Windscribe is a great VPN that packs in features, but is still easy to use, with great value commercial products, and one of the most generous free plans around. A decent sized network provides locations in 110 cities in 63 countries. Windscribe claims that its servers are actually located in those locations, rather than, the company suggests, ``some competitors who have most of their servers in the United States and Europe, and are simply spoofing the location with fake IP WHOIS data. . impression that you are somewhere else. ". A variety of apps keep you safe on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux. Extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera give you even more ways to sign in and tons of privacy-related extras, and the website has guides to help you set up the service on routers, Kodi, Amazon Fire TV, Nvidia Shield and through any OpenVPN software or compatible device Support for WireGuard, IKEv2 and OpenVPN with strong AES-256 encryption protects all traffic on your tunnel spies, while stealthy technologies attempt to mask your VPN usage, possibly allowing you to connect even in countries that actively block VPN traffic.
ROBERT is Windscribe's DNS tool to help users block ads, malware, trackers, and more (Image credit: Windscribe)
Windscribe subscription options:- 12 month plan - €4.08 per month (total cost €48.96)
ROBERT is Windscribe's DNS tool for blocking ads, malware, trackers and various types of Internet content (gambling, "fake news and clickbait", etc.). It goes way beyond the basic DNS blacklisting you'll get with other providers and gives you more power and configurability than even many desktop content filtering apps. Support is available via ticket, if you need it, but it's not 24/7 and there's no live chat. Still, there's an unusual upside to Windscribe's own subreddit with lots of new posts every day and occasional responses from Windscribe. This is valuable because it allows potential customers to see what actual Windscribe users are talking about, the questions they have, and the issues they're facing—a level of transparency you rarely get with other VPNs. The great news since our last review is that after a long time, Windscribe 2.0 apps are finally ready and out of beta. These bring a sleek new interface, WireGuard everywhere, easy location lookup, highly configurable split tunneling (on desktop and mobile), MAC address spoofing (a clever new way to prevent you from logging in). automatic login rules, automatic updates, even a command line interface for smarter scripts. More on these later.
In addition to the paid plans, Windscribe also offers a very generous free plan (Image credit: Windscribe)
Windscribe: packages and prices
Windscribe's free plan offers a generous 10 GB data transfer per month if you sign up with your email address, 2 GB if you don't. It's limited to eleven countries: North America, Europe, and Hong Kong, but it's still much better than what you'll get with many free services ('sorry, our free app only connects to Brunei, it's... what a problem ? ').
Upgrading to a business plan gives you unlimited data, access to 110 locations, and the ability to create custom OpenVPN, IKEv2, and SOCKS5 configurations.
There are also no annoying limits on simultaneous connections. You can set up and use the service anywhere you want, as long as the devices are yours (the fine print prohibits sharing your account with other people).
The prices are low. The monthly billing is only €9, for example; most VPNs charge between €10 and €13. Pay for a year in advance and the price will drop to the equivalent of €4.08. That's well below the yearly plans of most VPN providers (ExpressVPN is $8.32, Hotspot Shield $6.99, Speedify $5.99), though cheaper deals are available. Private Internet Access's annual plan is priced at €3.33, Surfshark's two-year plan is €2.49 for the first term, and as of this writing, Ivacy has a five-year contract priced at € 1.33 per month. Of course, we don't like long contracts either, but look at the totals. A year of Windscribe costs €49, so after a year and a day you'll have paid €98, while handing over €80 to Ivacy gets you five years of coverage.
However, this is not the end of the story. Windscribe's "Build a Plan" program can save you money by choosing only the locations you need, for $1 each. Each slot adds 10 GB to your free bandwidth allotment, and your plan must have at least two slots.
For example, if you sign up with your email address, you'll get a data allowance of 10 GB per month. Create a plan with EE. UU. And the UK and you'll get 30GB of data for €2 a month. You can upgrade to unlimited data for an extra €1, or a total of just €3 per month, billed monthly.
If you're only using a VPN for the occasional short trip, for example, it sounds like a good deal. Surfshark's monthly plan is more than four times as expensive at €13, for example; Ok, it's full service at all locations, but if you don't need it, who cares?
Another option, ScribeForce, allows you to register a group of users (a company, a family) with the same account. There's a minimum of five users, but you'll only pay €3 each, billed monthly, to access the full, unrestricted service.
Unusual Windscribe account options include purchasing a static IP address. Adding a residential IP address costs $8 per month, for example (data center IP addresses cost $2), but it could significantly improve your chances of accessing blocked sites and allow you to connect to restricted sites, businesses, and other IP networks. (Once you have a static IP address, you can also enable port forwarding in the Windscribe web console.)
Whatever your preference, Windscribe offers you a wider than usual selection of payment options, including card, PayPal, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies through CoinPayments.net, as well as gift cards and various other options through CoinPayments.net. Paymentwall.
Windscribe doesn't have the lowest prices, but their monthly plans are the cheapest you'll get, the rest are reasonably priced for the features you get, there are great savings if you're spanning multiple users and their flexibility. it is a big advantage.
If you don't need a full service all the time, the free plan may be enough for occasional use and you can, for example, buy three months of unlimited bandwidth per year for a total of €9, without the need for a long-term contract. Most VPNs charge more for a single month.
There's a potential catch in Windscribe's money-back guarantee, which only covers you for three days and if you've used less than 10GB of traffic.
Windscribe protects your privacy with AES-256 encryption and does not keep logs (image credit: Windscribe)
Confidentiality and registration
Windscribe's privacy features begin with its industrial-grade AES-256 encryption, with SHA512 authentication, a 4096-bit RSA key, and support for perfect forward secrecy (keys are not reused, even if a snooper obtains a private key, it will only allow them to view the data in a single session). The apps use various techniques to reduce the risk of data leaks, limit IPv6 traffic, redirect DNS requests through the tunnel to be handled by the VPN server, and possibly use a firewall to block all Internet access if the connection goes down. interrupt. We tested Windscribe's performance on a Windows 10 system using the IPLeak, DNSLeakTest, and DoILeak websites, and found no DNS or other leaks. We turn on the Windows client's kill switch (which Windscribe calls a firewall) and forcefully close the VPN connection to see how it behaves. The results were almost perfect: our Internet access was immediately blocked, the client interface refreshed to indicate there was a problem, then it immediately started reconnecting and displayed a notification on the desktop. Windows once we came back online. We'd love to have seen a notification on the desktop to tell us when the connection was dropped, but that's just a usability issue; if the firewall is activated and the client is minimized, the user has to guess why his Internet access was interrupted. However, it should normally reconnect in a few seconds, so this isn't a major problem. And in terms of privacy, the client performed perfectly, handling all the weird situations we went through and protecting our traffic at all times. Windscribe's logging policy is covered by an up-to-date and clearly written privacy policy that explains what the company does and does not collect. There's a small amount of minimum long-term registration, but you're limited to the total bandwidth you've used in a month (essential for managing usage on the free plan) and a timestamp of your last activity on the service to Allow identification of inactive accounts. The system briefly collects some connection details (username, connected VPN server, connection time, bandwidth used during the session, number of connected devices), but these are stored in the VPN server's RAM only and are lost when the session is closed. Other than that, there is no log of connections, IP addresses, timestamps, or browsing history. Or as the privacy policy says, "we don't store any records about who used which IP address, so we can't tie user activity to a single user."
Here is some of the data from Windscribe's transparency report (Image credit: Windscribe) Since there is no data on their activities, Windscribe emphasizes that there is nothing to share. This is supported by a transparency report that covers the amount of DMCA data and law enforcement requests during the year, and in both cases states that: ``Exactly no requests were fulfilled due to lack of relevant data. ''This is all good, but we'd like Windscribe to go further. Competitors like TunnelBear and VyprVPN have publicly audited their systems for registration or other privacy issues, giving potential customers a lot more security than stirring words on a website. We wait...