AirVPN Vs HideMyAss: The Champ May Surprise You

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Do you wish to stay anonymous while surfing the web? If yes, then AirVPN could be the perfect option for you.

While anyone can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it truly is.

AirVPN stands apart from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website starts with an appeal for your trust, stating, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can claim to be unique these days, when it pertains to VPN providers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They have actually been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was begun with the aid of 2 lawyers and a small group of activists and hackers. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, however AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

Throughout the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger company either.

Across their About Us and Mission pages, the business’s history is explained and information the privacy projects that AirVPN has established or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

How does AirVPN stack up versus its competitors with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread out throughout 23 countries.

Most servers are in Europe (aside from those in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor problem here is that the absence of diversity of servers reduces the number of global AirVPN users who might access geo-restricted services in their home country while keeping their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That said, Air is well known for its exceptional performance across its server network, with lots of countries having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation strategies to offer an accurate evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, without any speed constraints or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they utilize OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most reliable and safe and secure way to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Many ports and protocols are offered; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. So ignore PPTP and other unsafe protocols.

No choice is given to any application, service, or protocol when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can overcome internet restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical restrictions, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a big plus as it instantly improves users’ personal privacy and security and is highly trusted. The absence of WireGuard as standard might show Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN states it is testing WireGuard, but it will not put the newer protocol totally in place till a few of its technical and privacy problems are resolved.

AirVPN has also included a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to try out things.

Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly change servers as frequently as you like.

You can keep an eye on the current load on each server, any existing problems, and a history of previous problems on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a new tab).

There is a detailed specs page for AirVPN’s servers, with details like the available ports, protocols, DNS server info (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, however given that there is no third-party audit, you need to trust that what is being provided will work. Looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A great thing about this is that you can see what other people say about the service prior to signing up. You do not need to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

The business is very clear when it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy. Online privacy and security are the absolute concern, with protection from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that attack personal privacy. There is no personal details logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN doesn’t track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It just gathers non-identifiable “technical information” to keep the server running and enhance services, but you can request for this info to be deleted at any time. This makes it one of the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can tell what type of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without worrying about your computer and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping methods will fail against AirVPN due to the fact that your ISP and government will just see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They also state they adhere to EU privacy regulations and that any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and data protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to hide your IP so that nobody can use it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the high-level security offered.

If your ISP or country blocks OpenVPN, you can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor.

Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are saying about the service before registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a big plus. This implies that anybody can check out AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, however only ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been inspected by a 3rd party.

Relating to security, AirVPN’s cryptography is arguably the very best offered. It’s similar to that of some other providers, but still worth discussing. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to accomplish Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying occurs every 60 minutes, and the user can minimize this value. The primary information channel utilizes AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your genuine e-mail address. That’s terrific because it lets you prevent leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be conscious that you won’t be able to alter your account’s password if you do not use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, is a member of the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of nations that share intelligence data). But even if the government asked for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to give them.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s primary open-source application, available on all significant platforms and OSes, consisting of Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, in spite of Eddie’s considerable capability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those service providers who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Setting up the app is easy, and it has all the info you need to connect to a VPN.

Unfortunately, there are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to assist you. While it’s not tough to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use user interface, so it might be a more tough learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a lot of download choices. There are builds for numerous running systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most present doesn’t work on your setup.

After launching it, select ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest location. When you’re ended up, you just click Disconnect. Easy enough for anyone, but Eddie can do a lot more given that AirVPN provides more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

Two crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer starts up, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it defines “kill switch” throughout the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its safe tunnel. A lot of basic kill switches only do this when the VPN is on, but you can set up the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s layout is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview simply displays the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all available servers in the network, together with comprehensive info about every one, such as the server’s nickname, place, latency in milliseconds from your place, and current users and server load. Excellent stuff!

This tab likewise has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is suggested for you.

The Countries page shows the number of servers readily available in each country at a look, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. As with the Servers page, the amber/green indicator is likewise shown. Numerous servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller sized ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be discovered on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a nation, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that nation will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as numerous countries as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a nation, click the empty box.

By selecting a nation, you are not instantly connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).

The Speed tab displays a basic throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be changed, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While the majority of apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, existing user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data uploaded and downloaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to use a VPN with all the details they could ever want about the numerous locations, down to the number of users on a particular server. It’s an invaluable resource.

Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other data.

This enables you to tweak the setup, such as whether it needs to always connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the large feature list appears scary, even if you are a VPN specialist, it might be tough to find out what specific settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

However, don’t dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie even if of its intricacy. Remember that the program typically works fine by itself, and you’ll never see the settings until you search for them. However, if you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will offer it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you don’t wish to use Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can use an incredibly feature-rich Android VPN app instead. This software application offers the exact same extensive configuration options as its desktop sibling and practical status info.

Separate pages for country and server lists are what the Android app lacks that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the exact same page. Some handy text additions make the info more reasonable, however it’s still rather difficult to understand in some spots.

Android does not have as lots of settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still a lot more than most people will ever require. The software also tries a little more to assist you, with extra text subtitles to explain what each option does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN usually connects rapidly and is ready to enter less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app finding when the VPN tunnel drops, notifying us with a desktop notice, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In regards to personal privacy, leak tests revealed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which reveals that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

It was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN.

Reviewers have actually reported speeds to be outstanding. Indeed, one said there wasn’t a single nation where they might grumble about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually remarkable overall.

While it wasn’t rather at the top tier for VPNs that utilize WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for many people, and circumstances like HD streaming, video, and video gaming conferencing definitely won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a broader number of server locations. This might limit the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an exceptional choice for many people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other areas.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple Television, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks used by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Certainly, some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the significant streaming services. However, it appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer says services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the best server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably due to the fact that, unlike other companies, AirVPN does not offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming websites.

The good news is, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

Nevertheless, streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN excels, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more focused on privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Yes, it does; every web protocol, including peer-to-peer, is welcome. Certainly, Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. There’s nothing to configure, no hoops to leap through. Simply connect to the VPN server of your option and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to enhance your file-sharing performance. A number of applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer’s shares might be inaccessible from the Web.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, permits port forwarding for up to 20 ports simultaneously (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s built-in kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your gadget if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really hassle-free, particularly if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have actually revealed torrenting to be excellent, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no concerns whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Rates

AirVPN offers a larger variety of plans than the majority of VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as five devices simultaneously, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an excellent choice for people who live in a household home or want to use a VPN on a public network. While five really should suffice for many people, other VPN suppliers provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing varies based on the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans use good value; nevertheless, longer memberships provide the best offer.

The standard pricing is in Euros. Nevertheless, they utilize the European Central Bank to offer real-time currency exchange rate for those abroad, so it can be quickly transformed to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The current plans available are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, consisting of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of international choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day totally free trial, which can be obtained by sending a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.

There’s likewise a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they haven’t broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data during that time.

AirVPN Customer Support

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than numerous other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it uses e-mail support and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active assistance online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get an action. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, however the extensive answers can be quite technical, which might put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s website has a great deal of information, including a big Frequently asked questions area that is broken up by subject.

AirVPN’s community forums cover many different subjects, but newbies will have the very same troubles comprehending a lot of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Exceptional speeds with minimal loss.

Unlimited P2P allowed with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on apps and servers alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app setup and usage.

Many, many advanced settings and customization choices in the client app.

Solid Customer Care.

Active Community Forums and In-depth Guides.

Good costs, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists protect you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t really user-friendly or pretty like other services.

Client app might overwhelm newer users.

It is really hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Perhaps there are too many advanced choices.

Located in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Choice?

So the bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, reputable, and safe VPN service with great rates. It’s plainly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be much better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN company. However even brand-new users might do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re new to VPNs, you’ll receive much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its competing VPN rivals.

This VPN service is more focused on safeguarding your personal privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

It may not guarantee the very same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which appoints you a random account number and permits you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still an excellent option for customers who value their personal privacy.

While it does not hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the very best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an excellent choice for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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