NordVPN Review

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Summary

NordVPN is a fast, fully-featured VPN provider, offering a privacy-friendly service at a good price.

Based in the Panama, a contender for the most privacy loving country for VPN providers, NordVPN stores no logs so your activity is private and secure. NordVPN is certainly one of the best VPNs on the market.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

Features

The main features of NordVPN's service are:

Much like Proxy.sh, these features prove NordVPN to be a fantastic option if you're concerned about your online privacy — a full no-logging policy, so they are never able to snoop on your browsing habits and online activity, and they accept anonymous payment via bitcoin.

In addition, NordVPN can boast fantastic speeds and they offer unlimited bandwidth on all their plans.

If you have multiple devices you want to protect, or perhaps you want to provide VPN protection to your family, you're in luck — NordVPN allow 6 simultaneous connections, more than the 5 simultaneous connections offered by PrivateInternetAccess and the 3 offered by Proxy.sh.

Security and Privacy

Encryption

As to be expected, NordVPN employ very good encryption. Making a connection via OpenVPN, they use AES-256 for the cipher, HMAC SHA256 for the data auth, and RSA-2048 for the connection handshake. While they could be using RSA-4096, beefing up their encryption even further, this doesn't pose a real issue.

Much like PrivateInternetAccess, the NordVPN PC app provides a kill switch, which will disconnect your computer from the Internet if VPN connectivity is lost. This is a vital feature for protecting your privacy, as it stops your browsing activity being potentially exposed if your connection drops.

Privacy

NordVPN is based in Panama. As with the Seychelles, Panama is very privacy-friendly and once again is outside the reach of the Five Eyes group of countries.

Regarding logs, NordVPN do not store any — none of the data you transmit over the VPN is logged or stored by NordVPN, so your activity is completely safe.

Further, you're able to use disposable/temporary email address upon signup, and you can even pay with bitcoin, so no personally identifiable information is exchanged. This means they will have no idea "who you are", which is the best possible outcome.

Pricing

NordVPN offer their service at quite an affordable price. You can pay for a 1 month plan, costing $11.95, or their cheapest offering - a 2 year plan, costing only $3.88 per month. This puts NordVPN firmly within the realm of the 'cheap' privacy-friendly VPN providers.

If you're hesitant, then fret not — NordVPN have a full 30-day money back guarantee, so if you aren't entirely satisfied with their service, you can request a full refund.

Not only can you pay for their service with Visa, American Express, Discover, iDeal and giropay, but you can also pay for NordVPN with the cryptocurrencies bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple.

Pricing information for NordVPN