We couldn’t watch Netflix or BBC iPlayer when connected to the VPN. We saw decent speeds – not the fastest but perfectly good – when trying a variety of countries including the US, UK and Japan. Bitdefender customers aren’t second-class citizens: you get the same level of performance. In an ideal world, you'd use a VPN service based outside the 14- Eyes so there's no chance of it sharing any data with any other country or the local authorities.īut if you're using Bitdefender Premium VPN for purely legal activities, there's no real issue here.Īs Bitdefender uses Hotspot Shield, it’s no surprise that we found speeds were in line with what we saw when we tested Hotspot Shield. But aside from some aggregated, anonymous data which it logs to improve the service, the main issue is that it's based in the US which is one of the "14-Eyes" countries. Bitdefender collects only enough information to provide the service such as device IDs and hashed IP addresses.ĪnchorFree, which runs Hotspot Shield, is then responsible for processing your data and you can read our full review of Hotspot Shield to find out the full details. One of the biggest concerns with any VPN service is the privacy policy which determines exactly how much - if any - information it logs about you and your use of the service. With Hotspot Shield, you have the extra security of a kill switch and a few other settings for when to launch a VPN connection. There is a catch, though: no extra settings appear when you upgrade to Bitdefender Premium, You can select to automatically connect to a VPN server when you're on an unsafe Wi-Fi network, but that's it. That's because Bitdefender doesn't own its own VPN servers: you're simply using Hotspot Shield's service through Bitdefender's app.Īmazingly, Premium VPN works out cheaper than you can buy the standalone VPN service from Hotspot Shield. You'll notice the wording 'Powered by Hotspot Shield' at the top of the window, or at the bottom if you're using it via the Mobile Security app on Android or iOS (again, there's no separate app: it's still an add-on to the antivirus app). It doesn’t give you any more detail than that: you can't pick a specific server, or see which server is the fastest or has the least number of users already connected. Premium allows you to select a country from the 30-odd in the list, and this includes the US and UK. But although the VPN must still be accessed via Bitdefender's antivirus dashboard it will continue to work once your AV subscription has lapsed. You're billed for a year's subscription up front, and this may outlast your antivirus subscription. Upgrading to Premium VPN costs £2.55 / $3.33 per month which isn't bad at all. Unless you just want a tiny allocation of data to use while connected to public Wi-Fi, or you want protection and privacy for a very short time of browsing the web, you're going to find the free offering far too restrictive.
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