Conclusion

Prices quoted in our table are for one month, which may be useful to try the paid-for service before committing to longer periods that will work out cheaper – often significantly cheaper.

If your needs for VPN only extend to keeping your Facebook session cookies safe, and thereby your login details, while surfing in Starbucks then any of the tested services should keep you clear from casual hackers. If you are looking for a VPN service to help reduce the amount of unceasing online tracking by data harvesters and advertising companies, then you may wish to avoid the proprietary software of service providers which dial out to Google servers or rely on Google APIs. When we asked about this, CyberGhost told us it was moving away from using Google Fonts; HMA! was satisfied that user privacy was not being compromised; while Private Tunnel told us that it is now closing the leak in a new version due to be released later in March 2015.

If you’re looking for a VPN service that is less subject to government surveillance, the US-run services are in some respects a surprisingly reasonable choice since the USA does not mandate that these service providers must keep records of users log in/out times or worse. So most US VPN providers will declare they do not log. This includes the IPVanish and Private Tunnel services reviewed here. However, US companies are bound by federal law such as the Patriot act, which allow wiretaps on their customers, and are forbidden from telling anyone that this is happening. So doing business with any US internet or communications company always carries this risk.

In Europe, the Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC has been overturned by the European Court of Justice, and nations are no longer required to log user activity. They must ensure they do not implement any law or procedure that infringes our rights to privacy given in the European Union of Fundamental Rights. The UK is an exception after the DRIP Act of 2014, which requires UK companies to log their customers’ activity and turn over these logs on demand.

With jurisdictions in Panama and Italy, the services from NordVPN and AirVPN would seem to offer a more assured service of privacy, and should be better placed to make the ‘P’ for private in VPN mean something.