Surfshark VPN’s high price is balanced against unlimited devices per account and a superb set of features.
One of our primary concerns when reviewing a VPN is what quite value it offers. Does one get lots for what you buy, or does one get but the competition? Surfshark has numerous additional privacy features and takes the bizarre move of placing no limits on the quantity of devices which will use one account, making it a superb value—even if the price may be a bit high. The corporate also deserves credit for the efforts it’s making to boost transparency.
Pricing and Features
Surfshark recently raised the worth of its monthly subscription a dollar to $12.95 per month. I compare only the total monthly fees in my reviews, and this puts Surfshark well into the high end. The typical price of 1 of PCMag’s top-rated VPNs is $10.21 per month.
This pricing puts Surfshark and one or two of other services among the foremost expensive VPNs we’ve yet reviewed, far beyond the $5.54 per month asked for by Mullvad.
Like many VPNs, Surfshark incentivizes long-term commitments with steep discounts. An annual subscription to Surfshark costs just $59.76, significantly but the $71.88 average. The corporate also offers a six-month plan for $38.94.
These plans will absolutely prevent money, but I still recommend starting with the shortest possible subscription, to create sure it works for you, so increasing to longer subscription terms if you choose you wish the service.
If that’s too rich for your blood, there are numerous cheap VPNs and even some worthy free VPNs to contemplate. ProtonVPN fits into both categories, and is particularly notable because it’s one in every of the sole free VPNs that doesn’t have a knowledge limit.
While expensive, Surfshark does offer excellent value for that cash. For one thing, it enables you to use a limitless number of devices on one account, whereas most companies cut you off after just five simultaneous connections. CyberGhost offers seven connections out of the box and ExpressVPN a fair more generous 10, but you cannot beat unlimited. Avira Phantom VPN, Encrypt.me VPN, Ghostery Midnight, and Windscribe VPN are the sole other VPNs that place no limit on simultaneous connections. (Note: Encrypt.me is owned by j2 Global, the parent company of PCMag’s publisher, Ziff Davis.)
Surfshark allows P2P and BitTorrent via VPN on certain servers, and therefore the CleanWeb tool provides ad-blocking still. Its real strengths, however, are the rarely seen features it provides. One such feature is Whitelister, a split-tunneling tool that routes app traffic or websites outside the VPN tunnel. Letting you whitelist websites is sensible, since some sites block access from VPNs. These is anything from video streaming sites to banks. Surfshark’s solution is extremely tidy, going beyond most of the competition.
The other unusual feature is Multihop, which creates a VPN connection to a server so bounces your traffic to a second VPN server for even greater security. Few competitors offer this feature, which trades enhanced privacy for speed. Both Multihop and Whitelister are powerful tools, and while you may not use them a day (or ever), they assist justify Surfshark’s high price. More on these features below.
One rare feature Surfshark currently doesn’t offer is access to Tor via VPN, which is on the market through NordVPN and ProtonVPN. Notably, ProtonVPN also offers multihop and split-tunneling.
Many VPN companies allow you to buy add-ons to your base subscription. TorGuard, for example, has an à la carte option for the quantity of simultaneous connections you wish. NordVPN et al offer private static IP addresses, which are useful any time you discover your VPN connection blocked. Surfshark includes static IP addresses in its subscription, but you have got to share those with other users on the identical server.
VPN Protocols
There are many alternative ways to make a VPN connection. My preferred option is OpenVPN, which includes a reputation for speed and reliability. More importantly, it’s an open-source option, meaning that its code is out there to be examined for potential vulnerabilities. Surfshark offers OpenVPN in its Android, iOS, Linux, and Windows apps. The wonderful IKEv2 protocol is additionally available on all platforms and is default for macOS.
While OpenVPN is that the top of the pile for VPN technology now, WireGuard seems to be the long run for all VPNs. this is often still experimental open source technology, and it’s not yet had the identical level of scrutiny as OpenVPN, but it impressed me after I tried it out for myself. Notably, NordVPN has begun to roll out WireGuard to its Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS clients.
Servers and Server Locations
Geographic distribution matters because having many locations across the world to settle on from means you’re more likely to search out one near home or wherever you would possibly be traveling, and it provides plenty of options for spoofing your location. Surfshark covers 64 countries with its servers, which is above average. ExpressVPN leads the pack with a whopping 94 countries, and CyberGhost is close behind with 90 countries.
Surfshark provides above-average coverage to South America and Africa, both regions often ignored by other companies. Surfshark also offers servers in countries with repressive internet policies, including China, Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam. Competitors would act to follow Surfshark’s example.
Some VPNs make use of so-called virtual servers. These are software-defined servers, meaning that one hardware server could host numerous virtual servers. The technology allows companies to quickly add servers to satisfy demand, or configure a server to seem in a very country where the corporate cannot guarantee the protection of its hardware while really being hosted in a very safer locale. In general, i do not have an issue with virtual servers, but I do believe that companies must be transparent about which servers are virtual and supply actuality location of the server. Surfshark clearly labels its four virtual locations (Albania, Chile, Costa Rica, and Slovenia), all of which are hosted on machines within the Netherlands.
In terms of total server count, Surfshark offers 1,724 total servers, putting its server fleet on the high end of mid-range. CyberGhost and NordVPN lead the industry with 5,900 and 5,300 servers, respectively. ExpressVPN, Hotspot Shield VPN, Private Internet Access VPN, and TorGuard VPN all boast over 3,000 servers. it is vital to stay in mind that more servers doesn’t always translate into better performance, which total server count is partly a function of what number subscribers an organization, well, serves.
Your Privacy With Surfshark
Using a VPN requires a good amount of trust, because when your VPN is running, the corporate has the maximum amount insight into your online activities as your ISP does. If a VPN provider wanted to spy on your traffic, monetize your activity, or turn over your personal information to enforcement, it very easily could. That’s why it is vital to know the corporate’s privacy policy and also the legal framework the company operates under.
In general, Surfshark appears to be doing an honest job of protecting user privacy. That said, security only works with trust. If you’re feeling you cannot trust a corporation, look elsewhere.
I am pleased to work out that Surfshark has overhauled its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to be more readable, with break-out sections that designate concepts in plain English. TunnelBear includes a similar approach and other companies would act to emulate it.
In its policy documents, Surfshark stresses that it doesn’t log IP addresses, browsing history, amount of bandwidth used, network traffic, or perhaps connection timestamps. That’s exactly what you would like to listen to from a VPN company. i think the corporate is in a position to supply that level of anonymity partially because it places no limits on the quantity of devices or connections, so it doesn’t have to police its users as carefully.
The company does collect some information, including aggregate analytical data, in addition as account information and billing history. The corporate also notes that it receives advertising IDs from third parties, citing Google Play as an example. These are identifiers that you simply can reset yourself, and are employed in place of unchangeable IDs like your phone’s IMEI. A representative from Surfshark explained to me that these IDs are wont to determine whether the company’s advertising is driving installations. The app doesn’t have ads within it. I appreciate the disclosure in its documentation, but Surfshark should better contextualize how these IDs are used.
Company representatives have told me that it’s a highly decentralized organization, with offices in Cyprus, Germany, and therefore the UK and remote employees in China, Finland, India, Lithuania, Kingdom of The Netherlands, the Philippines, Ukraine, and the US. I appreciate the company’s transparency on this time.
Surfshark says that it relies on “trusted third-party data centers.” In July 2020, the corporate completed its migration to RAM-only servers. This makes them effectively diskless, relying entirely upon the volatile RAM memory. This suggests that if someone were to physically remove the server to urge at the info inside, the server would be immediately wiped. A blog post from the corporate also details how diskless servers prevent private encryption keys from being stolen from server configurations. Some companies, like ExpressVPN, made this variation way back.
The company includes a live Warrant Canary on its site which doubles as a transparency report. Most warrant canaries are one line that, when removed, subtly indicate that the corporate has received a National Security Letter or similar request, which might prevent Surfshark from disclosing the existence of the letter. Just like the proverbial canary within the mine, if Surfshark removes the page, something bad goes on.
PROS
Unlimited simultaneous connections
rarely seen multihop and split-tunneling tools
Well-designed app
Excellent speed test scores.
CONS
High price
must complete broader audits of its service
Beyond VPN
In order to square come in an increasingly crowded market, several VPN companies have begun adding additional features to their products beyond the scope of VPN protection. TunnelBear, for instance, encompasses a stand-alone password manager called Remembear and a bear themed ad-blocking browser plug-in. Hotspot Shield VPN is maybe the simplest example. Sign on there, and you get a Pango account that connects you to a bunch of privacy and security products included within the subscription fee. Both ProtonVPN and TorGuard have encrypted email services: ProtonMail and Private-Mail, respectively.
Surfshark has built out several privacy tools that transcend VPN protection: a custom DNS service that gives additional privacy called Smart DNS; an ad-blocker branded as CleanWeb; HackLock, which alerts you if your accounts are compromised, almost like HaveIBeenPwned; and a privacy-respecting organic search tool called BlindSearch. Note that both HackLock and BlindSearch require an extra $.99 per month. It is a good start, but not particularly compelling given the high price of the core service.
Speed and Performance
When you activate a VPN, you’re adding more machines and physical distance to your internet connection, leading to degraded performance. To induce a way of that degradation, I calculate a percent change between batches of tests run with a VPN and people without, using the Ookla Speedtest tool. To read the nitty-gritty about how we test VPNs, make sure to read the aptly titled feature How We Test VPNs. (Note that Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, which also owns PCMag.)
In my tests, I found that Surfshark decreased upload speed tests scores by a mere 4.5 percent over baseline, the most effective result I’ve yet seen for this test. The service performed remarkably well in both the latency and download tests, coming in mere below the highest score in both. It decreased download speed test results by 28.3 percent and increased latency by just 35.3 percent.
You can see within the chart below how Surfshark compares with the highest performers among the approximately 40 services we tested.
Keep in mind that my results came from using this VPN at a selected time of day and at a selected place. Your results will surely differ, but this method does allow me to create a comparison between services while controlling for variables. My testing has shown that, for now, Hotspot Shield VPN is that the fastest VPN service out there, but Surfshark is close behind. That said, speed alone should never be the most concern when buying a VPN.
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Cleaning Up a Negative SEO Attacks with Real Info PointIf you are blogging for a while you must have heard about Negative SEO Attacks, right?SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization that helps your website to rank better in the Google SERP.But what about Negative SEO Attacks, have you ever heard of negative SEO?No!Not an issue.In this post, I will be sharing some practical tips to protect your site from negative SEO along with what is negative SEO and why you should take care of that.Let’s dive in.What is Negative SEO?As the name specifies, Negative SEO Attacks simply means lower down the rankings of your competitors in the search engines or making any harm to their sites by using the Black hat or unethical techniques.It may involveWebsite HackingPlagiarism (Duplicate Content)Spamming (One can make spam links to your website)Backlinks destruction, or evenMisrepresenting your reputation onlineAll and all, Negative SEO Attacks can ruin your online career.So, one should take care of that to protect your site from being hit by hackers and negative SEO.Actionable Tips to Protect Your Site from Negative SEO AttacksUse Google Webmaster ToolsThe very first thing you can do to protect your site from negative SEO set up email alerts with Google Webmaster tools.This way you will get emails from Google itself, whenever your site gets attacked by any malware activities.Moreover, you will be notified of the indexing problem, server connectivity issues, and Google penalties.So start with connecting your website with Google Webmaster tools and enable email notifications.Audit Backlinks ProfileThis is a very important aspect of protecting your website from negative SEO.Backlinks are the links pointing towards your site.
Linking could be direct to your domain or any Individual web page of your site.A huge number of backlinks are made on a daily basis, and one can perform negative SEO on your website by making spam links to your website.So, it’s very important to analyze your site backlinks profile.How many backlinks it has, what are the referring domains, their spam score, and all?You can use some of the most popular SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest, etc.
to audit your site backlinks profile.Best Backlinks ProtectionYou know backlinks from high authority sites are very crucial for your website.
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It could be because they want to –Show you downMake fun of youTake RevengeOutrank you in any way, and so on.So, you should be prepared for that and you should handle the criticism in the right way.Remember, you are here to do business, not to make grudges.ConclusionI have shared an overview of what negative SEO is all about and how it can damage your website.Most importantly, I have also shared some actionable tips that can prevent your website from negative SEO.So, if you don’t want to see you’re all hard work go in vain, start implementing these tips to protect your website from hackers and negative SEO.Still have any question or feedback, please do comment below, we’ll be happy to help you.
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