ITop VPN’s apps look good and feature-rich but also score poorly on many usability fundamentals.įor example, tapping the big red Connect button will automatically connect you to the nearest server. We are left to trust iTop and hope the company is delivering what it promises. Whatever you think of iTop VPN’s claims, the real problem here is that the company hasn’t confirmed them with any form of security testing or logging. The privacy policy should be clear and precise, leaving us with no more questions than answers. Some of it looks like it’s referring to iTop’s website, not the app, but the fact that we have to guess is a problem. Scroll down the page and you’ll see a ‘What Information We Collect section, which can also include a lot of data: ‘…operating system, device ID, Internet protocol address, browser type, browser language, refer/exit pages, clickstream data of our websites and products or services, and pages or features of our software or services that you have visit and time spent there.’ iTop VPN limits its free plan to 700MB a day, so to make this work it has to record the bandwidth you use and associate it with a device ID. It sounds good, but we already know this can’t be entirely true. We do not store your original IP address or the server IP address you connect to.’ The company does its best to sound reassuring, telling users: ‘We do not record your activity while you are using the Service, including your browsing history, the bandwidth you have used, or the time you connect to the VPN server. ITop VPN claims to have no logging policy and the privacy policy explains what this means. One tooltip attempted to justify this by saying the details ‘allow us to contact you if there are any issues with your order.’ Uh, that’s not our email address for what? ITop values another privacy for its order form, where it insists we entered our full name, city, and postal or ZIP code. Unless you’re using a VPN, that risks exposing your credentials to stalkers. Its SSL certificate is not configured properly and this allows us to access areas of the website, including the Login page, using an unencrypted HTTP connection. We noticed a separate privacy issue on the iTop VPN website. For instance, you cannot test the encoding it uses. Maybe this is safe, maybe not, but the company doesn’t provide enough information to judge. The Windows app seems to make a fast proxy connection to the VPN server, then uses an open source package called WinDivert to direct your traffic through the tunnel, apparently encrypting it using its own protocol. However, iTop uses a custom scheme of its own. This doesn’t guarantee you’ll be safe – vendors can easily make mistakes in the setup – but they’re open source, so anyone can see how they work or check the code to find out. Most VPNs protect your privacy by using secure VPN protocols like WireGuard and OpenVPN. It’s good to see that you can also turn off auto-renew when you purchase the service, ensuring that you don’t accidentally pay for a second term you don’t want.Įven better, if you’re not satisfied, the ‘no questions asked 15-day money-back guarantee (7 days on monthly payment plans) means you can get your first payment back, too. ITop supports payment via card, PayPal, and bank transfer. A handful of providers are even cheaper – Private Internet Access has a three-year plan for $2.19 a month, Ivacy and PrivadoVPN are even lower – but it’s still a real bargain. Choose the annual plan and you’ll get an extra year, giving you two years of protection for $2.31 a month. For instance, you’re paying iTop $41.94 for six months of coverage, but Private Internet Access is only asking for $39.95 for the whole year ($3.33 a month). Paying six months in advance brings the cost down to $6.99 a month, but that’s still above average. This VPN’s monthly plan costs $11.99, not the highest we’ve seen, but pricier than most.
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