Before I got into reddit, I am using google search for VPN reviews, full of positive comparison and affiliated links, instead of actual use cases and experiences.
Regardless of cheap or expensive plan, I think users has the right to understand how different VPN company operates.
So here my review on Ivacy VPN, as well as some lesson that I have learnt by paying $42 subscription.
Hopefully, it will be useful for newbies out there looking out for VPN services.
Ivacy Customer Support are decent but only for connection issues, anything technical, they won’t hesitate to refer you to their BlackHole (email), whereby you might or might not get any reply.
Initially, I wanted a refund as I can’t access Server Location that I wanted to. In order to prevent me from initiating a refund, they offered me additional 1 year free subscriptions for the inconvenience cause, that actually blew my mind, so I thought maybe I can find some useful use case for it. So i agreed.
Needless to say, after the refund eligibility period, they don’t care about what issue you going to have. After a few months, I went back to check my account, service availability was till 2021, which mean I did not receive their promised free subscription, so I fired up their live chat, then they update my account till 2022.
A few weeks later, I was having trouble using their service again, so I switched to Windows Client ( previously using Linux), following their support guide on using desktop App to setup proper connection to their server.
To my surprised, their desktop app was showing my account availability till 2021, while webpage showing 2022, so I question their live chat support again as to why my account wasn’t updated to 2022. The support checked my account and update it.
From this incident, you can see that their support was terrible, reminding me of youtuber JimBrowning videos dealing with tech support scammers, full of surprise by tech supports knowledge.
On a side note, after months of unpleasant experience with Ivacy, I transferred my account to someone else who need this VPN more than me, but what got me amused was that they still
got my previous Email support tickets.
The recipient of the VPN account can only login by Username and Password,
instead of his/her email and password. Maybe his/her VPN connections are
still linked to my email.
Which prompt me to think twice again regarding their no log policy.
Ivacy websites shows they got thousands of server spreading across the earth,
but upon asking them to hand me some more IP address, they can’t. They told me some servers are behind a centralized server (load-balancing?).
Ironically, some/most of their servers are actually virtual locations.
For example, South Korea OpenVPN server in HongKong. If South Korea has great firewall like China, I would certainly understand their motive behind this, but it was South Korea, isn’t that funny to have a South Korea VPN in HongKong?
While their only South Korea server located in Korea peninsula only managed to yield 1Mbps. Their support told me I got that speed because of my location.
So I set up a VPS in South Korea, connect to their South Korea PPTP server, the speed test was still 1Mbps, which makes me think that the server was just a decoy to increase their server list.
After sending emails and speed test results, I didn’t get any responses from them. When I go to their Live chat, they told me it will be solved soon, I can get access to South Korea ASAP, but it went on as a mystery for months.
Ivacy VPN and Pure VPN , from technical point of view, they are the same company.
I actually email them to request an answer for it, but they were just beating
around the bush. In the email, they didn’t reply to my question, instead
they told me how many awards they are getting, and what affiliation are they having
with VPN award organizations etc, which was just utterly bull****.
Much more diggings into this, Ivacy VPN and Pure VPN actually got shared VPN server(geditek.com), same IP address. Which I believed is their parent company, you can find information easily regarding this by doing a research on google/youtube.
You may not think this is an issues, but try to imagine, two company using the same
IP address (same server). Isn’t that the same as two different company using the same bank account, but telling others that they aren’t the same company? Can you trust that?
Any more queries, lets discuss under the comment section.
Lastly, Lesson learnt and advises for newbies looking out for VPN.
Don’t be deceived by all those fancy award titles that VPN company put on their website,
those were just part of their marketing strategy, if you truly care about your own privacy,
create your own VPN for as low as 5 dollar per month on cloud providers like digitalocean/linode etc.
Check out youtube videos on how to do it, it’s quite simple with the aid of Image/Script. Can be done within 5-10min (if you understand how to do it).
If you think learning is troublesome, you may search reddit for VPN reviews before subscribing to VPN Providers.
VPN only encrypts your traffic from your (PC > ISP > VPN), any data going out from the VPN
is still the same as sending your data via your ISP, Data encryption still rely on protocols
like HTTPS, not VPN.
For Geo-location bypass usage, I would recommend using VPNGate (free provided by volunteers around the world), Although they do log connections, but if you are just using it for Geo-location bypass etc, it’s more than enough. There is really nothing to hide if you are a legitimate user. You can be a volunteers too by sharing your bandwidth when you are free, Sharing is caring.
But if you are thinking of doing something “funny”, please don’t rely on VPN, go do some research on web anonymity.