ProtonVPN 4.4.20 Crack+License Key 2023

For this review, we signed up for a $10-per-month Plus account ($96 per year, $159 every two years), which is the third of four pricing tiers. This is almost precisely the average monthly price of a VPN ($10.05 per month) we’ve tested, and still less than competitors with similar features, such as Editors’ Choice winner NordVPN. This tier lets you access all the VPN servers in ProtonVPN’s network and use up to five devices simultaneously. It also grants access to Plus servers. These are servers restricted to the highest two tiers of ProtonVPN. Plus subscribers also get access to the Tor anonymization network via VPN, a rare feature. You don’t need to pay or 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.

If all that is still insufficient, you can upgrade to a $30-per-month ($288 annually, $479 every two years) Visionary plan, the top of the four pricing tiers. This includes all 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 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. ProtonMail also includes a secure address book, private ProtonCalendar, and the forthcoming ProtonDrive file locker.

While ProtonVPN has an average monthly price, the same isn’t true of its annual fee. The average annual cost of a VPN we’ve tested is $71.58, thanks to the hefty discounts most companies offer for longer-term subscriptions. A ProtonVPN Plus account runs $96 per year, or $159 every two years. Kaspersky Secure Connection, on the other hand, is just $29.99 per year. Despite the savings, we caution against starting with a long-term VPN subscription. Instead, get a short-term or 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.

ProtonVPN subscriptions can be purchased via major credit card or PayPal. You can make Bitcoin payments, but you must create an account first. ProtonVPN says it will also accept cash sent directly to its HQ, an option we’ve only seen with Editors’ Choice winners Mullvad and IVPN.

If you find you need more simultaneous connections, ProtonVPN will let you purchase them à la carte. From the subscription portal, you add a ProtonMail Professional account. After that, you can add as many VPN connections as you wish for $2 per month, with a reduced price for longer subscriptions. However, some VPN companies have done away with these limitations entirely. Among the services we’ve tested, these include: Avira Phantom VPN, Encrypt.me VPN, Ghostery Midnight, IPVanish VPN, Surfshark VPN, and Windscribe VPN. (Note that Encrypt.me and IPVanish are both owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company.)The ProtonVPN Plus tier also includes access to multi-hop Secure Core servers, which are a bit unusual and merit further explanation. ProtonVPN says that these servers are only in countries with strong privacy laws and that it owns them directly. Physically, they reside in secure facilities (in one example, on an old military base). When you connect via Secure Core servers, your VPN connection makes two hops. First, from your device to the Secure Core servers, and then onward to the VPN server you select.

While a VPN protects your data with its encrypted tunnel, that doesn’t matter if an attacker has taken control of the VPN server. The Secure Core server scheme guarantees that your information is secure from your computer to the Secure Core server, which is under lock and key. If the next VPN server you connect to after the Secure 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 Secure 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.

In terms of distribution, ProtonVPN covers a quite respectable 61 countries, above the 53-country average among the VPNs we’ve reviewed. ExpressVPN, by comparison, covers an impressive 94. Having more server locations is good because it means you’re more likely to find a VPN server near to you, giving you better performance and more options for spoofing your location.

ProtonVPN deserves credit for improving its geographic distribution. The company now offers server locations in South America and Africa, two entire continents often ignored by VPN companies, as well as India. Importantly, the company has been steadily expanding its global presence and actively seeks feedback from users on what countries to add.

Having VPN servers in regions with repressive internet policies does not necessarily allow users to circumvent censorship, but it may provide a modicum of security and privacy to the populace. ProtonVPN covers several such countries, including China (Hong Kong), Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam.

Virtual servers are software-defined servers, meaning that a single, physical server can play host to many virtual ones. Virtual locations are VPN servers configured to appear somewhere other than their physical location. Neither are inherently problematic, but we prefer VPN companies to be transparent about infrastructure and where it is located. A representative for ProtonVPN told me that the company only uses “bare metal” servers, meaning they are dedicated machines and are exactly where they say they are.

In terms of physical security, ProtonVPN says it uses full disk encryption, so any seized server would be inaccessible. The company also says that its dedicated servers are harder to attack by virtue of not being virtual servers, and any server that goes offline in “unforeseen circumstances” is immediately wiped and reprovisioned. Other VPNs have gone further, having their servers run only in RAM.

ProtonVPN is owned by the parent company Proton Technologies AG and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It can be found in the Swiss Commercial Registry 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. Even if ProtonVPN were required to respond to a request, it would have little or nothing to provide. The company’s transparency report indicates ProtonVPN received a valid request for information in January , but it did not have any information to provide. This is all excellent from a privacy and security standpoint.

ProtonVPN has open-sourced its apps, meaning any researcher can verify there are no potential vulnerabilities. It also manages a bug bounty, paying researchers for the bug vulnerabilities they submit, and had its apps audited by SEC Consult. That’s all good, but we’d like to see a thorough no-logs and infrastructure security audit released to the public. TunnelBear, for example, has committed to annual audits of its service. Audits are imperfect, but still useful for establishing trust. ProtonVPN has announced it will complete an audit in , and we look forward to the results.

ProtonVPN offers clients for Android, Android TV, Chromebooks, iOS, macOS, and Windows. The company provides detailed instructions on how to configure a Linux machine to use the service. We had no trouble getting ProtonVPN’s Windows app installed on an 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, you might expect ProtonVPN would be an ugly, unusable mess. That’s not the case. ProtonVPN has a slick and well-designed app that’s easy to use and doesn’t skimp on features. A handy row of buttons now gives quick access to ad blocking, Secure Core, and the app’s kill switch features.