registry only. Maybe you’re worried about the contents of your Downloads folder? A custom scan could check that location only, maybe scan larger archives than usual (regular scanning ignores zips larger than 10MB) to be sure of catching any threats.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Antivirus Lab Test Results
Although we put every antivirus app we review through our own series of tests, we also pay close attention to results from the big antivirus testing labs.
We follow nine tests from labs including AV-Comparatives (Real-World Protection, Malware Protection, Android, Anti-Phishing, Performance), AV-Test (Windows, Android), MRG Effitas (360° Protection Testing) and SE Labs (Endpoint Security Home).
Each test has its own scoring system, making it tricky to compare performance. To address this, we use a special algorithm which (as long as an app is in at least five tests) converts the various results into a single summary score from zero to 10 representing the vendor’s overall rating.
Bitdefender appears in the latest reports for eight out of our nine core tests, making this a strong all-round test of its abilities. And Bitdefender’s combined score was excellent at 9.97, earning it second place just behind Avast’s 9.98.
Bitdefender was AV-Comparatives’ Outstanding Product of the Year 2023, winning top awards in all the main tests (Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Looking at the individual tests, Bitdefender’s most significant weak spot was an 11th place in the Malware Protection test. But that doesn’t represent a huge difference in results; Bitdefender achieved a very creditable 99.92% protection rate, and it just happened that the top-rated Norton and F-Secure managed 99.97%.
Results can vary month to month, though (Bitdefender topped the previous Malware Protection test), and the company scores very highly elsewhere. Bitdefender tops the anti-phishing charts, for example, blocked 100% of Android threats, and scored full marks in the latest MRG Effitas and AV-Test Windows reports.
Overall, the lab test results are very positive for Bitdefender, showing above average performance in most areas, and market-leading results in many. If you’re looking for reliable protection across the board, Bitdefender delivers.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Anti-Ransomware
Defeating ransomware isn’t just about spotting known threats as they’re downloaded. A good antivirus needs multiple other layers of protection, such as using behavior monitoring to detect even brand new threats before they can do any harm.
We test an antivirus’ ransomware-fighting abilities by pitting the app against our own simple ransomware simulator. This has never been publicly released, ensuring that an antivirus can only detect it by picking up on its suspicious behavior (spidering through test files and opening each one in turn.)
Previously we’ve managed to bypass Bitdefender’s protection for just a few seconds, but not this time. Bitdefender killed our simulator almost immediately, before it could damage a single file.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Even if some of your files are damaged, that’s not the end of the story. Bitdefender’s Ransomware Remediation can automatically protect ransomware-encrypted files, recovering them once the infection was removed. The technology has worked faultlessly in previous reviews, giving Bitdefender a major advantage over other security vendors.
To confirm our results, we took a look at the latest MRG Effitas Ransomware tests. This tested the performance of Avast, Avira, Bitdefender, ESET, Microsoft, Norton, ThreatDown and Trend Micro when faced with 37 ransomware samples. Bitdefender, ESET, Microsoft and ThreatDown came equal first by automatically blocking every threat, without needing to use their behavior-monitoring layer. That’s another great result, and suggests Bitdefender is one of the best vendors around for battling ransomware.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Quarantine
Any potential threats Bitdefender detects and removes are sent to quarantine, rather than being deleted. Quarantine is like a Recycle Bin for executables: it keeps potentially dangerous files locked away where they can’t do any harm, but, if Bitdefender accidentally removes something you’re 100% sure is safe, you can restore the file and tell Bitdefender not to touch it in future.
Although this is generally a very good idea, we noticed a problem. Bitdefender detected part of a legitimate app as a potentially unwanted threat, and moved it to quarantine. We hit the Restore button to put it back, but Bitdefender complained that ‘the system does not have rights to access the specified path.’ It had broken our app and couldn’t fix the problem.
This wasn’t a huge issue, as we were able to restore the file to our desktop and manually move it to the right location. But some users may not know how to do that, and even if you’ve no problems restoring any files, this is still a small usability hassle.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Anti-phishing
The best security tools don’t just detect and block web threats as they appear: they prevent you ever reaching them in the first place. That’s why we’re always very interested in an app’s ability to keep you safe from phishing and other malicious websites.
Antiphishing doesn’t get much attention from the labs, but AV-Comparatives did run a small test on the feature last year. Bitdefender led the pack with an excellent 96% protection rate, just ahead of Avast (94%), AVG (94%), ESET (92%) and Avira (88%.)
We ran a test of our own, and attempted to access 100 brand new phishing URLs on a Bitdefender-protected system. The protection rate was identical at 96%, but Bitdefender didn’t lead the way this time. Avira topped our anti-phishing chart with 100% protection, while Avast managed 99%, and Norton scored 95%.
We also compared Bitdefender’s results with Chrome, to give us a better idea of how much extra protection it adds. The answer turned out to be a lot, as Chrome ‘only’ blocked 64% of our test URLs. These included the four URLs that Bitdefender missed, though, so if we used both Bitdefender and Chrome together, we would have received warnings about 100% of our test links.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Performance Impact
We expect a quality antivirus to offer reliable and accurate malware protection, but that’s not all. The best apps deliver their protection without slowing down your device, raising endless false alarms or otherwise causing daily hassles.
AV-Comparatives’ Performance Test measures the performance impact of 16 antivirus apps on various common tasks: browsing websites, downloading files, installing and launching applications, and more. Bitdefender had a little impact on application launch times, but was still very fast overall, and received AV-Comparatives top Advanced+ award.
Our own tests showed much the same results. The excellent PCMark 10 benchmark found barely any performance impact from Bitdefender, and although our boot times lengthened a little, they’re still comparable to similar apps. Our test system took 65 seconds to fully load Windows and 81 seconds to fully load a collection of apps, for instance; Bitdefender increased this to 73 and 100 seconds, but that’s almost identical to Avast’s times of 72 and 102 seconds.
Recent testing shows Bitdefender doesn’t waste your time by raising endless false alarms for entirely safe apps (Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
It’s a similar story with false alarms. Bitdefender has a few more than Avast in AV-Comparatives’ most recent Real-World Protection Test (3 false alarms vs. 1.5), but that’s across 512 test cases, such a marginal difference that you’re unlikely to notice.
You may have a different experience, depending on the websites that you visit and the apps you use. But our tests suggest that although Bitdefender isn’t quite the most lightweight of antivirus apps, it has less performance impact than most, and didn’t cause us any significant speed issues.
Bitdefender detects when you access a banking or other sensitive site, and prompts you to open the page in its hardened browser, Safepay. (Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Safepay
Many security vendors offer some form of ‘privacy browser’, but typically you can get much the same result by installing a few well-chosen extensions, or a third-party freebie like Brave Privacy Browser.
Bitdefender Safepay is a secure browser which protects you both from web dangers, and malware which might have smuggled itself onto your own system.
The protection starts by Bitdefender recognizing when you’re accessing a sensitive site. When we visited a banking site, for instance, an alert popped up prompting us to open the website in Safepay (it can automatically connect to the VPN, too.) Sounds like a small point, but that one idea reduces the chance that you’ll forget to turn Safepay on.
The other major Safepay plus is it runs on its own virtual Windows desktop, isolated from everything else on your system. Malware can’t capture your keystrokes or record screenshots of what you’re doing (we tried with commercial and custom tools of our own), and the virtual keyboard prevents even hardware keyloggers from recording your activities.
Put it all together and Safepay offers way more protection than other privacy browsers, making it one of the highlights of Bitdefender’s range.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Vulnerability Scan
Bitdefender’s Vulnerability Scan checks your device for various issues which might make it open to attack: missing updates, weak passwords, dubious Windows and browser security settings, and more.
This kind of tool can be very useful, but Bitdefender’s offering has rarely told us anything interesting in previous reviews, and we didn’t see much improvement this time around.
The Vulnerability Scan warned that our Wi-Fi network was ‘unsafe’, for instance, because it didn’t have a password. We had intentionally set up a vulnerability, but we hadn’t removed the password; we had changed it to, well, ‘password.’ If a user doesn’t look closely, Bitdefender’s misleading description makes the real issue easy to miss. Worse, this issue has been around for years (we found apparent references to it on the Bitdefender community forum from 2017.)
The Vulnerability Scan found four low-level browser and operating system issues. That sounded interesting, but they turned out to be extremely minor, such as a setting on our system which allowed users to edit Internet Explorer security zones.
The scan didn’t find any missing application updates. It did report a missing Windows Security update which had just come out, which is good news, although we would expect any properly configured system to find and install Windows updates all on its own.
Other providers delivered more on the same system. Norton’s Software Updater found 11 missing application updates, for instance. Avast’s Smart Scan clearly warned us about our weak (not missing) Wi-Fi password, and although it ignored the Internet Explorer security zone ‘issue’, did make some more useful suggestions, including turning on Data Execution Prevention (a valuable Windows exploit protection technology) and ensuring device notifications weren’t displayed on the lock screen.
The Vulnerability Scan still has a little value. Malware often changes system settings to help stay hidden, so if you’ve been infected previously, there’s a chance the report will find something useful. But we’d like to see it updated with a more in-depth look at your system and application settings.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: VPN
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus includes the free version of Bitdefender VPN. The paid edition is an excellent service with quality apps using the Hotspot Shield network, but, unfortunately, the freebie is so restricted that many will find it unusable.
You only get 200MB of data a day, for instance. We opened desktop Outlook and a few other applications on a Windows laptop, and the background traffic alone used 70MB of data over the next hour. The free Bitdefender VPN is only suitable for light use.
Bitdefender VPN Free doesn’t allow you to choose a location. The app automatically selects the nearest server and that can’t be changed (Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
The other big issue is you can’t choose your location. Hit Connect and Bitdefender VPN automatically selects whatever it thinks is the best server for you (the closest or the fastest, most likely.). That means there’s little hope of unblocking anything, and, if the VPN chooses a location in a neighboring country to you, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Still, if you only need a VPN very occasionally, perhaps to securely access your email on public Wi-Fi, the free Bitdefender VPN just might be enough. And, if you can live with the data and location limits, there’s a lot to like here.
Welcome VPN bonus features include effective ad and tracker-blocking (Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: VPN Features
Bitdefender’s Windows app takes up a lot of screen space, thanks to a large and mostly pointless map (you can’t pan or zoom, it doesn’t show Bitdefender’s location or even precisely highlight your own location when connected.) But it looks good, and provides a lot of information: your current IP address, the session length, the data you’ve used, and more.
Using the VPN is easy - just hit the blue Connect button - but connect times were relatively slow for us at around 6-8 seconds. Many WireGuard VPNs take only a couple of seconds, and ExpressVPN’s Lightway protocol often gets us connected in less than one second.
Speeds were very acceptable during testing at 60Mbps+ on a 70Mbps connection. That’s adequate for browsing, or a short period streaming if you turn the quality down (30 minutes of standard definition YouTube watching needs around 180MB, for instance.)
Bitdefender VPN has some surprisingly capable settings, including support for the very secure OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols (Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender VPN’s highlight is its array of advanced features and configurations. Most VPN apps from antivirus providers are a little underpowered, but Bitdefender offers more functionality than many specialist VPN providers.
A strong choice of protocols includes WireGuard, OpenVPN and Hotspot Shield’s Hydra, for instance. Quality ad and tracker blocking enhances your privacy online, and we found the effective kill switch immediately blocks your internet access if the VPN drops.
Split tunneling support allows you to select apps which bypass the VPN and use the internet directly. That could help cut your VPN data usage and stretch that 200MB a day just a little further.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
A very clever Auto-Connect option can automatically connect to the VPN when your device starts, if you connect to unsecured Wi-Fi, when you access specific domains (your business network, say), even if you visit a particular category of website: banking, online payments, health, and more.
There’s even an App Traffic Optimizer, which can improve speeds of up to three apps by giving them priority for your available bandwidth. That won’t help much with the free version - the more apps you use, the faster your data will disappear - but we have to applaud Bitdefender’s technical expertise.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: VPN alternatives
Bitdefender VPN might work for you if you only need the bare minimum of protection, perhaps to stay safe while you spend 15 minutes a day accessing the web on coffee shop Wi-Fi.
If you like Bitdefender but can’t live with the restrictions, upgrading to Bitdefender Premium Security adds the unlimited Bitdefender Premium VPN. It’s more expensive at $79.99 in year one, $159.99 on renewal, but that’s still fair value. NordVPN’s Basic plan costs $68 in year one, for instance, $112 on renewal, for the VPN alone.
Other antivirus vendors offer free VPNs with a little more. Avast One Essentials gives you a far more generous 5GB a week data allowance, for instance, although it also doesn’t allow you to choose a location.
You could also choose a provider from our best free VPN list. PrivadoVPN, for instance, allows you to choose from 12 locations, and has a far more flexible 10GB monthly data allowance. Well worth a look if you’re on a strict budget.
(Image credit: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Password Manager
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus includes a password manager on its feature list, but it’s only a three-month trial version. That still beats Avast, who dropped its own password manager a few years ago, but it can’t match Norton, who still includes a password manager with even its starter Antivirus Plus package.
We signed up for the trial anyway, an ultra-easy process which took just a couple of clicks. Bitdefender supports Password Manager on desktops via Chrome, Edge and Firefox extensions, and there are mobile apps for Android and iOS.
No need to enter all your old passwords manually - Bitdefender Password Manager can import credentials from browsers and a bunch of other privacy tools (Image credit: Bitdefender)
The tool supports importing existing passwords from many sources, good news if you’re looking for a quick start. There’s direct support for 1Password, Bitwarden, Chrome, Dashlane, Edge, Firefox, KeePass, LastPass, Roboform, Sticky Password and many more.
We tried importing data from Dashlane, and it mostly worked, with one issue. Dashlane supports multiple accounts for a website (same email address, different passwords); Bitdefender Password Manager doesn’t, so where Dashlane had multiple accounts, it imported one and ignored the others.
We found some issues with the tool in real-world use. When we complete a ‘new account’ web form with Dashlane, it recognises fields like ‘email’ and allows us to fill them with a click; Bitdefender does this with passwords, but we had to enter our email address manually.
Although Password Manager correctly captured simple ‘username and password’ screens, it sometimes failed with more complex forms. When one site asked for our name, email and password, for instance, Password Manager recorded the login as our name instead of our email.
Bitdefender Password Manager can generate secure passwords when you need them direct from its app and browser extension (Image credit: Bitdefender )
But there are plenty of plus points, too. It was easy to access our logins and copy usernames and passwords as required. A secure password generator creates strong passwords as you need them, with your choice of upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols (and a neat ‘easy to type’ option to avoid the harder-to-find symbols.) The Security Report highlights weak or reused passwords, and can even run a leaked password check (via haveibeenpwned.com) to see if your account appears in any data breaches.
Bitdefender Password Manager is a useful tool, especially if you get it for free as a part of Bitdefender Ultimate Security or Bitdefender Premium Security. If you need to buy Password Manager separately, it’s cheap at $19.99 for year one, $29.99 on renewal (that’s half the price of Dashlane.) But if you’re looking for a powerhouse password manager with every possible feature, check our Best Password Manager guide for better ideas.
(Image credit: Bitdefender)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Anti-tracker
Bitdefender’s Anti-tracker feature is a technology that prevents intrusive trackers from collecting data on your online activities.
Anti-tracker is available as a very easy-to-use browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
We installed Anti-tracker on Chrome and it began blocking threats immediately, with nothing else to configure. You can leave the service to do its work, or, if you’re curious, click the extension icon for a report on whatever it’s blocked on the current page.
Our tests showed Anti-tracker blocked an excellent 93% of sample trackers. But we found that it also blocked trackers that are essential to website functionality. View the radar maps on weather.com, for instance, and although you’ll see radar images of incoming weather, the site doesn’t display cities, roads or any of the underlying map. Reading user reviews, we found many similar complaints of Anti-tracker breaking websites.
You can address this, in theory, by telling Anti-tracker not to block trackers on sites where you notice issues. But if, like weather.com, the only issue is a site not displaying some usual content, you may never realize there’s a problem. And the idea of having to exclude sites on Anti-tracker every single time something doesn’t work as you’d expect just feels too much time-consuming trouble than it’s worth. But if you disagree, give the extensions a try: they’re all free, no need to buy Bitdefender products or even create an account.
Securely wipe sensitive files to make sure they can’t be undeleted (Image credit: Bitdefender )
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: File Shredder
Bitdefender’s File Shredder is a simple tool which securely deletes files by overwriting them multiple times. It’s an easy way to get rid of sensitive documents, and ensures that even if someone else has full access to your device (you’ve sold it, maybe it’s been stolen), they won’t be able to undelete or recover that dara.
The easiest way to make this happen is to choose the files in Explorer, then right-click and select Bitdefender > File Shredder. Your files appear in the File Shredder console, and you can wipe them all forever with a click.
There are no configuration options, which might be an issue for the demanding expert users. For example, specialist secure deletion tools often allow you to choose a wiping algorithm, perhaps to overwrite data more often for extra security.
File Shredder delivers all the functionality most users will ever need, though. It doesn’t add a lot of value to the suite because there are more powerful file wiping tools available for free, but File Shredder’s ease of use is a plus, and overall we’re glad it’s included in the package.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus: Final verdict
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus consistently delivers great PC malware protection results from the top independent testing labs and in our own checks. But where it really scores is in Bitdefender’s array of additional security layers, including effective anti-phishing to block dangerous websites, and multi-layered ransomware protection that can recover damaged files in seconds. It’s our top Windows antivirus, and a must-try for anyone with a PC to protect.
Google One VPN is a simple VPN that comes bundled with the tech giant's premium subscription service, Google One. When we say simple, we really, really mean it. There are barely any options, settings, or features. You can't even choose a location. Hit the Enable button and the app automatically connects to a server in your country, then goes to work encrypting your internet traffic.
Google has expanded its app range since launch and the VPN now works on Windows and Mac, as well as Android and iOS. There's no way to manually set it up on anything else but with no real features, there's not much reason to do that.
If you're hoping to unblock US Netflix or anything else, get connected in VPN-unfriendly countries, set up the VPN on a router, or anything even faintly advanced, then we can say absolutely, definitively, and without question, Google One VPN isn't the service for you.
If you're going to buy Google One anyway and you could use a lightweight service to protect your internet activities on public Wi-Fi, then it might be a different story. In this review, we'll look more closely at what Google One VPN offers, what it doesn't have, and find out whether this could be a smart choice for you. We're only reviewing the VPN element here. If you want details on the full package, you can check out our Google One review.
The Bypass VPN feature allows you to choose apps that won't use the VPN tunnel (Image credit: Google)
What is Google One VPN?
Although it's more basic than just about anything from the big VPN names, Google One VPN is a real virtual private network (VPN) that delivers the same fundamental security benefits.
Turn it on, and the app directs all your device traffic through a secure encrypted tunnel. Snoopers aren't able to access your data on even the most insecure of public Wi-Fi hotspots, and with your real IP address replaced by Google One VPN's server, it's more difficult for companies to track you online.
The big omission is Google One VPN doesn't allow you to choose a new virtual location (pretend to be in the US when you're actually in Australia, for instance). As a result, it can't help you access US-exclusive Netflix shows, say, or any other content that isn't normally available in your country.
Although that's a major downside, it also looks like web companies won't spend as much time and effort trying to detect and block Google One VPN connections. We'll get more into this later.
A Snooze button temporarily turns off the VPN (Image credit: Google)
What are the apps like?
Google One VPN's Windows and Mac apps are just about as simple as you'll see. An opening dashboard lists two or three reasons you might use a VPN such as reducing tracking, staying safe on public Wi-Fi, and browsing securely. There's an On/ Off button, an option to launch when your devices start, and that's it.
Google's Android and iOS offerings look a little more complex, at least initially, because they include panels relating to Google One's various cloud storage features. Tap one to explore how your storage space is being used. A Sync option can back up your photos, videos, contacts or calendars, and a Clean up feature wipes junk files to free up more space. If you're not interested in any of that, though, just tap the iOS VPN panel and you've essentially got the same stripped-back interface as the desktop app.
Android users get a touch more functionality. A split tunneling feature allows you to choose apps that won't use the VPN, handy for anything that isn't compatible. A Snooze feature pauses the VPN protection for five minutes, then automatically resumes it, and integration with Android's system-wide kill switch protects you by blocking your internet if the connection drops. That's all good news, but the app is still seriously underpowered by usual Android standards.
There is a positive side to having next to no features; you've next to nothing to learn so anyone can use it. There's no need to understand technical concepts like protocols or even encryption. Just flip the switch when you need protection.
Unfortunately, the lack of features might compromise your privacy in some situations. Our tests showed the Windows app didn't have a kill switch, for instance, and when we forcibly dropped the connection, our real IP was exposed. The app didn't even warn us or try to reconnect, so Windows users could browse for hours, thinking they're protected, when they're entirely exposed.
Does Google One VPN store any logs?
Connect to most VPNs, and your login and user traffic is sent through the same server. That single computer knows your identity and where you’re going online, allowing a malicious VPN (or anyone who can compromise the server) to log your activities and link them to your account.
Google One VPN is designed so that you log in using one server, but your browsing is routed through another. This way, the first computer knows who you are, but not what you’re doing; the second knows what you’re doing, but not who you are. Even Google can’t see which sites you’re visiting (which means it can’t log them, either).
The service does log some very general data about VPN use: how many connections you’ve made in the last 28 days, for instance, and how many connections your account has active right now. But that’s not unusual – most VPNs monitor the number of active connections to enforce ‘maximum device’ limits – and there’s nothing here that can link you to any action online.
Google allows anyone to examine some reference libraries for its VPN (Image credit: Google)
Google doesn’t have the best of reputations for looking after user privacy, but fortunately you don’t have to take its VPN claims entirely on trust. The company has open-sourced some reference libraries for its apps, allowing anyone with technical expertise to take a look at how it works, and in 2021 the VPN was audited by NCC Group.
The conclusions were generally positive, with NCC Group finding that the VPN worked as promised, and explaining how Google had taken measures to prevent the system being compromised (malicious employees can’t simply install a backdoor on their own, for instance).
The report warned that the technical protections ‘did not categorically eliminate the opportunity for Google to violate its privacy claims’, but any audit of any VPN could make a similar point: things look great now, but it’s possible a provider could cheat the system later.
Overall, although the system design, open sourcing and audit report will never win over the biggest Google skeptics, the reality is Google One VPN has more support for its no-logging claim than most of the competition.
Google One Premium gives you a bunch of other stuff as well as the VPN (Image credit: Google)
How much does Google One VPN cost?
The Google One VPN is available in the following countries for eligible Google One members: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States
After signing up, you can travel to other countries and Google One VPN should still work, but it may not connect to a server in that country, which could lead to problems. If you use Google One VPN in Hungary, say, and it connects to a server in Germany, then websites may not serve you with the local content you expect.
The baseline Google One plan offers the VPN, 100GB of online storage, Google Photos editing features, and alerts if Google finds your personal details on the dark web. It's yours for a very low $1.99 billed monthly (regular VPNs ask $10-$13), dropping to $1.67 on the annual plan.
Higher plans add more storage and extra benefits, including premium Google Workspace features and up to 10% rewards on Google Play purchases. See our full Google One review for more details.
This could be good value in some situations. If you'll only use a VPN to protect yourself on public Wi-Fi when on holiday, for instance, giving an annual $4 to Google will cover you for a couple of trips. Bargain!
If you'd like to unblock content, get online in VPN-unfriendly countries, or do anything more complex, you can get a full-strength VPN for not much more. For example, Private Internet Access is just $3.33 a month on its annual plan. That's $2.03 over three years for a far more powerful VPN service.
Google One VPN's interface really couldn't be any more basic (Image credit: Google)
How easy is Google One VPN to use?
The Google One app doesn’t even try to match regular VPNs for visual style. It’s really just a web page, with different sections on the VPN and Google One’s other features, and you browse it for whatever you need.
This still isn’t difficult to use: all you have to do is hit the Enable VPN button, then an Enable VPN switch, and typically you’re connected in around a second. Standard VPN apps usually require one tap rather than two, but that’s the only significant difference.
Android users can make life even easier by adding Google One VPN to their Quick Settings menu. After that, there’s no need to even launch the app. Connecting or disconnecting is then as easy as swiping down a couple of times and tapping the Google One VPN button.
Google One VPN can't be used to unblock Netflix, or anything else, due to the way it's designed (Image credit: Netflix)
What does Google One VPN unblock?
Most VPNs let you connect to servers in different countries. This allows you to appear as though you're in Manhattan when actually you're in Melbourne. This may allow you to access content that isn't normally available in your country.
Google One VPN's apps automatically choose your server, though, usually one based in your own country. So, as you can't change your region, you won't be able to unblock anything at all.
One issue with streaming sites in particular is they often look out for VPN connections and block access if they detect you're using one. We connected to the VPN and then tried to watch Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, and BBC iPlayer. None of the sites complained about Google One and we streamed content as usual.
Using a VPN can cause hassles on non-streaming sites, too. You might see annoying 'click all the tiles containing a bicycle' type CAPTCHAs, for instance, and some sites may block you entirely.
To test how the VPN handles this, we connected and accessed twelve websites (including Google) that can detect VPN use. The results were a real surprise. Commonly used free VPNs might be spotted on up to ten of our twelve websites, most commercial VPNs are detected by six to eight, but Google One VPN was flagged by only one website.
Looks like Google One VPN's ‘we don't unblock anything' stance has at least one advantage: content providers don't have much incentive to spend time and money trying to detect its users, and that could mean you're far less likely to be blocked while legitimately accessing sites in your own country.
Google One VPN offers a decent turn of speed, performance-wise (Image credit: Google)
How fast is Google One VPN?
We tested Google One VPN's performance using several benchmarking sites and apps including SpeedTest, Measurement Lab, Cloudflare, and more. We did this from a US home with a 1Gbps fiber connection.
The results were a little below par, with Google managing average download speeds of 345Mbps. That's a very long way behind the market leaders - IPVanish, NordVPN, and Surfshark all beat 950Mbps in recent tests. Still, it's perfectly adequate for browsing, streaming, and most other internet tasks.
Final verdict: How good is Google One VPN?
Google One VPN is a very limited VPN which just won't work for most users. The inability to change location means it can't unblock anything. No desktop kill switch makes it poor for Windows or Mac privacy. It won't even try to get you connected in China or other countries that block VPNs. If you only need the VPN for occasional mobile use while accessing public Wi-Fi, and you'll make use of the 2TB online storage space and other Google One extras, then it might, just about, get the job done. Even there though, the likes of Private Internet Access offer a far more capable service for only a little extra cash.
