PrivateVPN Review: Protect Your Privacy Anonymously On the Internet

PrivateVPN Review: Online Privacy is a myth, atleast for most people. A 13 year old sitting thousands of miles away from you can hack into your systems and compromise your digital life as well as privacy.

That’s where tools like PrivateVPN come to the rescue and that’s the reason why this PrivateVPN Review is being produced in the first place.

The problem with tools like PrivateVPN is, there are hundreds of such tools on the internet, all claiming to be better than the next tool, so in that case how are you going to decide which platform to go with?

So instead of having you mess your head up, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with VPNs and that’s the reason I’m scribbling this PrivateVPN Review down, so that I can walk you through the features of PrivateVPN.

Well nope, I’m not asking you to buy or go with PrivateVPN just because I’m saying so. Instead just go through this article, get acquainted with the features PrivateVPN is offering you and then decide for yourselves.

But before that, let’s start with the Basics.

What is a VPN?

This being a PrivateVPN Review, it only seems fair I explain to you, to the best of my knowledge what a VPN is and why you should even consider reading this article, right?

A VPN is the abbreviation for “Virtual Private Network”. And what a VPN does is, it masks, or hides your real IP address and changes it with one of their own server IP addresses.

Many people have a misconception that the IP address is just a virtual number without any basis, well it’s not so.

A VPN masks your IP by changing your real IP with one of their own existing IP addresses so no it’s not just a random number.

Why is it Important?

Now the question arises, why would you even want to mask or hide your IP address? So let me tell you that when you connect to the Internet with your real IP addresses, there are quite a bit of loopholes associated with it.

a. Because We Value Our Privacy

I’ve always said, an IP address is like your cell phone number. The govt. hackers or basically anyone with basic computer science knowledge can use your IP address to trace your real location, hack into your system and spy on your activities and even uncover your real-life identity in some cases.

Now I get it that you aren’t involved in any illicit activities or something you’d be afraid of, well still my question is are you okay knowing your privacy is compromised and every single move of yours might be getting monitored?

b. Because Websites Shouldn’t be Restricted

Secondly, your IP address is based on your real geographical location. Now if you live in a country where your govt. has banned certain websites due to political or any other reasons, this PrivateVPN Review might just as well be your life-saver.

The reason of me stating that is with PrivateVPN you can change your IP address and spoof your location, so it would appear as if you’re connecting to that specific website from some other country, a country where accessing the site isn’t banned and hence you’re allowed to browse it.

c. Because You Don’t Want to be Hacked

What’s the very basic element needed to hack into your system remotely? Your IP Address! Just that, couple commands with Metasploit and an E-mail does the trick in most cases.

So that’s a good enough reason for me to use a VPN to hide my real IP address, because if my real IP address isn’t being used to connect to the Internet, it can’t be used to hack into my system as well right?

d. Other Reasons

The Deep Web is not the green-eyed-monster the Govt. and the media make it seem like. Instead it’s just a deeper level of the web where govt. secrets and conspiracy theories are shared.

Now I personally like (and I’m sure some of you do too!) stumbling over there when I’m bored. But well, it’s filed under “illicit” activities under the govt.’s books.

Must Check: How to access the deep web

That’s where PrivateVPN helps me out by masking my real IP address, because you don’t want Homeland security knocking on your doors 5 seconds later; do you?

e. Torrents

One of the primary plus points of this PrivateVPN Review is that, PrivateVPN allows you anonymous torrenting as well.

Obviously torrents are marked as ‘illegal’ across the globe, and you wouldn’t want to get caught in all that mess with your real IPs.

But with the P2P friendly connections from PrivateVPN you can easily access and use torrents without the risk of getting caught.

f. Summary

We’ve only covered around 30% of this PrivateVPN Review and you already know what your IP address is,  why it’s important, what a VPN is and why you would want to use one.

So bottom-line being, a VPN ensures that your real identity and location are masked and you aren’t exposed to the digital world.

That being said, now let’s have a look what PrivateVPN exactly offers you and what makes it different from the other VPNs out there in the market.

PrivateVPN Features

1. Easy Installation

The installation process took me exactly 38 seconds on a 4GB 2.4ghz system, so I would say it’s pretty impressive considering I’ve had to wait as long as 5 minutes with some other VPN Services.

2. Easy and Clean Interface

Even if you’ve never spent a day in your life with VPNs, you still won’t find any problem downloading and logging in to your PrivateVPN account. Another reason of me deciding to compile this PrivateVPN Review here.

Download PrivateVPN from the official link and you’re halfway there.

Once you fire up the application, a neat box shows itself asking you for the login details, you don’t have to go fishing for those options out there.

3. Extensive 60 Country Servers List

As I said, there are no “complications” with PrivateVPN and that’s yet another one of the reasons why I took to scribbling this PrivateVPN Review down.

Once you’re logged in to your account, you get to choose your desired server from the PrivateVPN window right away.

And the list constitutes of almost every major country you might want to get access to. Here’s a glimpse of what it’s offering:

Basically, there are 60+ different countries you can choose your new IP address from. (Updated: 15th Sept. 2019).

Once you choose any country from this list, you virtually get to be in that country! In short, anyone running a trace on your IP address would get this new country IP rather than getting a hold of your real address.

4. Unlimited Server Switching

The last time I was with a VPN, I found out the hard way that they offered a limited number of “server switching”.

Meaning if I chose Australia (or any other country) as my first choice, I could change it only a certain number of times.

Well PrivateVPN on the other hand offers “unlimited switching”, so you can change your desired location as many times as you want without any restrictions.

5. Advanced Settings

Different Connection Protocols:

The other VPNs I was talking about, in most cases offer me 2 to 3 connection types. While PrivateVPN here is offering me as many as 5+ different connection types:-

• PPTP
• L2TP
• OpenVPN (Tap+UDP)
• OpenVPN (TAP+TCP)
• OpenVPN (TUN+UDP)
• IPSec

a. PPTP:

PPTP is the default connection protocol you get with PrivateVPN (and most other VPNs!) It’s the abbreviation for Point to Point Tunneling protocol.

If I get into the technicalities, you might not exactly grasp what I’d be explaining (and I’m sure you didn’t come here for a lesson on connection protocols either!

So let me just say that PPTP being the most common connection protocol is not as secure as most people take it to be.

I personally wouldn’t recommend you using PPTP because considering NSA grade tech existing today, it won’t be hard to imagine them being able to break in to the PPTP connections.

But unless you’re trying to teach the Al-Qaida how to manufacture bombs, and as long as you keep to basic activities like browsing the web and pranking your friends maybe, you would get along just fine.

Point being, feel free to use PPTP for your daily activities as long as you’re only trying to mask your online activities and identity.

b. L2TP

L2TP is the type of connection which doesn’t have any connection or privacy of its own, but when combined with the right encryption (something like the IPsec), it can turn out to be one of the best “privacy protection” diets you’ve ever taken.

c. TCP

I’m listing it here separately because as I’ve discussed in this PrivateVPN Review, PrivateVPN offers you three other connection protocols utilizing OpenVPN along with TCP and UDP.

TCP is the abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol. It’s one of the most error-free and stable connection protocols existing today.

The TCP sends data packets to the receivers end, and then waits for a confirmation that the data packet has been received successfully before sending the other data packet.

At times, it does delay the connection no doubt. But it makes sure that all of your data is being delivered, and if not the next packet of data isn’t being sent anyway.

d). UDP

UDP is the abbreviation for User Datagram Protocol. It’s the counterpart to TCP. It’s comparatively faster, but less trustworthy.

For the simple reason that the UDP protocol would keep sending your data packets to the destination without waiting for a delivery confirmation.

This way, all of your data packets get shipped right away, but there’s no guarantee that they ever reached where they were meant to.

Anyway I believe it’s enough connection protocol talk for a PrivateVPN Review, so  let me walk you through some of the “more interesting” features you get with PrivateVPN!

e. Open VPN

PrivateVPN supports OpenVPN as well. Well Open VPN is an open-source platform which utilizes VPN techniques including P2P and S2S.

OpenVPN uses more or less the authentication pattern with Bluetooth devices, it uses one secret key or certificate in order to pair, or connect to peers together.

As far as encryption goes, it uses 256-bit encryption along with OpenSSL library to encrypt the connections.

Talking about where PrivateVPN is concerned, OpenVPN is paired with TCP, UDP or TUN connection protocols to create secure data transfer tunnels.

It’s coming up as the more “desirable” alternative compared to IPsec, for the simple reasons that some ISPs block IPsec protocols for a number of reasons.

6. Auto-Reconnect

There’s this option which lets you automatically reconnect to your connection in case you were disconnected.

This makes sure you don’t have to manually connect everytime, although let me tell you in my over 10 days of personal experience with PrivateVPN, not once I’ve experienced a connection drop.

7. View-Logs

One of the other rare features which motivated me to get this PrivateVPN Review done is its ability to let me view connection logs.

You can choose to view your connection logs anytime you wish to.

8. Connection Guard

This is one of my favorite features with PrivateVPN! It’s a safeguard to make sure that my real IP is never exposed.

It’s possible that your connection might get dropped while you’re on the web. In those cases, lest this feature didn’t exist, your real IP address would get exposed because you will still be connected to the internet, just with your real address.

Instead what the connection safeguard does for you is, you can add the programs you want terminated immediately in case your connection is dropped.

The best way to use it is to add your Internet browsers and downloaders to the list. So in case you aren’t connected to the VPN, your browsers would be terminated hence preventing you from exposing yourselves.

9. Auto-Connect on Startup

You can even set PrivateVPN to automatically connect to a secure server when the system starts up. This way you can automate the whole “hide my identity” task.

You won’t have to manually turn on the VPN and that minimizes your workload no doubt, you just set a default server and you’ll be automatically connected to it everytime.

10. No Speed Loss

When I began writing this Private VPN review down, this was one of the primary features that I had in my mind.

“Speed loss” is one of my primary stress-issues whenever I’m using any VPN, because most VPNs significantly cap my browsing speed down.

Well the good news is, as you might have guessed by now via this PrivateVPN Review that PrivateVPN is not “most” VPNs.

I’m not saying there was “no” speed loss. What I’m saying is, it was so insignificant that I wouldn’t have even noticed if I wasn’t monitoring my speed via Ookla.

And as far as download speed goes, it too was almost not effected at all. So speed? No you aren’t losing that with PrivateVPN.

11. Consistent Speed

Some VPNs grant you fast speed initially, but as your usage amount increases, your speed is capped. I noticed this with 4/10 VPNs I use.

That’s again another problem you don’t have to worry about with PrivateVPN! Doesn’t matter how much data you use using the VPN, your speed is consistent.

12. No-Saved Logs on Server

PrivateVPN reportedly has stated that they do not keep any logs whatsoever. So unlike most VPNs where you’ve a risk of being exposed under certain circumstances, that’s not the case with PrivateVPN.

Doesn’t matter what you do, which websites you browse or which IP you connect to (or connect from!) PrivateVPN doesn’t poke its nose in your business.

13. Free Remote Setup

I judge a tool with the quality of its customer support, don’t you? Well so let me tell you when it comes to customer support, PrivateVPN stepped up its game to the next level.

They offer us “Free remote setup” via Teamviewer. Meaning they would setup the tool for you if you’re confused or unable to set it up for yourselves.

14. Pricing

Now finally we’re down to one of the primary sections of this PrivateVPN Review. “Primary section” because doesn’t matter how classy and feature-rich the Audi R8 might be, if you can’t afford it, it’s useless for you.

Fortunately, PrivateVPN isn’t the Audi R8 and considering the wide-range of features they’re offering, I would say they’re almost underpriced.

They’ve got 3 separate pricing plans:

Since our last update, they’ve updated their pricing plans. The updated plans are:

• 1 Month- $7.67/month
• 3 Months:- $4.88/month
• 13 Months:- $3.82/month. 

Although the lowest plan starts at $3.82, in the long run the 13 month package turns out to be the cheapest plan. 

They also have a 30-day moneyback guarantee just in case you aren’t happy with the company.

Payment Methods 

The company is a pretty privacy-respecting company, they accept payments via:

• Bitcoin (anonymous)
• PayPal
• Credit Cards. 

15. 6 Simultaneous Connections 

It’s one of the very few VPNs in the industry which allows for as many as 6 simultaneous logins. So a single account, and a single payment let users share the same account with all their family members without any extra payment.

It also guarantees unique IP addresses  for each device individually. Comparatively, 6 is a good number considering how most other VPNs provide between 3-5 simultaneous connections.  

16.  Supported Devices and OS 

Private VPN isn’t a windows-exclusive VPN. Although it still isn’t compatible with Linux yet. If you own any one of the following OS you can run Private VPN:

• Windows
• MacOS
• Android 
• iOS.

Custom-Crafted as a VPN for Kodi

The website has a page which details how it’s one of the best VPNs for Kodi. It’s 100% compatible for Kodi because it allows all Kodi addons and media to be unlocked.

Additionally the servers are specially optimized for Kodi so there’s no speed-issues and the video doesn’t keep buffering forever even in High-quality. 

It claims to unlock ABC, NBC Sports, Fox, iTV, Hulu, HBO and all other Kodi extensions with its ISP-avoiding IP addresses. And well if it can unblock Kodi, it also can be used to access Netflix and all other geo-restricted content.

PrivateVPN Review: Final Verdict

So will I suggest you to go with PrivateVPN? Why not? You’ve already seen what it’s capable of, the features, unlimited bandwidth, no speed capping, unlimited switching and everything else.

I honestly feel there’s not a single feature which a VPN should have which PrivateVPN lacks. Infact its offering as many as 6 different connection protocols when 2 or 3 are more than enough.

And take a look at the pricing, $8.95 is less than what we spend on our coffee every month. Don’t you think your privacy and security is a bit more important than your coffee?

So as far as I’m concerned, I can only say go and try out PrivateVPN for yourselves, and then if you think it doesn’t deserve your time or attention, you can even avail a 7-day money back guarantee!