TunnelBear VPN Review

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MONTHLY PRICE: 6.99 USD
ANNUAL PRICE: 5 USD/mo

TunnelBear can righteously be entitled to the most exquisite and original VPN provider with a great sense of humor and uplifting attitude. Everything from smooth website design and flawless apps, to content and support team is very well thoughtout and humorous. Their clever Bear theme with amazing animation and puns can be traced all the way to the payment options where you supposedly can pay with “Jars of Honey”. By signing up with this no logs Canadian VPN service, you will “secure your data and hide your IP address behind a Bear”.

Additionally, TunnelBear is an excellent privacy company with a number of advanced security features that minimize tracking, maximize privacy and prevent IP leaks. TunnelBear “Maul Trackers” – a web tracking protection feature – blocks a large number of trackers that websites use to collect information about the users. “Vigilant Bear” is a Kill Switch that temporarily guards data transfer to ensure no information is leaked during server switches or when the Internet connection is unstable. Vigilant Bear, however, is not a traditional Kill Switch that completely shuts down Internet access until VPN connection is re-established.

While UDP port (“faster”) is a default server configuration, TunnelBear allows their Bear owners to switch to TCP port which is generally recommended on connections that frequently disconnect.

IntelliBear is a very handy feature that is offered by a handful of VPN providers. IntelliBear allows split tunneling only selected websites through secure tunnels or vice versa. For instance, if you would like to use the Bear to access only specific websites, you can tell IntelliBear which URLs should be tunneled through a VPN. Alternatively, if you would like to access some websites with your regular Internet connection (PayPal or banking that requires specific connection, for instance), you can list PayPal.com and the Bear will exclude this URL from tunneling.

More so, Bear owners can use GhostBear feature. It’s particularly useful for those who live or travel to countries like China, Iran or Syria, with China being the most aggressive country when it comes to Internet censorship. Among other methods, the governments employ deep packet inspection to detect and block encryption protocols, thereby, rendering most VPN providers useless. GhostBear, while being somewhat slower, wraps OpevnVPN into other tunnels that cannot be distinguished from regular encrypted traffic and reroutes VPN connection through port 443. GhostBear essentially completely hides OpenVPN traffic by making it look like regular HTTPS browsing. For this reason TunnelBear can bypass even the strictest firewalls, including corporate and college networks that tend to block a number of connections as well.

Since Netflix now actively blocks VPN users based on their IP addresses, most VPN providers can no longer be used to unblock US Netflix or access Netflix videos in general. But not TunnelBear! All Bears are “whitelisted” and are not detected by Netflix as proxy. Therefore, TunnelBear is a recommended choice for users who would like to remain behind secure VPN tunnels while they stream their favorite content on Netflix, Hulu, HBO or other streaming services.

Even though quite a few VPN providers offer iPhone apps, TunnelBear has one of the best. Generally iOS requires downloading VPN profiles that are separately stored in the main “Settings” section under “VPN profiles”. This essentially means that the app’s main function is only to download those profiles to the device. TunnelBear app, on the other hand, takes advantage of IPsec/IKEv2 protocol that takes VPN setup on iPhone to a whole other level. Once the user installs the app, they can use it in the same way Windows or Mac app works: choose a server from the interface and connect.

TunnelBear offer a free 500Mb/mo high-speed VPN plan that can be increased by another free GB though Twitter. Although enough for an occasional user, an upgrade to the Giant (monthly) or Grizzly (annual) Bear is recommended for those who need an encrypted connection on a regular basis.

Overall, TunnelBear is certainly one of the best privacy companies on the market offering a number of security and privacy features as well as great speeds to stream HD multimedia content. TunnelBear, however, completely blocks p2p traffic on all servers and, therefore, does not suit users who would like to use their servers for torrenting.