On the encryption front, Bitdefender's use of the Catapult Hydra protocol means it's not as clear how you're protected as if, say, you're using the open-source OpenVPN. Check out our full Hotspot Shield review if you're concerned. This doesn't allow the company to see anything of what you're doing online, but it's still more than you'll see with most of the competition. But there's more session logging than you might expect, too, including the recording of device identifiers, browser types, device settings, network information and more. The Hotspot Shield privacy policy explains, reassuringly, that there's no monitoring of your web traffic or browsing history. But as Hotspot Shield is processing the data, we checked its website for more information.

For this service, we use AnchorFree as data processor who processes data on behalf of Bitdefender in accordance with Bitdefender's instructions and for the sole purpose of providing VPN services to users.' 'We collect for this service only randomly generated or hashed user and device IDs, IP addresses and randomly generated tokens to establish VPN connection for the sole purpose of providing the VPN service.

You can see this in Bitdefender's very basic Privacy Policy, describing the data it uses: That doesn't matter at all when you're using the service, but it's relevant when you're trying to figure out the service logging policy, because that isn't under Bitdefender's control. Privacy and loggingīitdefender Premium VPN appears to be a solely Bitdefender product - you pay them to use the service, it's powered by their software - but it works by connecting to Hotspot Shield servers and using the Hotspot Shield network. Hand over your email address to create a Bitdefender Central account and you'll get a free 7-day Premium VPN trial, and there's further protection from a 30-day money-back guarantee if the service doesn't work out for you. ZenMate's three-year plan is priced at just $1.64 a month paid up-front, for instance, while Ivacy's five-year deal is a bargain $1.33. That's notably cheaper than the VPN heavyweights of ExpressVPN and NordVPN, although there are better deals around, especially if you're willing to sign up for a longer contract. You can pay by card, PayPal or bank transfer. It's decent value, though, at just $2.49 a month for year one, $4.17 on renewal. Bitdefender has dropped monthly billing since our last review, and now only offers an annual plan.

Bitdefender premium vpn