Cointelegraph continues to review some of the top VPN services who accept payment in Bitcoins. Last time we covered Hide My Ass, which is arguably the largest name in the industry. Now we move on to some of the lesser-known options - TunnelBear and ShadeYouVPN.
TunnelBear
TunnelBear is a very accessible and beautifully designed VPN. A simple sign-up procedure requires you to enter your name, email address and a desired password. After that is done, all you have to do is confirm your email, and you’re good to go.
The company offers three possible tariff options:
- Free - you can use the basic tunneling service for free with a 500MB monthly download limit (can be increased by an extra 1GB if you make a tweet about the company);
- Monthly subscription - unlimited access to all features for $6.99 a month;
- Yearly subscription - same as above, but at an upfront price of $49.99 ($4.16 a month).
The payment options include Visa, MasterCard, American Express, jars of honey (yes, you read that right) and, of course, Bitcoin.
The VPN app itself is very simple: you choose either one of several available tunneling locations or just the closest tunnel, and turn it on with a single click. The connection is secured with AES-256 encryption, and a simple test on speedtest reveals that the app produces no more significant effect on latency/speed than you would expect from any other VPN.
The app supports all major platforms, such as Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
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TunnelBear has strict rules regarding logging user data: while they couldn’t deal away with it completely, it has been brought to a minimum. The app only logs your operational data, such as an overall number of connections (without timestamps) and the total amount of data used each month.
It never logs IP addresses and does not monitor, collect, analyze or store any information about the applications, services or websites the users visit with TunnelBear on. The privacy policy promises to ‘not disclose user information to other commercial parties under any circumstance.”
Ultimately, TunnelBear is a secure, fast, simple-to-use option for people who want to protect their privacy at an affordable price. Its highlights are: the option to use it for free, simple interface, limited logging policy.
ShadeYouVPN
ShadeYouVPN represents a down-to-earth approach with the very cheap contracts. Users get exactly what they pay for - an easy, reliable VPN service.
The sign-up process is the same as with TunnelBear (with the exception that you have to enter a username instead of your actual name).
The company offers a one-day free trial, and there are three tariff options after that:
- A 12-month subscription for $25.99 ($2.17 a month).
- A 6-month subscription for $16.98 ($2.83 a month).
- Monthly renewal for $3.95 each month.
The list of available features is the same for all three options, and the company offers a 7-day refund guarantee, in case the app doesn’t work for you.
ShadeYouVPN has a huge range of available payment options, including, but not limited to: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, American Express and Bitcoin.
The VPN application is nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. It allows you to choose the tunneling location (out of more than 12 available countries), the protocol (OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP) and your connection port before you turn it on.
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The connection is protected by a highly secure 2048-bit key encryption, and the app, once again, does not produce a significant effect on your connection speed and latency.
ShadeYouVPN only has a proprietary client for desktop Windows platforms, but it does provide a setup guide for other platforms, such as Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. One important feature of the service is the ability to protect 5 different devices working simultaneously, which means that you can use it to secure all your online activity - desktop and mobile.
In regards to logging user data, ShadeYouVPN follows a similar approach to that of TunnelBear: its privacy policy states that it ‘does not collect information about the activities of clients on the network.’ Any information they do collect will only be used to provide a great service and will never be sold, distributed or transferred.
In short, ShadeYouVPN is a no-frills service which provides great value for money. It offers increased security for what is potentially the lowest price in the industry; you can run it on 5 devices simultaneously, and the 1-day trial and 7-day refund policy guarantee that you will get what you paid for, or your money back.