Security & Privacy

Security & Privacy is the foundation of any VPN recommendation. A reliable VPN must use industry-standard encryption such as AES-256 or ChaCha20, alongside secure tunnelling protocols like WireGuard, OpenVPN, or IKEv2/IPSec. These ensure that your online activities remain private and inaccessible to hackers, ISPs, or government surveillance. Beyond encryption, we examine the integrity of the VPN’s privacy policy, paying close attention to whether it enforces a genuine no-logs policy that has been independently audited. A VPN may claim not to store your data, but without technical verification or a transparent audit trail, those claims hold little weight.

Jurisdiction also plays a major role in privacy. The country a VPN operates from can impact whether it is subject to data retention laws or international intelligence-sharing agreements such as the Five Eyes Alliance. We evaluate whether the provider’s legal base strengthens or weakens its privacy commitments, and whether its infrastructure, including DNS servers and account management systems, is owned or outsourced. Additionally, we run real-world leak tests to check for DNS, IPv6, and WebRTC leaks, and we assess security extras like kill switches, obfuscation modes, multi-hop routing, and Tor over VPN support.

Our goal in this category is to ensure that any VPN we recommend can be trusted to protect your identity, browsing history, and personal information, even under scrutiny. By combining technical testing with a legal and policy review, we provide a clear, evidence-based picture of how well each VPN safeguards your privacy.