AVG Secure VPN is a decent VPN choice for streaming or protecting your information on public WiFi organizations. It offers sensibly quick download speeds, yet we don’t prescribe it to anyone with solid privacy needs because of its invasive logging policy.
AVG is one of the biggest antivirus brands on the planet, yet how great is its VPN service? AVG Secure VPN doesn’t make any big claims about it being the best or quickest VPN around. However, it does promise to protect your WiFi with “military-grade encryption” and to empower private browsing anyplace. Our specialists have altogether tried AVG Secure VPN to see whether those claims are valid.
Avast has its central command in the Czech Republic, which something of a warning for privacy, as it makes the organization subject to intrusive EU information retention laws and intelligence-sharing concurrences with different countries. AVG’s jurisdiction is an issue as a result of its detailed logging policy, which implies it keeps VPN connection details of every one of its clients for a minimum of 30 days. In its Privacy Policy, AVG even expresses that it will disclose your information to “disconnected third parties” in a couple of different circumstances, the main ones being:
To satisfy a legitimate government solicitation or request
In compliance with a lawful requirement by an official courtroom or in the public interest
Because of a third-party summons
This is not something you need to get with your VPN provider, regardless of whether AVG Secure VPN doesn’t log your actual IP address in full. This attitude towards customer information and shopper privacy is bad.
Logging Policy
In addition to all this, the reputed AVG’s Privacy Policy is incredibly long; however, there is a section dedicated to the VPN service, which plainly shows you what AVG Secure VPN logs. The information it gathers includes:
The subnet of your originating IP address this is only a portion of your IP address and can be utilized to identify your ISP, yet not you by and by
The IP address of the individual VPN worker utilized by you
A timestamp when you interface with and disconnect from the VPN
The total measure of information transmitted during your session
This is a superfluous measure of information to gather for troubleshooting purposes, and the entirety of this is stored on AVG’s workers for as long as 30 days, or considerably more if they presume you of breaching the Acceptable Use Policy. In any event, AVG expresses that it does not monitor:
Your full originating IP address
DNS queries while associated
Activity logs: the applications/services/websites you use when associated
In any case, this is one of the more intrusive logging policies we’ve seen and should put off clients seeking the highest degrees of privacy.
Fairly quick speeds, insofar as you’re close to a VPN worker.
Speed and Reliability
AVG Secure VPN is way off the mark to be as quick as our quickest VPNs, yet speeds are sufficient for easygoing clients. If you’re near one of AVG Secure VPN’s 36 worker locations velocities will be quick enough for general browsing and Full HD streaming on a couple of devices without a moment’s delay, with a download speed rate drop of around 20-30%. Simply make a point to try out several close by workers in request to see which gives you the quickest speeds. For instance, we test from the UK; however, found the Netherlands worker (76Mbps) a fair bit quicker than the one situated in our nation (67Mbps).
Exceptionally little VPN worker network covering 36 countries
Lamentably AVG’s website doesn’t list its worker organization, making it difficult to check whether the nation you need is available before you buy.
Fortunately, AVG Secure VPN’s workers cover the most mainstream locations, for example, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and numerous countries in Western Europe.
There are additionally eight countries available in the Asia Pacific, three in South and Central America, two in the Middle East, and one in Africa (South Africa). City-level worker choice is incredible for optimizing speeds and for accessing geo-specific substance. AVG Secure VPN’s selection of 15 cities in the only us is impressive for a worker organization of this size.AVG does not disclose what number of individual VPN workers (or IP addresses) it provides, nor does it specify whether they are virtual or physical workers.
If you need a more prominent selection of VPN workers, Hotspot Shield serves more than 80 countries.
Opens Netflix and BBC iPlayer with workers optimized for streaming
AVG Secure VPN reliably opens Netflix and BBC iPlayer with workers optimized for streaming.
In the past AVG Secure didn’t work reliably with Netflix – indeed, one customer help specialist composed on the Support Community discussion saying: “This is an issue on provider’s side and we can’t influence it.”
However, our ongoing tests show that AVG Secure VPN has since improved its Netflix accessibility, and we would now be able to stream shows instantly and with little buffering. Make certain to utilize the ‘Gotham City’ worker. The ‘Wonderland’ VPN worker, which is situated in the UK, attempts to open BBC iPlayer effectively too a rarity and a genuine reward.
AVG Secure VPN does permit torrenting and has a few workers optimized for P2P use. They are set apart with a ‘P2P’ in the worker list and are situated in:
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Netherlands
UK
US (Miami, New York, and Seattle)
Censorship
Don’t attempt to utilize AVG Secure VPN in China, UAE, Turkey, or some other high-censorship nation – it in all likelihood won’t work. AVG Secure VPN’s applications don’t accompany any obfuscation tools or covertness protocols, making OpenVPN – the main VPN protocol included – simple for edits to distinguish and hinder.
Backing operators from Avast (AVG’s parent organization) ostensibly admit that the VPN will not work in China “because of Chinese government regulation and policies.” While the Chinese government does obstruct numerous VPN services, there are still some VPNs that can sidestep the Great Firewall, allowing you to get to the free and uncensored internet.
We’ve discovered ExpressVPN, Astrill, and VyprVPN to work best in controlled nations like China. Just compatible with the most well-known stage AVG Secure VPN provides custom VPN applications for four well-known stages:
Microsoft Windows
Apple macOS
iOS
Android
Shockingly AVG Secure VPN provides no manual workarounds for different devices and stages, like Linux. You can utilize AVG Secure VPN on up to five devices simultaneously.
Games Consoles and Streaming Devices
AVG Secure VPN is incompatible with games consoles and streaming devices, as it can’t be installed on your switch and it doesn’t have any custom VPN applications outside of the four listed previously. You will need to utilize another VPN service if you need to utilize a VPN for Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Roku, Xbox or Playstation, Chromecast and to our knowledge that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Program Extensions
However, the AVG Secure VPN platform doesn’t have VPN program extensions, so you’ll have to utilize a different VPN for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Opera.
Basic security tools and solid encryption
AVG Secure VPN is a fair VPN choice for protecting your information on public WiFi organizations. Yet, we can’t prescribe it to anyone with stringent privacy needs because of its logging policy. AVG Secure VPN utilizes different VPN protocols for every one of its custom applications:
Windows and Android:
OpenVPN (UDP), our favoured protocol for its harmony among privacy and execution.
macOS:
L2TP/IPSec, a more established protocol yet, at the same time, considered secure.
iOS:
IKEv2/IPSec, a fairly new VPN protocol that is secure, quick, and fit for handling network changes efficiently.
You can’t toggle between VPN protocols as they are prepared into the AVG Secure VPN applications. AVG Secure VPN’s encryption is via the solid AES-256 cypher, which is widely considered tough.
There aren’t any exceptional security highlights like split tunnelling or multi-bounce yet AVG’s ongoing addition of a VPN kill switch for Windows and macOS is welcome. The kill switch include ensures your information if the VPN connection drops by blocking internet traffic and keeping your actual IP address hidden.
We didn’t experience any DNS, IP, or WebRTC spills during our tests. However, AVG Secure VPN suggests disabling WebRTC from within your program settings as it doesn’t right now offer an element to disable WebRTC in-application.
Conclusion
AVG Secure VPN isn’t an awful VPN, yet it’s not an excellent one either. It might work with Netflix and torrenting, however with a privacy policy that gathers too much client information, unimpressive velocities, and no customer uphold, there are far superior VPNs available at a similar cost or less.
