AnonVPN.io is no longer active. We recommend checking our best VPN services in 2023 instead.
AnonVPN.io is no longer active. We recommend checking our best VPN services in 2023 instead.
Right off the bat, AnonVPN makes claims that it offers fantastic privacy features, unlimited bandwidth, and access to geo-restricted content.
Unfortunately, there’s little information available to back up these claims. Is the server performance good, does it allow streaming Netflix from anywhere? Very difficult to know.
After a bit of research on this tool we began questioning – is AnonVPN a genuine scam or just mired down by overall incompetence? Let’s see the evidence.
AnonVPN is no longer active. We recommend checking our best VPN services in 2023 or go with the best option: NordVPN instead.
NordVPN is our top-rated VPN provider, known for unparalleled protection, the fastest speeds, and global coverage.
AnonVPN’s security credentials are, to put it mildly, a mystery. While the website makes several claims towards protecting its users, there is no mention of security features anywhere.
The only thing we were able to gather about this provider is that it supports PPTP, a tunneling protocol that has many well-known vulnerabilities and is widely considered unsafe. PPTP offers weak encryption that hackers can easily brute-force. The very concept of VPN is to prevent malicious attacks such as these.
We can safely assume it doesn’t have a kill switch because this is usually only offered with higher-quality VPN services, and AnonVPN gives us no reason to believe it is one.
Alas, the lack of details relating to AnonVPN’s security features creates a poor impression of the provider. In fact, it arguably counts as evidence that AnonVPN has pitiful security capabilities.
As with many VPN providers, AnonVPN claims to never store any usage logs.
Let’s just say we’re skeptical of that claim.
In their privacy policy, they admit to storing email addresses and passwords and nothing else. During the sign-up process, however, users are advised to avoid using their real email address or to simply make one up.
The company, AnonVPN, LLC., is also registered in the US. This is a major privacy no-no as the US is an original member state of the Fourteen Eyes surveillance alliance.
As such, it would be nice to see AnonVPN undergo an independent audit as some other providers have. Short of that, we’d at least like a Privacy Policy document longer than an 8-year old’s essay on constitutional democracy.
AnonVPN offers unlimited bandwidth as standard, which thereby promises unrestricted download and upload speed. However, in reality, connection speeds are always limited by any number of factors starting from your regular connection speed, the distance between you and the server you’re connecting to, and so on.
AnonVPN only offers five server locations. What’s more, these servers are located in:
That means you won’t have great speeds unless you’re located in the US (or Europe, if we are to assume the service doesn’t have enough users to overcrowd one server location). Additionally, such a large concentration of servers in North America disqualifies AnonVPN.io from being used for sensitive activities – The Man would not find it very difficult to get to your data if it was necessary.
AnonVPN is available on the bare minimum of platforms. These are:
Let’s begin by saying it’s not normal to stop developing the Windows app past Windows 7, especially when it’s your only app.
Setting the VPN up on iOS or Android is a little more complicated, but the website still takes you every step of the way – just note that there is no app, so you’ll be using the native way of setting up a VPN connection. That implies a serious lack of sophistication and security features.
It’s unclear how reliable AnonVPN.io is when it comes to unblocking streaming sites such as Netflix and Hulu. We wouldn’t bank on it. Moreover, due to its small-ish server fleet, it can only ever bypass geo-restrictions in the US, Canada, and the Czech Republic.
This completely negates the ability to unblock BBC iPlayer, for example, as that service is only available in the UK.
AnonVPN does not appear to support secure torrenting, and nowhere on its website does it mention that a P2P connection is supported on any of its servers.
What’s more, the only cipher we’ve been able to confirm that AnonVPN uses is PPTP; there is no indication that it offers a SOCKS5 proxy, which is nice to have for torrenting.
As we mentioned earlier, AnonVPN likely lacks a kill switch in its arsenal, which would offer protection against unexpected connection losses during torrent downloads.
Given the lack of information available about AnonVPN—and the amount information we can presume as a result—we can quite confidently say that it would be useless against the Great Firewall of China.
AnonVPN only seems to use PPTP, which is useless against serious deanonymization efforts. Moreover, it seems to lack support for any features such as a stealth VPN or obfuscated servers. These are necessary for bypassing deep packet inspection (DPI).
We’d also like to point out that there are no AnonVPN.io servers on the Asian continent, which would make the connection speeds terrible.
Ostensibly, there is only one customer support option, and that is through email-based ticket submission. There is no phone support or live chat support available.
Even then, though, AnonVPN’s customer support team, if it ever existed, appear to have packed up and left.
It’s been almost a week since we sent them some questions, and the user comments on their FAQ section suggest that our wait is in vain.
The FAQ section itself isn’t much help, either.
AnonVPN is available with the following subscription packages:
Firstly, this is absurdly expensive for a VPN with no features. Secondly, any VPN provider offering a lifetime subscription should be viewed with scrutiny. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be anyone manning the controls, as we saw in the Customer support section, makes it even more untrustworthy.
Furthermore, there is no free trial or money-back guarantee of any kind. The terms of service also state that no refunds will be available for dissatisfied customers, ever.
The only real saving grace with regards to AnonVPN’s pricing is that you don’t pay for the service through the site itself, but rather you purchase a prepaid subscription card from a third-party website.
This is a smart privacy move, especially considering you don’t need to use your real email address to create an account with AnonVPN in the first place.
Frustratingly, though, nobody in the first twenty pages of our Google search for “anonvpn subscription card” seems to be selling it! What’s more, the website itself couldn’t even provide any retailers that sell AnonVPN subscriptions.
This seems like a dead VPN or a scam or both. If you do manage to find anywhere selling subscription cards to AnonVPN, we wouldn’t advise following through with your purchase.
Quite simply, this is a weak VPN provider that is severely hamstrung by its lack of available information. With that said, the information it does provide is severely disappointing.
Good
Bad
I don’t know what happened to Anonvpn.io, but I was using it for years and it was always one of the best ones I’d tried. But even good things get run out of town every once in a while … I miss this! It was good!!!
Having used this VPN for the last ~4 years with a $20 Lifetime membership I got off stack social I can say I have gotten my monies worth many times over. It has been reliable and I can push 10-20Mbps through their non USA servers. I have used it to stream and use region locked online games with minimal issues of lag. That being said if I had to pay the current price I probably would have found a different solution.
This is a very strange and seemingly biased review. I’ve had a lifetime subscription to AnonVPN for a few years now and while I do find it is a bit slow (typically only 75% of my ISP rate is achieved, but when my ISP plan rate went up, so did the performance on the VPN), it has been fine for these years.
1) It has a kill switch. I can’t see how you can possibly, arbitrarily suggest that it doesn’t without checking this yourself.
2) They state they don’t keep logs and there is no reason to doubt this. ALL VPNs that require an account to use, must use a login username and password so they must store either these or a hash for them. It would be crazy to think that any VPN would not have your username and pw to authenticate you and let you login. The email address is simply the username in this case and can be a throwaway account you deleted long ago after never using it, was only needed to receive the login at first if you didn’t get it another way.
3) You wrote “nowhere on its website does it mention that a P2P connection is supported on any of its servers.” Again you are making negative false assumptions without any reason to unless it is a deliberate bias. ALL VPN servers by default, support P2P unless they take measures to disable it. P2P does work on AnonVPN, I’ve tried it several times.
4) I’m stopping here. It would seem that you did no research at all about AnonVPN and just make up fiction to generate an article.
Again, I have an account with them and have had it for years. I have never had any problems from using it, BUT they did release a version of their connection app that was very slow (v1.0.5.5) while the prior v1.0.4.3 works fine.
If AnonVPN doesn’t give you some features you feel you need, do pay more for whichever VPN you prefer, but i have been VERY satisfied with the low cost of my lifetime AnonVPN subscription. I’m not even going to tell you what it cost me because it was a “pay what you want” deal and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how inexpensive it was, lol.
Hi DJ,
Businesses present their product in the best possible light and VPN service providers are no different. If AnonVPN has all these awesome features then it’s reasonable to expect them to say as much on their website. As it stands, their website is so thin on information that we could only assume the worst – especially considering shady practices like the lifetime subscription, lack of information about the company behind the service, as well as a seemingly complete lack of recourse should your payment end up disappearing. Such a service doesn’t merit testing because it triggers numerous alarms at first glance and we were quite transparent in that position for this review.
Finally, even if there’s a half-decent VPN hiding behind this very lackluster presentation, there’s still no way it’s worth $9/month when the market is full of proven VPNs that cost less, the same, or only slightly more.
This never bypassed anything! Screw this VPN, none of them work at all! I can’t even access any sites at school, it disconnects me from the internet entirely!
I never really knew there is a VPN worse than Zenmate free until I tried this last year
I don’t see why they are in the business still. Are there any scams pertaining to this VPN?
It’s “interesting” that some review sites give this a 4 out of 5 stars which is ludicrous. This can’t receive more than 2 or 3 stars out of 10. At best! It’s one of the worst VPNs around. They definitely look like a scam to me.