VPN Trust Report

*A test commissioned by AnchorFree and performed by AV-TEST GmbH Date of the report: August 27th, 2018.*

As you may know, a Virtual Private Network is a tool to provide anonymity, protect privacy from ISPs and websites collecting user data, enable security on public Wi-Fi hotspots and circumvent geolocation blocks to avoid censorship.

This report is about the credibility and trust of companies providing VPN solutions. When using a VPN the user trusts handing over their privacy to an external private or public company. The VPN provider may be able to access what the user is aiming to protect from the Internet Service Provider and other parties. The VPN may be able to intercept, sent and received packages, and create a detailed map of the user's online behavior. Trust is hard to measure and particularly difficult when we have no insights into the concerned parties or when the Companies providing the VPN service are not transparent. In order to find a method of evaluating how trustworthy a company appears, the transparency in regards to management, the requests for data handling and further company details need to be evaluated. When general information like this, which is commonly known for most companies, is not publicly made available in a clear and obvious manner it raises questions of responsibility, credibility and trust.

In August 2018, AV-TEST performed a test of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) solutions. VPNs have been reviewed in different fields of data request transparency, management team and leadership and jurisdiction.

The presented evaluation assesses AnchorFree’s Hotspot Shield Elite, Avast SecureLine, Avira Phantom VPN Pro, Cisco VPN, ExpressVPN, F-Secure FREEDOME VPN, KeepSolid‘s VPN Unlimited, London Trust Media’s Private Internet Access, NordVPN, Pulse VPN, Symantec’s Norton WiFi Privacy and Tunnel Bear now owned by McAfee.

Investors trust a company enough to back it by acquiring a stake in that company. We found information for investors for several of the tested companies but the number of companies disclosing the actual investors is relatively low with two, those are AnchorFree and F-Secure.

*The official office address is related to the jurisdiction as this will influence what data has to be stored or with whom it has to be shared.* All vendors disclosed their official office locations and by extension the location of their jurisdiction.

*We asked all vendors to comment on and confirm the findings of this report and that their main offices are indeed at the posted addresses. Five vendors replied and confirmed this, those were AnchorFree, Avast, Avira, KeepSolid and Symantec.*

We evaluated the VPN tools on the following four criteria:

*Transparency Report which provides information on official data requests and how they are handled. Only three products provide this information AnchorFree, Avast and Cisco and only AnchorFree states that no information at all has been shared.*

*Of the three products publishing the report, only AnchorFree claims to have not released any data on its users.*