TorGuard VPN Reviewhttps://www.torguard.net/So why is it important to pick a proper VPN provider?Basically it's still an issue of anonymity believe it or not. The issue is that whilst you are indeed encrypted and secure when browsing by means of a VPN, the provider which offers this service might keep logs of the established sessions. Now this in itself is not a major issue, however when combined with the company's policy on offering secured information to 3rd parties, it might lead to you using a VPN which doesn't make you really that anonymous. Technically any law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over the area where the VPN server is located can request the logs from your provider. Obviously this leads to a major problem with your personal privacy.
When did this issue come up so aggressively?Around September 2011, a member of the loose hacker group Anonymous (particularly the LulzSec branch) was tracked down and arrested after supposedly using a VPN service from HideMyAss. He was found because HideMyAss uses servers in the USA and keeps logs of the connection sessions. Naturally when the FBI knocked on their door and asked for the information on this specific individual, they were able to get logs on him for the previous 6 months. They of course contained more than enough information to indict this individual.
What do you want to ask your VPN provider?There are two very important questions in relation to your anonymity that you want to ask any provider who you're thinking of buying a VPN service from.
Question1: Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold?
Question2: Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?
Of course it is important to know technical details as well, such as: bandwidth, server up-time, number of VPN servers, location of VPN servers, port-forwarding possibilities and so on. These characteristics depend too much on your individual needs, so naturally I can't tell you what you will need. However most of the providers offer unlimited bandwidth/speeds on Gigabit+ connections and port-forwarding capabilities.
How does TorGuard shape up when anonimity is the question? Question1: Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold?
TorGuard: “Our sever connection logs are purged on a daily basis since we don’t maintain hard drive’s big enough to store all this data. TorGuard’s torrent proxy and VPN connection logs do not associate an IP with each request as there are hundreds of users sharing the same connection at any given time. Since there are no logs kept or IP’s recorded, it is not possible to identify exactly who has used the connection.”
Question2: Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?
TorGuard: “Our parent company is based in Panama, with secure servers in Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine and Panama. We do not share any of our user’s information with third parties, period. Only in the event of an official court order would we be forced to communicate with a third party. This scenario has never occurred, but if it were to, we would be forced to explain in more technical terms how we don’t maintain usage logs.”
So that's great. They only have logs for 24 hours, which means that at most you can see somebody's activities for the past day. On top of that more than one session is open per public IP at any given time, so whilst you can narrow down the server used, the number of clients that were connected in the past 24 hours on that server is likely quite high (in the thousands) so precise pin-pointing is impossible. As an extra to that, they also state that in case a 3rd party were to ask for logs, they basically will reply with a technical letter which details why it's literally impossible for them to conform to the 3rd parties request.
Is signing up to TorGuard easy?Yes, signing up is incredibly easy and very secure. I chose the package "Anonymous VPN Service" and pointed out that I'd like to buy it. When it was added to the cart I had a few details to fill in. The first is the billing cycle (monthly/quarterly/yearly), and then you have to pick the username, password and recovery PIN of your VPN. All communications are via https, so SSL encryption is running when filling out this form. Implicitly it means that you cannot fall prey to a MitM attack which will steal your credentials.
The optional setting that you can choose refers to the basic VPN feature of IP. The standard situation is that you are assigned a Shared Static IP. For an extra fee (which I did not take because I don't need it at the moment) you can get 1 dedicated IP and unlimited port forwarding.
Afterwards you are asked to fill in another form which contains your information. Apart from your name, surname, address and other trivial details, you can also choose your method of payment. Of course TorGuard accepts most major credit cards and PayPal, however in order to truly make yourself anonymous you can choose to make your payment with BitCoins! This is great because BitCoins are by far the safest and most private way to make online purchases.
So what do you get for your money when you choose TorGuard?As I said, I bought the full VPN package. I did this because the price is really good (see more details on the pricing below) and because of the features it offers.
First of all you can connect up to 5 devices at the same time to the same TorGuard account.
The servers (they claim 40+, there are 61 available servers):
- Netherlands (x19)
- Romania (x3)
- Switzerland (x1)
- New Zealand (x1)
- Russia (x2)
- Canada (x15)
- U.S.A. - Los Angeles (x7)
- U.S.A. - Dallas (x2)
- U.S.A. - Miami (x1)
- United Kingdom (x2)
Of course depending on your particular connection and such, some servers will work better than others. This is a detail each person has to figure out on their own, however in 30 minutes last night I was able to narrow down 10 servers over all the countries except New Zealand and Switzerland which don't throttle my speeds at all. For a measure I have a 100/50Mbps connection at my home, a 20/20Mbps connection at my work, and a 120/120Mbps connection at my second home. The throttling didn't occur on any of these (ofc different ISPs as well).
The supported protocols for the VPN connection are as standard: PPTP and OpenVPN, up to you. In the case of my VPN package I can change between them whenever I want. However if you decide to buy a lower package, some of them make you pick once at the beginning and you can't change your option anymore.
OpenVPN is the most secure protocol as it sports a 256-bit encryption, as opposed to PPTP which sports a 128-bit encryption. The catch here is that OpenVPN cannot be installed on mobile devices, whilst PPTP is a default protocol on Android phones. This means that you can/should use the OpenVPN for your laptop/desktop Windows/OSX/Linux machine, and PPTP for your Android phone.
Apart from normal traffic, the TorGuard VPN package also protects your Torrent/P2P connections. This means that if you're under watch for torrenting (like is the case in the U.S.A. at the moment) you can connect to your VPN and download stuff to your hearts desire without having to worry about snoopers.
Is it user friendly?That's an understatement. You download the OpenVPN TorGuard application, which is customized and comes configured with all of the TorGuard servers. Your job is to input your VPN username and password, choose what server you want to use and click "Connect". Once it says that "Connection has been established" BAM! You're invisible on the Internet!
Does it truly work?Yes, I have checked both my displayed IP in relation to web-browsing and co., and I have also checked the visible IP of my computer when connecting to a torrent. In both cases the VPN did it's job perfectly and not only completely encrypted my traffic (couldn't MitM myself with any method I know) but it changed my public IP to the particular one that I selected. I am now able, for example, to stream shows on Hulu without even worrying about the fact that I'm not in the U.S.A.
FINAL VERDICT & PRICES & TL;DRTorGuard seems to be a VPN provider who understands why people buy VPN's. They went through great lengths to ensure the privacy of their customer, proof of that being the fact that they only keep logs for 24 hours, they don't share with 3rd parties, and you can pay for your services with BitCoins.
Whilst there are a few servers that didn't work that great for me, there can be many reasons for that. Unfortunately TorGuard doesn't allow customers to check loads/number of connections on any particular server so that you can estimate which one would be best to choose. Basically you have to check which server works for you best. It's not painstaking work, but it has to be done.
The price for the full VPN package is 9.95$ monthly, 19.99$ quarterly or 59.99$ yearly. I took the 3rd option because I was sure that I would be pleased with their services, and indeed I am. They reply very fast in case you contact them, and they offer 24/5/365 support with 100% up-time guarantee.
Final Verdict: 8/10
I will definitely keep my subscription to their service as long as their conditions don't change! I highly recommend their services if you are thinking of getting yourself a VPN!BONUS You can get a one-time 20% discount (I took it on my year subscription and paid 38$ instead of 60$) by using the coupon code: "TorrentFreak".
