Bottom Line
Golden Frog has updated
its VyprVPN service to support more platforms without compromising speed
and ease-of-use. While extra encryption options are attractive, the
price tag feels high for what is essentially a basic VPN service.
VyprVPN from Golden Frog easily protects your
online activity from digital snoops and hides your geographic location.
Your computer and mobile devices communicate with Websites and other
systems online by sending and receiving data packets. Anyone with a
packet sniffer—your Internet Service Provider, the owner of the WiFi
network you are using, or someone up to no good—could intercept that
data stream and see what you are up to. Businesses rely on the Virtual
Private Network to protect remote employees and their networks; a VPN
service such as VyprVPN extends that protection to end-users. VyprVPN
supports all major operating systems and provides users with varying
degrees of protection.
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When the VPN service is active, all the packets travel through a
protected tunnel between the user's computer and Golden Frog servers.
The servers handle all communications with the destination site, and
responses are sent back to the PC through the same encrypted tunnel.
Sites that try to identify you by your IP address see one of Golden
Frog's IP addresses instead.
VyprVPN has servers in the U.S. (Los Angeles, Washington, D.C.,
Austin, TX), Europe (London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Paris), Canada
(Toronto), and Asia (Hong Kong).
Pricing Plans
VyprVPN comes in two flavors, basic
and Pro. Plain VyprVPN, at $14.99 a month, is available only for
Windows and Mac OS X systems. It uses the PPTP protocol standard 128-bit
encryption for its VPN connections. PPTP is widely deployed as it is
built into most desktop and mobile operating systems, making it easy to
set up. Since it uses basic encryption, it is the fastest among
VyprVPN's options.
Users who want to use the VPN service on their iOS and Android
devices must sign up for VyprVPN Pro, at $19.99 a month. The Pro version
supports PPTP, OpenVPN SSL, and L2TP/IPSec. While PPTP uses 128-bit
encryption, L2TP/IPSec uses 256-bit encryption and OpenVPN offers both
160-bit and 256-bit. L2TP/IPSec relies on the highest encryption so it
has slower performance. OpenVPN, which relies on digital certificates,
is reliable and performs very well. However, OpenVPN is not available
for iOS.
Both Pro and basic versions offer users free 5GB online storage on
Golden Frog's cloud storage service, Dump Truck. With Dump Truck, users
can securely upload and share files with others. Unlike many of its
competitors, Golden Frog does not offer free trial or ad-supported
versions.
Getting Started
Users sign up for a Golden Frog
account after buying either the basic or the pro version. An account
confirmation email contains the link to the dashboard and to setup
instructions. When I logged into the portal, I saw a well-laid out
dashboard with information about VyprVPN on the left side of the screen
and the Dump Truck cloud storage service on the right.
While you can use the VyprVPN credentials on multiple devices, only
one device can be connected at a time. I can see if a device is
currently using the service on this dashboard. Suppose you left your
home PC connected and now you want to switch to your tablet. I can just
log in to the dashboard and disconnect the PC. It would have been nice
to be able to use devices simultaneously, the way Norton Hotspot Privacy
does. At least VyprVPN sends a notification to the disconnected PC the
connection has been dropped.
Users download the client applications for VyprVPN for Mac and for
Windows from the dashboard, or for Pro users, click on links back to
Google Play and iTunes for the Android and iOS apps. I can just use the
client applications or follow the set up instructions to manually
configure the VPN clients that came with my operating system. This means
that as long as the device supports VPN, I should be able to configure
it with VyprVPN credentials. If my router has DD-WRT firmware, I could
just install VyprVPN and protect all users on the network in one step. I
like this uncommon feature; I've seen it in only HideIPVPN and
PrivateInternetAccess so far.
Installing the client application took only a few moments. Since
VyprVPN also supports the OpenVPN protocol, the installer adds the
TAP-WIN32 adapter, in the same way as competitors VPN Direct and
HideIPVPN.
Starting the software for the first time opens up a settings window
where you enter the login credentials and select the connection
settings, such as the geographic location of the server and the
connection type. By default, the VPN settings are set to PPTP. There are
also other settings, such as automatically reconnecting if the
connection ever drops and automatically enabling the VPN service
whenever the user connects to an unsecured wireless network.
The software is extremely lightweight, so it is easy to forget it is
running. Like Private Internet Access, VyprVPN did not have an actual
application window when I launched the program. All I got was a tiny
lock icon in the system tray, and when I right-clicked on the icon, I
saw a menu listing my current network settings and the option to go back
into the Settings screen.
Golden Frog offers NAT Firewall as a separate
add-on for $5 to block unrequested inbound traffic, such as bots
scanning for open ports to exploit. Most wireless routers use Network
Address Translation to share the single Internet connection across all
connected devices, and when it receives unrequested inbound scans, it
doesn't know which device it is for and blocks it automatically. Since
VyprVPN bypasses the router and establishes a direct connection with the
Golden Frog server, users aren't protected from malicious inbound
traffic via the router's NAT. The NAT Firewall add-on protects users
from these scans while connected to VyprVPN.
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