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ProtonVPN

Started by Prem Kumar, Aug 06, 2020, 12:20 PM

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Prem Kumar

ProtonVPN

BOTTOM LINE

ProtonVPN might seem small, but it has a lot more to offer than many of the bigger players. The free version is the best we've tested, and paid subscriptions are affordable as well.

ProtonVPN isn't the biggest, the flashiest, or even the cheapest VPN, and yet it's one of the best services available. It places an enormous emphasis on security and user privacy, and has an excellent client that's very easy to use. It also offers a suite of advanced privacy tools usually reserved for far more expensive products. For all that, and its amazing free version that has no limit on data usage, it's an Editors' Choice winner and one of the best VPNs. If you're dipping your toe into VPNs, it's a great way to start with no risk.

What Is a VPN?

When you activate your VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server operated by the VPN company. Sending your traffic through the tunnel keeps it hidden from anyone on the same network as you, and from your ISP that is all too willing to sell your anonymized data. A VPN also hides your true IP address, making it harder for advertisers to track you across the web. If you select a distant server, you can even spoof your location to appear in a distant country.

VPNs are valuable tools for improving your privacy online, but they can't do everything. I still recommend that everyone use a password manager, activate two-factor authentication wherever it's available, and install an antivirus app.

ProtonVPN Pricing and Features

Most VPN services offer the same set of features across all pricing tiers. For those services, the tiers are less about upgrades and more about longer-term subscriptions at a reduced rate. ProtonVPN goes in the opposite direction. There is a 20 percent discount for annual versus monthly subscriptions, but more generous features are unlocked or added as you move up the four price tiers.

On its pricing page, ProtonVPN includes speed classifications for its subscription tiers. These are just estimations based on the expected number of users. ProtonVPN does not throttle your speeds, regardless of the subscription you use. The Free subscription has "Low" speeds because ProtonVPN expects it will have many users crowded into a few servers, while the paid subscriptions have "High" speeds because they have access to more servers and fewer users per server. I put this to the test below.

The first subscription tier of ProtonVPN is its free offering, which includes just three VPN server locations, and only allows one device to be connected at a time. You'll also have to create an account with ProtonVPN in order to access even its free tier. Despite those limitations, ProtonVPN is unique in that it does not limit the amount of data a free subscriber can use, as mentioned earlier. TunnelBear VPN's free offering limits you to 500MB of secured traffic per month, Hotspot Shield limits your bandwidth to 500MB per day, and KeepSolid places no data restrictions on its limited free version. Other free VPNs pile on other restrictions. Because of all that, I recommend ProtonVPN over all the other free VPNs I've tested.

The second tier is ProtonVPN Basic, which costs $5 per month ($48 annually). This tier grants access to all the VPN locations ProtonVPN has to offer, but limits you to just two devices. P2P file sharing is allowed at this tier. Mullvad offers unfettered access to its service for a smidge more, at €5 ($5.89 at writing) per month.

For this review, I signed up for a $10 per month ($96 annually) Plus account, which is the third of four pricing tiers. This slightly below the average monthly price of a VPN, and still less than competitors with similar features, such as NordVPN. This tier lets me access all the VPN servers in ProtonVPN's network, and use up to five devices—the average for the industry. This tier grants access to Plus servers. These are servers restricted to the highest two tiers of ProtonVPN, and intended to be less crowded and therefore higher performing. Plus subscribers also get access to the Tor annonymization network, a rare feature. You don't need to use a VPN to access Tor, but it's nice to have. There are also specially designated servers for streaming media at the Plus level.

While ProtonVPN has an average monthly price, the annual fee for its Plus tier is not. The average annual cost of a VPN is $73.40, thanks to the hefty discounts most companies offer for longer term subscriptions. Kaspersky Secure Connection, for example, is just $29.99 per year. That said, I caution against starting with a long term VPN subscription. Instead, get a short term of free plan, and see how the VPN works in your home and with the sites and services you need before making a high-cost commitment.

The Plus tier also includes access to multihop Secure Core servers, which are a bit unusual and merit further explanation. These are servers owned by ProtonVPN and kept in secure facilities (in one example, an old military base). This way you can be assured that no one has tampered with the servers, to expose your information. When you connect via Core Servers, your VPN connection makes two hops. First, from your device to the Core Servers, and then onward to the VPN server you select.

While a VPN protects your data with its encrypted tunnel, that doesn't mean anything if an attacker has taken control of the VPN server. What the Core Server scheme does is guarantee that your information is secure from your computer to the Core Server, which is under lock and key. If the next VPN server you connect to after the Core Server has been compromised, whoever has taken control won't be able to glean anything about you because your traffic will appear to be coming from the Core Server and not your actual computer. This is similar to Tor, but Tor is much more complex with many more hops in between you and your destination.

Unsurprisingly, multihop connections come at a pretty hefty trade off in terms of speed and performance, but is a unique feature that should put even the most paranoid mind to rest. Other companies may offer similar multihop VPN connections, and CyberGhost also boasts about the integrity of its NoSpy data center. ProtonVPN brings it all together.

If all that is insufficient, you can upgrade to a $30 per month ($288 annually) Visionary plan, the top of the four pricing tiers. This includes all of the features listed in the previous tier but raises the number of devices that can be simultaneously connected to 10. What you're really getting with a Visionary plan is access to the highest paid tier of ProtonMail, the encrypted email service also operated by ProtonVPN. That means 20GB of ProtonMail storage, 50 email aliases, support for 10 email domains, and up to five users on a single email account.

ProtonVPN subscriptions can be purchased via major credit card or PayPal. You can make Bitcoin payments, but only when you upgrade from one plan to the other; you can't create a paid account using Bitcoin. Mulvad, for example, offers several different payment options, including cash sent directly to its HQ. That said, ProtonVPN has announced its own cryptocurrency, suggesting that anonymous payments could someday come to the forefront.

VPN Protocols

VPN technology has been around a long time, and there are lots of different flavors of encrypted tunnels to choose from. I prefer VPN services that make use of the OpenVPN protocol, which is thoroughly vetted by virtue of being open source and has a reputation for being fast and reliable.

ProtonVPN tells me that it uses OpenVPN UDP/TCP in its Windows app and IKEv2, another good protocol, in all of its Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows apps. I'd like to see it deploy OpenVPN more widely, although that might matter less with the arrival of the super fast heir apparent to OpenVPN: WireGuard. Only few VPN companies like NordVPN and Mullvad have already widely deployed WireGuard, so ProtonVPN isn't behind the curve yet.

Servers and Server Location

In terms of distribution, ProtonVPN covers a respectable 51 countries, a little below the 52 countries provided by VPNs on average. CyberGhost covers 90 countries, and ExpressVPN an impressive 94. More server locations is good because it means you're more likely to find a VPN server near to you, giving you better performance. It also means more options for spoofing your location.

ProtonVPN deserves credit for improving its geographic distribution. The company now offers server locations in Africa, an entire continent often ignored by VPN companies, as well as servers in locations in India. ProtonVPN has one location in South America, another oft-ignored locale. I'd like to see more options in all of these regions, but ProtonVPN does better than most.

ProtonVPN provides servers in regions with repressive internet policies, including China (Hong Kong), Russia, and Turkey. Having servers in these regions does not necessarily allow users to circumvent censorship, but it may provide a modicum of security and privacy to the populace. Note that recent legislation has prompted some VPN companies to remove their Hong Kong servers.

ProtonVPN has nicely sized networks of servers,and one that has grown steadily over the years. It now stands at 954, which is a far cry from the 5,000 or more available from CyberGhost and NordVPN. While numerous servers are certainly nice, they don't necessarily mean better service.

Some readers have expressed concern about VPNs using virtual servers. These are software-defined servers, meaning that a single, physical server can play host to many virtual ones. These can also be configured to appear as if they are in a country other than their physical host. The concern is that people want to know exactly where they are connecting, and through which countries their information is passing.

That's not to say that using virtual servers is bad. GoldenFrog VyprVPN, for example, uses virtual servers in locations it regards as secure in order to service locations where the company cannot guarantee the safety of its hardware. A representative for ProtonVPN tells me that the company only rents "bare metal" servers that are dedicated to ProtonVPN, meaning they are not shared with other renters and are exactly where they say they are.

Your Privacy With ProtonVPN

It's important that every VPN company respect your privacy and protect your personal information. After all, the main reason to use a VPN is to limit access to your personal information. The company's privacy policy clearly lays out this, and more, in just a few short paragraphs. It's not as short as TorGuard VPN's policy, nor interactive, like TunnelBear's, but it's clear and concise. I'll do my best to summarize here. In general, it seems that ProtonVPN is living up to its stated goals of protecting user privacy and security—both through its policies and its hardware and technology practices.

In conversations with me and in the company's documentation, ProtonVPN says it does not log user activity. In order to prevent brute-force password attacks, it only stores a timestamp of the last successful login, which is overwritten after the next login. That's excellent.

A representative from ProtonVPN tells me that ProtonVPN only makes money through subscription sales, not by selling user information. ProtonVPN is owned by the parent company Proton Technologies AG, and is based in Switzerland and operates under Swiss law. As such, it only responds to requests for information from an approved Swiss court order, which also requires that the individual who is the target of the investigation be notified. That's in stark contrast to the practice of the US sending National Security letters to companies, requiring information and preventing them disclosing the request. Even if ProtonVPN were required to respond to a request, it would only supply login timestamps. The company's transparency report indicates it has not responded to any requests for information. This is all excellent from a privacy and security standpoint.

ProtonVPN recently open-sourced its apps, and notes that its service passed muster with Mozilla. That's good, but it hasn't undergone a no-logs or infrastructure security audit. TunnelBear, for examples, has committed to annual audits of its service.

In terms of physical security, ProtonVPN says it limits access to its hardware and encrypts its servers so the loss of one would not affect the rest of the fleet. Other VPNs have gone further, having their servers run only in RAM. The company also says that it will inform the public about any data breaches, "as soon as it can be guaranteed that disclosing the information will not put users at risk."

Security is really an issue of trust. Even if a company does everything right, it doesn't matter much if you, the customer, don't trust them. I recommend that consumers consider this information, and choose a service based on which company they feel they can trust.

Hands On With ProtonVPN

ProtonVPN offers clients for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. The company provides detailed instructions on how to configure a Linux machine to use the service. I had no trouble getting ProtonVPN's Windows app installed on a Intel NUC Kit NUC8i7BEH (Bean Canyon) desktop running the latest version of Windows 10.

Because ProtonVPN puts such a heavy emphasis on user privacy and technological excellence, I expected ProtonVPN would lack basic features and be a generally unusable mess. I was pleasantly surprised that ProtonVPN is a slick and well-designed app that's easy to use and doesn't skimp on features. Moreover, it's continued to be a pleasure to use over the years.

When you start up ProtonVPN, it appears as a skinny window similar to a mobile app. There's a very obvious button that quickly gets you online, which I appreciate. The app also shows your connection status, a selection of servers so you can quickly change VPN location, and a toggle switch for the Secure Core servers. Clicking the small grey arrow in the upper right expands the window to reveal ProtonVPN's servers spread out on a map along with a real-time assessment of network traffic.

You can search or browse the available servers, and I particularly like that you can drill down to the specific servers within a location. The app also displays how much load a particular server is experiencing, whether they are Plus servers (that is, servers reserved for Plus users), and which are specialized servers for Tor, streaming, file sharing, and so forth.

In addition to the specialized servers, ProtonVPN includes Profiles for specific activities. Two Profiles are included by default, one for connecting to the fastest server and another for connecting to a random server. You can also create your own Profiles to meet your unique needs by specifying a country and a specific server within that country with which you wish to connect. You can name your profile, mark it with a color, and require that it use the Secure Core servers, too. I recently realized that unlike most VPNs, ProtonVPN doesn't let you mark a server as a favorite—that's what Profiles are for. This is a pretty advanced feature, but you can easily ignore it if you're not interested.

ProtonVPN does include a Kill Switch that halts web traffic on your machine should the VPN link become disconnected. That prevents your traffic from being exposed, even if only briefly. The app also includes an easy tool for split-tunneling—that is, routing the traffic from specific apps or IP addresses either into or outside of the VPN tunnel.

Sources by: PCMag

ZaneCobb

#1
I've never heard of ProtonVPN before, but thanks for the recommendation!

CadenGarcia

#2
Hi there! I couldn't agree more! I've been using ProtonVPN for a while now, and I absolutely love it. The free version is great, but the paid subscription is even better. It's very affordable, and the service is top-notch. Paid subscriptions are affordable, and I think they're a great value for their features and protection. Thanks again for your feedback! Alternatively, I can recommend thunder vpn for pc. Unfortunately, the parameters aren't the best ones, but at least this VPN is totally free. I hope this helps!