įortunately, by keeping your personal information and data secure, you can continue to live your best life online. Anyone with access to the public network can see your online activity, including hackers. This is especially true if you’re using your phone on public Wi-Fi. But just as there’s a lot of good that comes with the internet, it can also make us susceptible to cybercriminals. Whether playing, working, or studying, we rely on staying connected. If you’re looking to try an Android VPN with a view to buying, this one’s easy to recommend.There’s no denying that the internet fills a big part of our days. It’s fast enough for normal use, it doesn’t hassle you to upgrade – and if you do want to switch to a premium service, it’s pretty good value. There’s a lot to like about TunnelBear as a service, and the Android app is a pleasure to use. Indeed, it explicitly affirms that disclosures to law-enforcement agencies are limited to the personal information collected when you join and pay for the service. However, TunnelBear’s privacy policy makes clear that the company doesn’t record IP addresses or DNS queries while connected, nor any information about the applications, services and websites you use while connected to the VPN. TunnelBear is based in Canada, which is part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – so any data the company has on you could be shared with the US or the UK. All of these options can be turned on or off with a tap. And “SplitBear” allows you to exclude selected apps from the VPN connection, so non-critical traffic isn’t slowed down and doesn’t eat into your data allowance. “VigilantBear” is designed to keep your location private should TunnelBear momentarily disconnect. The “GhostBear” function scrambles VPN communications to make them look more like regular internet traffic, to fool deep packet inspection tools. TunnelBear has some nice advanced features – and they’re not just reserved for premium customers. The tests suggested that we might be vulnerable to HTTP and WebRTC IP leaks, but we were able to confirm that, in fact, our true IP address wasn’t being revealed. Privacy protection, meanwhile, appears rock-solid. That’s more than fast enough for streaming video – although sadly, Netflix won’t work over a TunnelBear connection. Through a US server, we saw speeds of 12.3Mbits/sec downstream and 7.6Mbits/sec upstream. Transatlantic speeds aren’t too bad either. That’s a big drop, but it’s still perfectly fast enough for everyday use – and it’s a lot better than you’ll see with, say, the Opera Free VPN or VPN Monster. Routing our traffic through the Netherlands saw speeds fall further, to 11.3Mbits/sec and 8.3Mbits/sec. When tunnelling through one of TunnelBear’s UK servers, we saw download speeds drop from 26.8Mbits/sec to 15.2Mbits/sec, while uploads fell from 8.5Mbits/sec to 7.4Mbits/sec. ![]() Inevitably, using a VPN slows down your connection. There’s also a UK presence if you’re concerned about privacy, rather than spoofing a particular location your IP address is disguised and your traffic encrypted, but it’s a relatively short hop, so performance isn’t too badly impacted. The selection of exit nodes isn’t enormous, but you can tunnel to 22 locations covering Europe, North America, Mexico, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Singapore. Food for thought for some other VPN providers, perhaps? Server locations TunnelBear doesn’t nag you to do either, though the thinking seems to be that if you like the service, you’ll be willing to pay to use it more. There’s a switch to connect and disconnect the VPN, plus a menu button for options and help, and you can also tap to upgrade to a paid-for plan or rate the app on the Google Play store. TunnelBear keeps things simple, and highly visual: you pick your VPN location by tapping on a cartoon map, to surface your connection through the tunnel of your choice. Best Android apps 2019: Our favourite applications for Android phones and tablets
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