TunnelBear 4.6.2.0 Crack + License Key 2023

If you decide to pay for TunnelBear, it won’t break the bank. An Unlimited plan costs $9.99 per month, just three pennies above the $9.96 per month average for a VPN we’ve tested. Hotspot Shield, by comparison, costs $12.99 per month, while Mullvad is a mere $5.54 per month. TunnelBear also has longer term subscriptions: an annual plan that costs $59.88 and a three-year plan that runs $120. Both are significantly less than the average of $72.33 per year among VPNs we’ve tested.

You can pay for TunnelBear using major credit cards. Bitcoin is an option, but only for the one-year plan. Other VPN services such as Editors’ Choice-winner Mullvad go further by accepting numerous payments, including cash. TunnelBear says it will accept jars of honey, but this method of payment may prove to be a challenge in practice.

TunnelBear’s biggest drawback is that it doesn’t offer much beyond VPN protection. Editors’ Choice winners IVPN, NordVPN and ProtonVPN are among the few VPNs that offer multi-hop connections, which use a second VPN server for extra security. A few grant push-button access to the free Tor anonymization network. TunnelBear has none of these.Previously, TunnelBear forbade the use of its services for P2P file sharing or BitTorrenting. Thankfully, those days are gone. You can now use it to torrent over VPN to your heart’s content. It does not, however, include split tunneling, which lets you designate what traffic should pass through the VPN or bypass the VPN.

Some VPNs have expanded their purview beyond securing web traffic. Hotspot Shield grants access to a whole suite of privacy services, while NordVPN now offers subscriptions for a file locker and a password manager. TunnelBear has stayed focused on VPN protection but does offer the RememBear password manager. It’s free to use on one device, but if you want the convenience of syncing across all your devices, you must pay $36 per year (or $60 every two years). A subscription to RememBear is bundled with the three-year TunnelBear subscription.

VPNs do a great job of keeping your online activity private, even from your ISP, but there are many advanced ways to track your movements online. We recommend making use of the privacy tools built into most modern browsers, and a tracker blocker like the EFF’s Privacy Badger or TunnelBear’s standalone Blocker. A VPN will also do precious little to protect you against phishing and malware. We highly recommend that everyone enable two-factor authentication wherever possible, use antivirus software, and create unique passwords with a password manager.

TunnelBear secures your connection with the OpenVPN protocol for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. This is our preferred protocol, as it is open source and available to be picked over for any potential vulnerabilities. IKEv2 is also available for the iOS and Windows clients. You can’t change which protocol TunnelBear uses in its app—it’s handled automatically—but that’s fine for most users.

Many of the best VPNs we’ve reviewed, including NordVPN and Mullvad, have begun deploying the next generation, open-source WireGuard VPN protocol. A TunnelBear representative tells us that the company is looking to implement WireGuard in a future release, which is fine considering how new this technology is, but it’s not ideal.

The more server locations a service has, the more options you have for spoofing your location. A wide variety of locations also means you are more likely to find a server nearby when traveling abroad, which will likely be faster and more reliable than a distant server.

TunnelBear offers servers in only 27 countries, about half the average among VPNs we’ve reviewed. This collection covers the essentials, and has expanded to encompass more of South America, but could improve. TunnelBear’s offering completely ignores Africa and the Middle East—an omission that is, sadly, not unusual for VPN companies. The company also has no presence in regions with repressive internet policies, and has moved its servers out of Hong Kong. ExpressVPN covers 94 countries with a physical presence, the largest among VPNs we’ve tested.

Not all servers are created equal. Virtual servers are software-defined servers, which means several virtual servers can run on a single physical server. Virtual locations are servers configured to appear somewhere other than where they are physically located. Neither is inherently problematic, and both can allow a server to live in a secure location while providing coverage to a nearby unsafe location. It becomes an issue when companies aren’t transparent about where your data is headed.

TunnelBear told us that it has dedicated servers in all of its locations and only uses virtual servers to handle unexpected demand. The company says that less than 20% of its servers are virtual. Importantly, those virtual servers are located in the country they claim to be. If you’re using TunnelBear, rest assured that your data is exactly where it’s supposed to be.

Many VPN companies are aware that their products are used to help bypass censorship, and work to support those efforts. TunnelBear has offered free bandwidth to users in specific countries and in it kicked off an increased focus on anti-censorship efforts.

TunnelBear says that it has taken steps to limit the damage a successful attack on its server infrastructure might cause. The servers themselves contain no identifiable information about users, and the drives are encrypted. Some companies, including NordVPN and Surfshark VPN, now run their servers “RAM only,” and TunnelBear should consider doing the same.

TunnelBear says that it will not disclose, sell, or trade personal information with third-party companies. TunnelBear does use third parties for payment processing, but this is not unusual. Additionally, a company representative confirmed to us that TunnelBear’s only source of revenue is subscriptions—not data mining or ad retargeting. The company says it does not collect information about users’ web activity, nor does it store originating IP addresses, timestamps, or DNS queries. The company does rely on an account system, so the information you provide to create an account is stored by TunnelBear. IVPN and Mullvad VPN have an unusual system that does not use accounts and requires no user information.