A fast VPN from a provider you can trust
Avast SecureLine is a simple VPN from the popular security vendor Avast Software, but powered under by the HideMyAss! Network (HideMyAss! Is now part of the Avast group).
SecureLine Specs are relatively ordinary. There is an average-sized network of 55 places (P2P is supported on just 8) in 34 nations. You get customers for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, but nothing more — not downloadable OpenVPN configuration files which might allow you to manually install other applications and devices.
Avast SecureLine VPN subscription choices:
12 month plan – US$5.33 a month (US$63.96 total cost)
And there’s no zero-knowledge DNS system, no habit protocol To bypass VPN blocking, no sign of anything even faintly complex. SecureLine isn’t bad, but it’s not outstanding, either. It is more focused on being’just good enough’.
Wish to try Avast SecureLine? Check out the site here
Pricing is, well, complicated, as Avast does things very differently to all the contest.
You May opt to obtain a one-year license covering a single device, as an example. Covering a single Android or iOS device is relatively affordable at #15 ($19.50), but Windows and Mac licenses are more expensive at a yearly #50 ($65), or the equivalent of 4.17 ($5.42) a month. Private online Access currently costs $3.33 (#2.56) a month on its yearly plan, and that gets you coverage for any five apparatus, not just one.
Alternatively, paying an annual #65 ($8.40) — equal to a monthly #5.42$7 — gets you coverage up to five devices. That’s still more costly than Personal online Access, but it’s cheaper than many others, and there’s another important advantage. Many VPN accounts just cover you for devices owned and utilized from the account owner. SecureLine five devices can be owned and used by anyone. A single license could cover the whole household.
The service looks fairly priced, then. And if you’re tempted to try it out, a no-strings-attached seven-day trial makes it easy, no payment details demanded.
Logging and privacy
Avast’s service For the exceptionally secure OpenVPN protocol utilizing AES-256-CBC gets it off to a good start from the privacy stakes, but there’s little else to say about the service. There’s no control over protocol configurations, no support for different protocols, no kill button, no customized escape protection technologies or alternative privacy-related extras.
This is not quite as bad as it seems. SecureLine over covered the fundamentals during our evaluations, averting DNS and WebRTC leaks which might give away hints about our individuality and online actions.
Recognizing Avast’s logging Policy was more difficult, largely because the company has so many other services and applications to explain. We fought our way through the colossal 20,000-word privacy policy, though, and finally uncovered some helpful details.
The The company explains that it doesn’t record your browsing history, saying’we don’t store details of, or track, the websites you link to when using our VPN service.’
Sounds good, until you read about all SecureLine’s session logging:’We’ll store a time stamp and IP address when you connect and disconnect to our VPN service, the number of information sent (up- and – download) during your session together with the IP address of this individual VPN server employed by you personally.’
This May not matter very much if you’re simply using the VPN to see US YouTube clips, or as a more secure means to access your emails over public Wi-Fi. But if you are downloading torrents or doing anything else at which somebody might record and explore your IP address, it could allow them to join those activities back to your own Avast account.
We’ve rounded up the best free VPN services of 2018
Programs
Avast knows what it is doing with safety Software, and the Windows customer was one of the most professional and polished we’ve attempted. Setup was fast and hassle-free (apart from being presented with a 10,000+ word license agreement, anyway), it was supremely easy-to-use, and everything worked just as we expected.
We Weren’t asked for payment details, and the customer didn’t even ask us to register with an email address. You’re in a position to set up and use the service for a whole seven days without supplying any personal information.
Apps
The Windows customer interface has clearly been designed with the VPN newcomer in mind. An arrow brings your attention to the Connect button, and easy captions explain what each function does, such as:’Switch on your VPN to reestablish what you do online ‘, or ‘When your VPN is onto, your location will appear to other people since .’
The Client displays notifications so that you can tell when it’s connecting, connected or disconnected. We like to see that, as users will need to know when they are protected or not, but there is one annoying problem. The client uses its own notification system rather than the native Windows desktop system, and its pop-ups catch the window focus.
If you are Typing something in Notepad, along with a notification appears, your typing is disrupted and you need to click or Alt+Tab back to the Notepad window before you can continue. There’s an choice to turn the notifications off, but we’d like it if Avast implemented them correctly in the first place.
The attribute list is okay in general terms, however there are issues here. For instance, the place picker enables filtering servers from continent, and also to exhibit P2P and streaming-optimized places — but there is no indication of server loading or ping time that will assist you make the best option. Neither is there some favorites method to hasten the process of reconnecting to commonly-used servers.
It’s a similar story ! settings. We like the ability to connect to SecureLine automatically when you get unsecured Wi-Fi networks, but there is almost nothing . No ability to change or tweak the protocol (it is only OpenVPN-only), no kill switch, no DNS alternatives, little more than the ability to connect when your machine starts.
Even SecureLine’s system tray icon has just a very minimal right-click interface. Many customers will allow you to choose a location straight from the menu menu, but here, if you don’t wish to choose the default server, then you must open the entire client and click, click, click your way into whatever place you want.
We checked out SecureLine’s Android app to see if it might hold some surprises, however for the most part, it worked much like the desktop variant. Connect and disconnect using a tap, and select your location from a long list (even more here, as it’s just a single list with no choice to filter from continent). There’s still no favorites system or recent servers list to speed up connections.
There is Only one little but welcome bonus with a more powerful auto-connect system. Rather than just having the program connect when you access an insecure Wi-Fi network, you can get the service connect whenever it accesses anything other than specific networks that are trustworthy, or whenever you’re using a cellular link.
That’s good news, and apart from the Deficiency of a kill switch (and maybe the notifications), the programs do nothing obviously wrong. But they don’t excel at anything, either, and we watched nothing that would persuade us to select SecureLine over any of the big-name competition.
Performance
Avast SecureLine does not provide OpenVPN configuration documents, which meant we weren’t able to conduct our typical automated performance tests. Rather, we switched back to our guide approach, linking to several servers through the programs and utilizing SpeedTest.net, Fast.com and other sites to check their pace.
UK download speeds were high at 50-60Mbps on our 75Mbps test line. Shifting to nearby European countries where we would anticipate high performance — France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden — gave us much the same outcomes.
Heading A little further afield revealed one or two issues, with for example Poland returning anything from 12 to 31Mbps. That’s slower and less consistent than we expected, but still usable for many tasks.
US speeds were very reasonable at an average of 54Mbps on the east shore, to 35Mbps in the west.
Going Long space gave us a mixed bag of results, with Australia providing us a strong 25-40Mbps, while Malaysia fought to some lethargic 1.8-3.6 Mbps.
In General, Avast SecureLine offers above average rates from many servers, with just a couple of exceptions. If you only have to use a few servers in some very common locations (London, New York) then you’ll most likely be fine; in case you are looking further afield, run your own speed tests before you buy.
Netflix
Avast SecureLine’s Windows customer offers Just four servers it says are’optimized for streaming’: one in the UK, and three in the US (New York, Miami, and, apparently, Gotham City — that is perhaps the very definition of a virtual host ). Would that be enough to let us access to geoblocked articles?
We started by trying to access US-only YouTube content, and the results Were a surprise. We don’t recall the last time we saw YouTube block anything, but we weren’t able to get in via Miami or’Gotham City’. Fortunately, New York functioned just fine, and we could look at and stream YouTube clips.
We Moved on to attempt accessing BBC iPlayer through SecureLine’s’Wonderland, UK’ server, but without success. The website detected the VPN and displayed its regular’content is not available on your place’ warning message.
Thus Far, so not-very-great, however, the image enhanced when We logged back into the New York server and were able to see Netflix articles without difficulty. Netflix blocks new IPs all the time, which can change at any moment, but right now, at least, Avast SecureLine makes it easy to flow content, wherever you’re.
Service
The Avast support website Is a massive source, absolutely packed with installation, use and troubleshooting guides. Alas, the huge majority are for Avast’s additional goods. The SecureLine section is most likely the most basic VPN knowledgebase we have ever seen.
No, Forget that –‘fundamental’ is too kind. The main page lists just 15 articles organized into three classes (Basic Usage, Subscription and Buy, Technical Issues), and many of those are on something other than core VPN issues (producing an Avast Account, GDPR Compliance, two articles on activating the product, two more on cancelling automatic renewal — you get the idea).
We dug a bit deeper and discovered that a SecureLine FAQ. This does have more relevant topics, but there’s little detail, and nothing that compares with specialist VPN providers like ExpressVPN.
If you can’t find any instant help online, you can try posting a question in the SecureLine part of the Avast support forum. This isn’t particularly active, but it does get some use — the Windows part of the forum had nine threads made in October 2018, for example, and the majority of them had a helpful response in less than an hour.
If you are still in trouble, you can always contact Avast Support directly. There is no live conversation, just a web form, and a disclaimer which’Avast Support usually responds within two business days didn’t fill us with confidence, but it’s available if you require it.
Final verdict
Easy-to-use And with above average performance, Avast SecureLine could be a smart VPN choice for one computer, especially with a cheap cellular apparatus license. But beware — there are hardly any attributes, the inflexible Licensing system won’t work for everyone, and you can not set up SecureLine on your router for a shortcut.
