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Windscribe VPN Review – Best Secure VPN Service for Windows, Android, Mac, iPhone or Linux

Windscribe, launched in April 2015, is a Canada based VPN service provider which has made a strong entrance in the market thanks to its strong encryption and dual-pronged approach to keeping your data and activities inaccessible to outside partiesIt is a simple and secure VPN service provider that facilitates you to access the Internet with military grade encrypted privacy being connected with their world class private servers from all over the world.

The company was created in the principle that the internet was established as an environment where people can freely express their beliefs and opinions. And because of this, the mission of this company was to provide unrestricted access to all its users in regards to internet information and data worldwide with proper privacy and anonymity.

If you are looking for a VPN provider that covers many fronts to ensure your internet privacy, security and high speed connection,  then Windscribe with the functional features and anti-spy add-on is a solid choice for you that will surely live up to your expectations.


Pricing Plan with Remarkable Features

In this Windscribe VPN review I’ll introduce you first with the pricing plan of this Best Secure VPN service provider so that you can choose one plan that best suits your desire of using VPN service. Windscribe currently has 2 pricing Plans: Free Limited Plan, Unlimited Pro Plan.

  • Limited Plan: $0/month; (1 Device, 10GB per month Bandwidth, 8 Locations)
  • Unlimited Pro Plan: $7.50/month ($9.00/month); Save 16.6% on 1 year purchase

Remarkable Features of Unlimited Pro Plan at a glance

  • 340+ VPN Servers, 90 data-centers in 46 countries worldwide
  • Unlimited traffic, bandwidth and Server switching
  • Only username and password are required to sign up
  • World class & very Powerful VPN Client software / apps
  • OpenVPN protocol by default for Windows, Mac OSX & Android
  • IPSec/IKEv2 protocol by default for iOS devices
  • Up to AES-256Bit encryption with SHA512 auth and a 4096-bit RSA key
  • IPv4/IPv6 leakWebRTC IP Leak & DNS Leak Prevention
  • Kill-switch to block all traffics when connection drops
  • StealthVPN (Stunnel) to bypass DPI (Deep Pack Inspection) in censored locations
  • Cruise Control to be connected with best servers closest to you
  • Double Hops for double layers of privacy and
  • Free Blocker extension to block Ads, tracking and beacons
  • Browser extension for Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera
  • Unlimited Devices connection allowed
  • P2P/ Torrenet Allowed, Maximum servers are P2P Compliant
  • Compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, routers 
  • Multiple Payment Methods including Bitcoin
  • 24/7 email/ticket Support

Go to Windscribe.com


Accepted Payment Methods

Windscribe accepts these following payment methods for its users: Visa/Master Card, PayPal, American Express, Bitcoin and Paymentwall

340+ VPN Servers, 90 Data-Centers in 46 countries Worldwide

For a best secure logless VPNWindscribe offers a good number of choice in its server locations. They have self managed 340+ servers spread out at 90 data centers across 46 countries worldwide. Their servers are located in the following countries: USA, Canada, UK, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Romania, Spain, Widen, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic,  Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, Belgium, Latvia, Moldova, Greece, Iceland, Ukraine, India, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Israel, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand.


Compatible with major Operating Systems and Devices 

Device & OS compatibility is a very important matter in VPN perspective, because if you purchase any VPN service that is not compatible with the device or operating system you use then you have loosen your money. So, in this Windscribe VPN review I’ll somewhat discuss about its device and OS compatibility.

Windscribe supports multiple devices for their VPN applications. Whether PC, NoteBook, SmartPhone or Tablet—you can use it on all your devices, even simultaneously. Windscribe is also compatible with major operating systems including Windows, iOS, Mac, Android.


Unlimited devices connection per account

Windscribe allows amazingly unlimited devices connection per account, which makes them perfect for those who face need of that facility. It will really seem great for people with families that need to protect more than one online connection or even just people that use a couple mobile devices in addition to their home computer.


World class and very competent VPN Client Software / App

In this WIndscribe review, I’ll depict an overview of the security and privacy level of Windscrbe’s client software in detail.

Windscribe VPN has been able to develop an incredibly simple but at the same time innovative, impressive, competitive and very powerful VPN client software that has, with some cool features, one of the most secured and end-to-end encryption technology in the industry to ensure the most up-to-date, high performing and feature-rich security service. They have developed this vpn software to defeat censorship, protect your personal identity and prevent tracking you while surfing. The reasons why I said this client software good are as below-

VPN client includes latest protocols with strong AES 256-bit encryption by default

Windscribe’s powerful VPN software is built to establish a highly secured and military grade encrypted VPN connection between your computer and their VPN tunnel. For ensuring utmost privacy and security in any situation, Windscribe offers two different VPN protocols on their network: OpenVPN protocol for Windows, Mac OS X or Android users and IPSec/IKEv2 protocol for iOS users as IPSec/IKEv2 works best on iOS devices.

Windscribe performs a symmetric encryption on the data that leaves your computer or device before it travels across their vpn tunnel and out to the Internet. 256 bit symmetric encryption is generally considered extremely strong. So they have used in their software strong AES 256-bit encryption by default. Weaker encryption isn’t even an option in there. When you use it, all in-and-outgoing connections is anonymized and no third-party can see your real IP address.

Capability to hide IP and geolocation assigned to your ISP

I performed multiple tests at different IP-tracker websites to see with my own eyes about how much capable Windscribe is of hiding my real IP assigned to my local ISP. I am highly impressed that I found all the results of my tests supremely OK. I, for example, only show below here 2 images of mt test results got at renowned IP tracker websites whatismyipaddress.com and ipleak.net . The images show that Windscribe client software works perfectly in hiding my real IP address assigned to my local ISP, as my IP is not visible. You can only see Canada IP Address 199.66.88.100 perfectly altered by Windscribe.

Capability to prevent DNS Leak 

You should know that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is able to read and monitor what you do on the internet by storing file-logs and records in their servers about your whole internet activities. When connected to a VPN, a user automatically connects with VPN’s DNS server instead of ISP’s DNS. This way, the ISP doesn’t know which domain you are accessing or what website you are visiting. But, in rare cases it can happen that your system will revert back to your ISP’s DNS server, exposing your online activities to your ISP. So ‘DNS leak protection’ feature has been invented by VPN providers to mask your local ISP’s eye to let them not see and record your internet activity at all.  To prevent DNS leak, Windscribe firewalled DNS traffic at their VPN software. They state-

“IPv6 connectivity is firewalled at the client, and all DNS requests get made through the tunnel, resolving domains at the VPN server. This overrides your ISP DNS so you cannot be snooped on by them which offer more flexibility than some of the other parental control applications that we have seen and reviewed in the market today”. [https://windscribe.com/faq]

I performed five ‘DNS Leak’ tests at different DNS-Leak-Tracer websites and am delighted to say that I have experienced no DNS Leak during my tests. I show below here, for example, 5 images from my test results performed at cryptoip.info/dns-leak-test ,  www.dnsleaktest.com , hidester.com/dns-leak-test/perfect-privacy.com/dns-leaktest and ipleak.net . You see the images showed the result of ‘No DNS Leak’, as you only see  Canada DNS IPs  altered by WindscribeVPN; not the DNS IPs assigned by my local ISP.

Capability to prevent WebRTC IP Leak 

Reports from some users have brought to light a Internet security hole first in VPN industry that might reveal your local IP address to websites / web Browsers through ‘WebRTC’. The ‘RTC’ in WebRTC stands for Real-Time-Communication, and the API directory is used for voice calls, video chats, and p2p file sharing.  This WebRTC was originally developed to aid certain types of connections between browsers without the need for an additional plugin. But today’s most remarkable worrying subject in VPN industry has been WebRTC that could be used to discover your local IP address provided by your local ISP, even under the presence of a VPN connection.

So, does Windscribe client software has the capability to protect your public and local IP address from being leaked through WebRTC?

I am very happy to state that Windscribe perfectly passed the tests and No WebRTC IP leak were detected, at all, during my below 5 tests. I have shown below here five images of a test result got from very reliable WebRTC IP tracker website ipleak.net , www.perfect-privacy.com/dns-leaktest/diafygi.github.io/webrtc-ips/ , browserleaks.com/webrtc and hidester.com/dns-leak-test/  . The results show the IP address 10.114.6.124 as WebRTC Local (Private) IP address which is assigned to Windscribe VPN; not assigned to my local ISP. So, my Local IP address is not leaked through WebRTC technology. See the images below-

Note: To increase ‘WebRTC Local IP address leak protection’ security, I recommend you to use updated Mozilla Firefox browser (and completely avoid Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, Comodo Dragon etc browsers), while being connected with VPN, for ensuring more privacy. If you add ‘Disable WebRTC’ extension to Mozilla Firefox Browser and perform the same test at the same WebRTC IP tracker websites mentioned above, then you’ll get more perfect results and even your VPN’s private and local IP addresses both will be absolutely invisible. See the images below-

In case you use ‘Google Chrome‘, you are recommended to add ‘WebRTC Control‘ extension to an updated Google Chrome to prevent ‘WebRTC IP Leak’ perfectly.

Capability to prevent IPv6 Leak 

IPv6  stands for ‘Internet Protocol version 6’. It is also called IPng (Internet Protocol next generation). IPv6 is the most recent version of the IP (Internet Protocol). It is basically a communication protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the ‘Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)’ to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion. IPv6 is intended to replace the current version of IPv4 (Internet Protocol Version 4).

As IPv6 routes traffic across ISP (Internet Service Providers) and Websites, nowadays it may be possible that user’s traffic requests will be traced by third party or malicious attacker even when connected to an IPv4 VPN. This risk may take place stealthily while surfing any website by downloading any advertisement, image, or css file from an IPv6 URL, and it can even occur over Bittorrent also. In this way it would be possible to spy on the user’s website browsing history or online activity simply from leaked IPv6 requests. So, protecting IPv6 leakage is very important.

This is why Windscribe has firewalled IPv6 connectivity at their VPN client that specifically forces all IPv6 traffic to route through their VPN tunnel; thus blocking any potential leak at the source. They state-

IPv6 connectivity is firewalled at the client, and all DNS requests get made through the tunnel, resolving domains at the VPN server. This overrides your ISP DNS so you cannot be snooped on by them.which offer more flexibility than some of the other parental control applications that we have seen and reviewed in the market today. [https://windscribe.com/faq]

Capability to bypass DPI (Deep Pack Inspection) in censored locations

Nowadays different websites, ISPs and Governments of different countries around the world are using DPI (Deep Pack Inspection) technology to spy on people’s online activities and control their access to the Internet. This DPI can only tell them that you are using encryption and that your packets are coming from a VPN server. And It is not a magic wand that breaks encryption. And so far, despite pretending to do exactly that, not even the NSA has ever broken a single packet with or without DPI.

I performed a test on this issue at www.doileak.com to know about how much capable Windscribe is of preventing a VPN connection from being inspected and traced by any 3rd party. The result shows that No VPN connection was traced by www.doileak.com and it reports that ‘We could not detect your connection type‘. See the image below-

Note: If VPN connection was detected, then it would say – ‘You are connected via generic tunnel or VPN and have made …. hops. Your connection type (generic tunnel or VPN) is rather uncommon for the average internet surfer, and could suggest proxy/VPN use’.

So, Windscribe is a great choice for the users who live in such countries that practice Internet censorship such as China, Turkey, Iran, the United Arab Emirates etc

Kill-Switch option to stop traffic whenever connection drops 

Kill-switch is an innovative feature to ensure data privacy and security of all users by disabling all internet activities when the VPN disconnects.

To ensure complete protection, Windscribe added this ‘Firewall‘ feature in their VPN software that disconnects all your internet activities if the VPN connection drops. It means when kill-switch is enabled and the connection interrupts, the client software automatically blocks all outgoing network connections. This is an optional feature so you can switch it on if you feel the need. They state-

“Firewall (sometimes incorrectly known as a “killswitch”) blocks all Internet connectivity that happens outside the connection to our servers, so data does not leak your ISP provided IP address. This is helpful if your wifi suddenly drops or you restart your computer. With the firewall enabled, you can be sure that your true IP address doesn’t get exposed”. [https://windscribe.com/faq]

VPN is here to provide security and anonymity to users. But, this tool only manages to protect the user’s privacy until it is connected. In most disconnection cases, users do not even realize that their VPN connections have stopped working. Cyber criminals and surveillance agencies stay on the lookout for these few unprotected moments to get into a system and compromise its security. Luckily, this will not be the case anymore with WIndscribe VPN users, because WIndscribe has introduced the ‘Firewall‘  feature in its new Windows VPN App.


Browser Extension for Chrome, Opera and Firefox

Windscribe launched an amazing powerful browser extension. You can use this extension along with desktop client on their own separately, but for much greater security and protection, I recommend you to use them both. Note that browser extension is free and includes many options for ensuring greater online privacy and security like Ad-Blocker, Untraceable, Anti-social, Split Personality. The extension is a set of tools that work together to block ad trackers and web beacons, restore access to blocked content and help you safeguard your privacy online.

Privacy Options: This option works with desktop client to help maintain your privacy online. It includes the following significant and amazing options:

  • Ad Blocker – By activating it, It is engaged in blocking ads. By activation it, you can block annoying ads, tracking cookies and protect your computer from malware too that can be injected via banner ads. With it, you can enjoy surfing without ads.  It also helps load websites much faster and makes using the Internet a more pleasant experience.
  • Anti-social – It is engaged in stripping out all Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+ and many other social trackers from websites you visit, that all might report your activities to their individual companies.
  • Untraceable – Cross-site tracking is used nowadays to generate a profile on your unique online activities, which ultimately destroys your privacy. If you switch on ‘Untraceable’,  It is engaged in removing known ad beacons and trackers from the websites you visit, that can track you across multiple websites you visit.
  • Split Personality – It is engaged in rotating your browser’s user agent every time you start your browser, which helps fight browser fingerprinting.
  • Whitelisted Site– You can keep given sites from being affected by the above options by using this.

Privacy Policy

Windscribe, as a best VPN service provider, is seriously committed to client’s privacy. To ensure their users’ privacy they accept Bitcoin too beside other payment methods from their users to pay for their services. So, you can pay anonymously using only your username. Yet,

Although Windscribe keeps some logs of users for developing their services, yet the way they keeps logs will yield nothing of value, because with those logs no third party will be able to relate any online activity with any specific user and they cannot match any specific user’s identity with any Internet activity. They stated that-

  • We do not store historical usage. We also store a timestamp of your last activity on the Windscribe network, this is done to weed out inactive accounts. We do not store connection logs, IP timestamps, or sites you visit (we are firm believer that one’s browsing history should be taken to one’s grave).
  • For the duration of your connection we store the following data in a temporary location: OpenVPN username, VPN server connected to, time of connection, amount of data transferred during the session. This data expires and is discarded within 3 minutes of session termination.
  • Since we store the bare minimum for a customer to actually use our service, any request for user data would yield nothing of value. We do not store any logs on who used what IP address, so we cannot tie user activity to any single user. [https://windscribe.com/privacy]

Refund Policy

Windscribe VPN has an option, as you already come to know above, for its user to get 10GB of free data every month to use.  Anyone can get this free data to test their VPN services before purchasing any plan. I think it is sufficient to test overall performance of Windscribe. This free service differs from the commercial service only with respect to bandwidth limit and number of servers. Yet they have adopted a 3 day refund policy for their Unlimited Pro Plan. They stated-

Windscribe strongly encourages to test the free Service before you pay any subscription to commercial plans. The free service differs from the commercial service only with respect to bandwidth limitations and available servers. In case you are not satisfied with the commercial Service, once you have subscribed you have the right to obtain a full reimbursement, given that your request is sent within 3 commercial days from the subscription payment. Windscribe accepts only written refund requests sent to our support desk. You have the right to request a reimbursement without giving explanations. The right to be refunded is invalid if You have violated the Terms of Service and/or if you send the request after having used the Service for more than 3 days and/or if you have used the Service for a global traffic volume exceeding 10 GB. Windscribe warrants a reimbursement within 30 days from receipt of reimbursement request”. [https://windscribe.com/terms]


Customer Support

After sales, customer support service is one of the key implementers to hold your customers; particularly, when you work in a service industry. Be that as it may, with regards to a VPN, Customer benefit gets to be something more than simply fundamental. very one of these services increases the value of the administration acquired and likely enlarge maintenance.

Windscribe only offers email support and no live chat support. Their support team is available to help you 24x7x365. Contact them anytime, via Email, support team will come forward to solve your problems. They also provide a FAQ and ‘Setup Guide’ section for its users.

Go to Windscribe.com

Remarkable Pros

  • 340+ VPN Servers, 90 data-centers in 46 countries worldwide
  • Unlimited traffic, bandwidth and Server switching
  • Only username and password are required to sign up
  • World class & very Powerful VPN Client software / apps
  • OpenVPN protocol by default for Windows, Mac OSX & Android
  • IPSec/IKEv2 protocol by default for iOS devices
  • Up to AES-256Bit encryption with SHA512 auth and a 4096-bit RSA key
  • IPv4/IPv6 leakWebRTC IP Leak & DNS Leak Prevention
  • Kill-switch to block all traffics when connection drops
  • StealthVPN (Stunnel) to bypass DPI (Deep Pack Inspection) in censored locations
  • Cruise Control to be connected with best servers closest to you
  • Double Hops for double layers of privacy and
  • Free Blocker extension to block Ads, tracking and beacons
  • Browser extension for Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera
  • Unlimited Devices connection allowed
  • P2P/ Torrenet Allowed, Maximum servers are P2P Compliant
  • Compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, Routers  
  • Multiple Payment Methods including Bitcoin
  • 24/7 email/ticket Support

Remarkable Cons

  • No Live Support

Go to Windscribe.com


Our Take on Windscribe 

In this Windscribe VPN review, I am delighted to say that Windscribe is, according to me, one of the best secure VPN service providers in VPN industry. Firstly, you can register with them using only email address and buy any premium plan with bitcoin anonymously. Secondly, my tests proves that Windscriber perfectly ensures military grade encrypted privacy of user’s identity and online activities while surfing, by hiding user’s local IP and geo-location and internet activities from unauthorized inspection of any third party. Thirdly, Windscribe does not keep such identifiable logs that would allow any third party to match any specific online activity to any specific user. Fourthly, Windscribe is also suitable and highly recommended for those users also who want to bypass any country’s Internet Censorship &  Content Surveillance, as well as to access any Geo-Blocked Website, or to view or download any legal file or video with encrypted privacy. Fifthly, Windscribe is compatible with all major devices and operating systems, and they offer very user-friendly client app for their users. As a whole, their are, in comparison to its competitors, many front features of this provider that might have already drawn significant attention to VPN users worldwide. I love this provider.

nv-author-image

Michael

Michael Reddy is a tech enthusiast, entertainment buff, and avid traveler who loves exploring Linux and sharing unique insights with readers.