Full of lies VPN comparison table

[fsy 34]

Head up for the community,

This table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/edit#gid=231869418
is full of errors against AirVPN, Windscribe and other autonomous VPN services. AirVPN offers the best ad and tracker blocking service I have ever seen and the table reports a "0" rating (fucking worst) for ad blockers. The table reports 0 for RAM servers too, but we know and staff confirmed that AirVPN runs everything in RAM after the minimal boot. Although me and a friend of mine warned the maintainer a month ago about several errors about AirVPN, Windscribe and more, and we received thanks for that, our messages were deleted after a while and the author of the table did not fix the errors.
So the table rates higher the VPN services that offer the higher payments for fake reviews and higher referral rewards. I start to suspect that the maintainer is just another filthy whore spreading lies for money. Total jokes and solemn shenanigans like HideMyAss, that handed over a customer to police, and the former malware Kape group VPNs (Express, CyberGhost and all that shit) rate higher than rock solid AirVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe. I am disgustingly disgusted and I invite the whole community to report everywhere the lies they can see in this table. If the author is not what I suspect, the errors will be fixed, otherwise we'll know for sure what a filthy grubby scumbag whore it is.

[OpenSourcerer 1442]

It's not that the info on AirVPN is wrong – it's outdated. I agree with some points, can understand others, but some are, as you wrote, simply wrong in 2023. This info must have been sampled before 2022 because in Oct 2021 the Wireguard beta started and in May 2022 it was completed. Yet, Wireguard is a 0.

Can you post the source of this sheet? Must be somewhere on Reddit. It doesn't seem to have any links to the original source, though.

[fsy 34]

Hi there, you guessed it, it's here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vpnreviews/comments/so9w1v/vpn_comparison_table
The author writes "Table last updated: Mar 21, 2023".  I don't want to advertise here other VPN services but it's too strange that the only independent VPN like Windscribe, TorGuard and AirVPN are the most penalized with false data. Everything looks shady, as if pre-computed to put the large majority of VPN below all the Kape conglomerate ones and the Nord, in other words the VPNs that pay you if you publish a table somewhere with a channel/formu/blog etc. with at least 10k followers or a minimum amount of views and you rate at least two of the conglomerate in the top positions. I stress once more that this author "paperplans5" is informed on the errors damaging scores of Windscribe, AirVPN etc. in multiple sectors, from Ads blocker to protocols, from servers on RAM to owned servers, but so far I see no fix.

 

Edited ... by fsy
Keyboard defects :)

[Staff 10017]

Hello!

We confirm that the linked table includes several errors. We take this opportunity to clarify that:

• all VPN servers use RAM disks. After a minimal bootstrap which must bring up the TCP/IP stack, the network and essential services to operate on the network, vital files (including secrets, configuration files and scripts) are downloaded on RAM from the network, from selected storage and strong authentication ensuring integrity. What's more, if a server reboots unexpectedly, the AirVPN management must confirm the authorization for the server to be re-admitted in the infrastructure, making it possible to understand the cause of the reboot and to verify (thanks to pristine copies) whether the server has been tampered before it comes back operational
• WireGuard is available since 2022 (in beta testing since the last quarter of 2021) and it also includes pre-shared keys, just in case they are needed for a quick additional cipher deployment in an unlikely post-quantum world. The API has been improved to offer the option to re-generate keys on the fly, resolving the privacy problems posed by WireGuard
•  ads, trackers etc. blocking lists are available since  2021. In our opinion our system is unrivaled on any VPN service, as you can configure it, add additional blocks or specific exceptions to lift blocks, and link different lists, additions and exceptions to different devices. Last but not least you can operate via API to get the available list information. Note that the ad blocking system is opt-in for a precise choice: by default the network must remain agnostic and neutral. Blocks are enforced only when explicitly wanted by the users.
• additional connection modes include OpenVPN connecting through HTTP(S) and SOCKS proxies, OpenVPN over Tor (not available on Android), OpenVPN over previously established TLS and SSH tunnels (OpenVPN over stunnel and OpenVPN over SSH), OpenVPN tls-auth for backward compatibility, OpenVPN tls-crypt for enhanced block bypassing

Kind regards


 

[Tubular 1]

On 5/2/2023 at 3:51 AM, fsy said:

the former malware Kape group

To be fair, Kape acknowledges the malware incidents, but explains that it was not their doing; bad actors were allegedly able to exploit their framework to write malicious extensions for ad injection. See: https://restoreprivacyDOTcom/kape-technologies-crossrider-malware/

Kape should definitely be denounced and regarded with suspicion for their acquisition of multiple VPN services, because consolidation under one company is bad, and because Kape also now owns some of the best-known VPN review sites that seem to rate Kape's own VPN companies higher than others. It might also be considered suspicious that Kape has partnered with Hutchison 3 Hong Kong (PRC) to provide integrated VPN services for the carrier's customers.

However, accuracy in criticism is very important if it is to be taken seriously, so I don't think Kape can be characterized as a "malware" company. Still, I, for one, would never use their services.

[OpenSourcerer 1442]

21 hours ago, fsy said:

Hi there, you guessed it, it's here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/vpnreviews/comments/so9w1v/vpn_comparison_table

The author wrote:

Quote

Edit 4: I will do a detailed analysis of the comparison table in 2023 because providers were changing rapidly. I'll look into the new features, plans, prices, etc. Please contact me if you have any suggestions or insights!

Edited today, unsure if this was added when done so. I think it's not a malicious thing, it's just that even keeping up with that limited assortment of providers proofs to require quite some time. Also, the fact he/she thanked you, then did nothing was probably because it was forgotten. It can happen.
I'll probably have you publically apologize here for your statements against the creator. It's not a malicious reviewer per se.

[fsy 34]

15 hours ago, Tubular said:

To be fair, Kape acknowledges the malware incidents, but explains that it was not their doing; bad actors were allegedly able to exploit their framework to write malicious extensions for ad injection. See: https://restoreprivacyDOTcom/kape-technologies-crossrider-malware/


However, accuracy in criticism is very important if it is to be taken seriously, so I don't think Kape can be characterized as a "malware" company. Still, I, for one, would never use their services.

Crossrider's (previous Kape's name) business was tied to malware too. One of the proves was given by Malwarebytes, source https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2018/04/new-crossrider-variant-installs-configuration-profiles-on-macs
Quote: "Obviously, not all parts of this chain are affiliated with Crossrider, but the chumsearch domain imposed by the configuration profile [one of malicious parts included in cr packages] definitely is. ".

Crossrider could not be not aware of what was happening: through a chain of affiliation and owned domain names monetized from it for years! The thin justification provided by Kape comes too late, when the shit already hit the fan and they could no more hide the truth. "Curiously", they take care to omit some "key information", such as that similar  practices were led by section 8200, an Israeli intelligence agency, as reported by an investigation published on Forbes. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/06/09/from-israel-unit-8200-to-ad-men/?sh=63c5cb2e26e2 Not surprisingly, an Isreali 8200 section agent co-founded Crossrider.

So to me "former malware" company definition for a company whose monetization was based on affiliation to malware products forcing malicious re-directions to domains owned by that same company has all the criticism accuracy you ask for to be taken seriously. As for the rest of your message, I totally agree, nicely put.

[fsy 34]

15 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

The author wrote:
Edited today, unsure if this was added when done so. I think it's not a malicious thing, it's just that even keeping up with that limited assortment of providers proofs to require quite some time. Also, the fact he/she thanked you, then did nothing was probably because it was forgotten. It can happen.
I'll probably have you publically apologize here for your statements against the creator. It's not a malicious reviewer per se.

"It" had a year and more to fix the errors - sounds enough time to me - but "it" didn't. Instead "it" wrote that the 2023 update was done on March 23, 2023, and then "it" deleted messages documenting the data to check and fix. Yes I received a thank you and as soon as my message was getting upvoted it was deleted. Same thing happened to a friend of mine and now I wonder to how many more.
 

Quote

Also, the fact he/she thanked you, then did nothing was probably because it was forgotten. It can happen.

Sure it can happen. Who knows, if "it" did not delete my message and other messages they could have been reminders for this forgetful reviewer.
 

Quote

I'll probably have you publically apologize here for your statements against the creator. It's not a malicious reviewer per se. 

Sounds great to me. Hope you're right that "it" is not a malicious reviewer "per se" really, but too easy to fix only when you see that the shit is going to hit the fan, after years of damages vs. independent VPN, so I want to see a consistent honesty and accuracy in the following years. I honestly hope, believe me, that "this one" is not like "that one" guy, who played the part of the goody-goody while secretly arranging a sale to get money from the usual commercial reviewers paid for bogus reviews.

While I am writing this message, the table still contains all the errors boosting Kape conglomerate and the Nord VPN, and penalizing the independent VPN. Time passes, tick-tock, tick-tock.

[OpenSourcerer 1442]

So what if he/she is? Is it really worth your personal time? It's not like this sheet is the answer to everything. It's also not hurting anyone in the least.

The same maxim as always applies: Do not believe everything you read on the internet.

Now, please stop the rants and direct them to Reddit or something, as they've got zero effect on this forum. Closing. If anyone wishes to converse with the guy/lass, you may do so linking to this thread.

[Staff 10017]

@OpenSourcerer Re-opening the thread upon various users request... at least for a while. We did not expect we could acquire information we were unaware of thanks to this thread but it happened, plus some community member was happy to be informed about this whole matter so let's see where the thread goes, it doesn't deserve to be locked right now. Let the community members decide by themselves what to do, of course always within the bounds of the netiquette (right, @fsy ?).

 

[Quallian 26]

Thanks support / staff for re-opening and the help to recover access to my account, I don't like writing long messages on forums and subreddits and I asked to reopen for I wanted to give my quick 2 cents to the thread but I found a lock.
Last year, around christmas holidays, I stumbled on the comparison table linked by OP and saw lots of errors for another vpn i use and for airvpn that i use with another account, and I wrote a personal message from a reddit account to the author telling only to check some data. I spent quite some time to send links to make him verify conveniently but i received no replies and the errors are not corrected, so i decided to stop wasting time with it, however when i saw this thread... I felt angry and i wanted to confirm the bad experience and make more people aware of the problems of this table, very misleading and injurious for some vpn like airvpn. Keep up the good work and good luck for everything.

[OpenSourcerer 1442]

If you want to make people aware of that sheet's problems, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to do this here. People check the sheet, they deem AirVPN as middling, they never get to even look at the homepage. Who are you trying to address with your quick two cents? You are preaching to the choir, as the saying goes; it's a misdirection of your time and feelings.
When you start being angry, it bears the risk of snowballing into some kind of witch hunt. Rage tends to breed even more rage. If the author stumbles upon this thread and sees that you direct your rage at him/her, how much do you think will he/she feel inclined to change the ratings?

If you really care about change, start where the author sees you: Write messages and comments, post on Reddit. If you've got a blog, write about it and link to it there. Talk with the mods of respective subreddits if the author doesn't seem to budge. Maybe make your own counterlist, promote it where the author's target audience can see you, too. Basically, apply pressure from many angles. If you care about change, that is.

But talking about it here? Sure, you can do that. But every second you're here, someone in the world is looking at AirVPN's meekly 2.x rating on that accursed sheet and is about to decide to go with Nord or Express. You can get angry about this, or you can get to work. The choice is yours.

[Quallian 26]

58 minutes ago, OpenSourcerer said:

If you want to make people aware of that sheet's problems, . The choice is yours.

Come on spare me your lessons, i just felt right to let airvpn users know that i had a very similar experience to OP's, only the truth. This forum is well indexed by search engines, everything counts when the truth is written and maybe this thread will be read more and more. Why are you hostile to the users of the forum you moderate who write on this thread? Why do you try to shut down this thread, I had to open a ticket only to give my tiny testimony and the support did not even know that the thread was locked? Start yourself to follow your own lessons, investigate this matter and write about it on your blog, social network and whatever, I will do the same. Edited ... by Quallian

[nutcracker 1]

Hi folks,
for what it matters I'm gonna test AirVPN after I read this thread. I picked Nord several months ago and I based my decision mainly on the Reddit VPN comparison table and I always have been disappointed by the poor performance on Nord servers. Now that I have checked that the table really is biased on many features with plain wrong data I will ask for an AirVPN free trial on this weekend. I feel deceived by this comparison table and by looking closer I noticed that so many messages have been deleted on the Reddit thread of the VPN comparison table. Now that stinks! I read that the policy of that subreddit forbids to mention any VPN, so how can you point out a specific error on that public thread if it's forbidden to mention VPN names? It's ridiculous, we have a thread to compare VPN with a table mentioning VPN names where it's forbidden to name VPN. It could be a cherry-picked policy to prevent constructive criticism and corrections.

I am unsure on what to do to report this table false data apart from writing to the author, though, I will think about it. If you guys decide to build up your own comparison table please inform us here too.

All the best
-- nutcracker

[msb100 2]

I am happy to see a response to the sheet, even if I never knew it existed. Thanks airvpn for your always fast responses to such things and able to clear the "air" for future users(and existing).

[fsy 34]

22 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

So what if he/she is? Is it really worth your personal time? It's not like this sheet is the answer to everything. It's also not hurting anyone in the least.

How I spend my time is none of your business.
I don't give a *about your morbid obsession for this thread but I do care when an AirVPN moderator tries to shut down a thread that contains factual reports complete of quoted sources suddenly and without explanations. The factual reports protect airvpn business and reputation while they reveal a network of lies against independent vpn services, so to me your position is inexplicable. Your statement that the table is "not hurting anyone" is disproved by yourself, see yourself what you then write:
 

Quote

People check the sheet, they deem AirVPN as middling, they never get to even look at the homepage.

Holy *, then it's clear to you too that the table may bring damage to AirVPN! but just to write something against me and other posters here your mind derails (you even defined my factual reports as "rants", bravo! congrats! that's a really ethical moderator, wow) and you support two antithetical thoughts on the same day.

 

Quote

But talking about it here? Sure, you can do that.

"Sure you can do that" my a*. If it were for you or some moderator, the thread would be locked, someone from staff or support had to re-open it.
 

19 hours ago, Staff said:

@OpenSourcerer Re-opening the thread upon various users request... at least for a while. We did not expect we could acquire information we were unaware of thanks to this thread but it happened, plus some community member was happy to be informed about this whole matter so let's see where the thread goes, it doesn't deserve to be locked right now. Let the community members decide by themselves what to do, of course always within the bounds of the netiquette (right, @fsy ?).

Fair enough, I will behave and it couldn't be otherwise as I have total respect for AirVPN mission, the AirVPN founder and for what he did when I was a teen (send him all my datalove), but I expect the same from you all. What about explaining why one of your moderators locked a thread without explanations and you had to overrule the decision, to begin with?
 

17 hours ago, Quallian said:

let airvpn users know that i had a very similar experience to OP's, only the truth.

Thank you a lot, it's important to receive confirmations of similar occurrences, they help define a pattern.
 

[Staff 10017]

22 hours ago, fsy said:

What about explaining why one of your moderators locked a thread without explanations and you had to overrule the decision, to begin with?

Hello!

Thank you for having joined the AirVPN community forums with vibrant passion. The community forums have been created by AirVPN for the AirVPN community, and are moderated by moderators from the community itself, appointed by the AirVPN staff. An experiment with un-moderated forums was attempted but unfortunately it was a fiasco. Nowadays, hoping to have a readable forum when it's not moderated at all is probably unrealistic.

The moderators propose themselves on a voluntary basis and perform their tasks during their free time without any monetary retribution and without any obligation to complete their task in the future. Moderators are not employees of AirVPN and their only motivations are passion and dedication. Their role in maintaining the community forums readable and a relaxed place is invaluable.

While the AirVPN staff forums are moderated by Staff and only Staff members can start new threads, community forums are open to anyone (even non AirVPN customers) and are subjected to non-staff moderation in general. Staff members now and then intervene on the community forum, usually when a post by staff is explicitly required or in those rare cases for which legal problems arise, but in general the staff members don't interfere with the community and with the moderators activity, except to delete blatantly spam bot messages ("buy pharma", "new project porn", and so on) when they pass through captchas.

In the case of this particular thread, the support team had an important amount of requests to re-open it (not from you, we know) even from long time community members. Due to the amount of requests, support passed all the matter to a staff member who decided that it was worth to re-open the thread immediately.

It is opinion of some staff members that this thread is informative in general, and that it provides various verifiable data which may be useful to protect AirVPN business and promote the good name of AirVPN itself. By keeping the thread open, the community offers to any involved party, including the parties which allegedly publish false data harming AirVPN and/or other services here mentioned, the option to reply even in public and even here should they wish so.

We repute that locking the thread would substantially undermine the right to reply, as correctly external entities made us notice via e-mail. With them we publicly apologize, and at the same time we remind that the locking was very short (something like 3 hours max), that a new thread may be opened by anyone (you don't need to be an AirVPN customer) and that the forum moderation is performed by volunteers from the community.

Please keep in mind that moderators are persons and human errors in total good faith are possible. There is no reason to make a drama out of it. Whether you are a member of AirVPN community or an external entity which want to exercise the inalienable right to reply, we encourage you and the whole community to open a direct communication channel with moderators when you have doubts, complaints, or just to discuss issues in the forum. You can reach community moderators (LZ1, OpenSourcerer and zhang888) through direct messages of your forum Messenger. Staff messenger is also open now, and as usual for professional support you may open tickets which will be handled by the (not outsourced) support team.

Kind regards
 

[revsplus 8]

Hello,
I'm sorry I post this message with a guest account, but I have a good reason, I do not want to correlate my real AirVPN account with my Reddit account.

I would like to clarify about this:

Quote

the policy of that subreddit [r/VPN] forbids to mention any VPN, so how can you point out a specific error on that public thread if it's forbidden to mention VPN names? It's ridiculous,

This is a strict policy, you can't name VPN services, and only the infamous VPN comparison table can do it. The policy says:

Quote

 

Don't name specific VPN providers. Be vendor-neutral in your descriptions. This applies to naming specific VPN providers, and any features that are specific to one provider. Most questions can be answered without knowing which provider you're using.

This rule is enforced due to the commercial nature of most VPN providers. We only make an exception for remote access solutions and software for setting up your own servers.

 

However, you find the VPN comparison table, which is horribly biased, as many of you have found out, pinned in the subreddit in the 2nd highest position, which names all the major VPN service vendors.
So I suppose, for huge monetary interests into play I guess, you can't rely anymore on those subreddits and you necessarily have to open your own blog or web sites. I see AirVPN was an early supporter of Mastodon. That's another good tool to spread information you care to spread. Of course this forum too, as someone before me said it is indexed by search engines. As soon as I have time I am publishing here a "fixed" VPN rating using the same parameters of the VPN comparison table, to make you see how the AirVPN score changes greatly when objective ratings are more fairly assigned.
I wish you a good Sunday, will be back early next week.

Edited ... by revsplus

[nexsteppe 24]

I feel the moderator made a quite reasonable (albeit, unpopular) choice to lock the thread.  It's not exactly clear to me what more "insight" is to be gleaned here.  But I suppose there is no real harm in beating this dead horse some more, though, if that's really what people want.

Also, while I appreciate the Staff's clarification in this thread on the role of forum moderators, I find some of their response uncomfortably close to corporate PR-speak.  Given the moderator's overwhelming dedication to this community over the years, I suppose I would have hoped for a reply that didn't appear to simply deflect responsibility to the moderator as a mere "volunteer," especially when he exercises otherwise good judgement in managing this forum on AirVPN's behalf every day.

[Staff 10017]

2 hours ago, nexsteppe said:

I feel the moderator made a quite reasonable (albeit, unpopular) choice to lock the thread.  It's not exactly clear to me what more "insight" is to be gleaned here.  But I suppose there is no real harm in beating this dead horse some more, though, if that's really what people want.

Hi!

The final decision to re-open was taken after the request to re-open the thread came from someone who we could call a "counter-part" wishing to exercise the right to reply. This is a perfectly legitimate request. Of course we have no idea whether it comes from the original author of the table or from anyone else, and that's not important. It's only important that anyone is given the right to reply.
 

Quote

while I appreciate the Staff's clarification in this thread on the role of forum moderators, I find some of their response uncomfortably close to corporate PR-speak.

We're sorry to hear that, and indeed the role of every moderator is invaluable. We indeed wrote "The moderators propose themselves on a voluntary basis and perform their tasks during their free time without any monetary retribution and without any obligation to complete their task in the future. Moderators are not employees of AirVPN and their only motivations are passion and dedication. Their role in maintaining the community forums readable and a relaxed place is invaluable." and we're sorry to hear that it's not enough in your opinion.

Therefore, we would like here to re-affirm that without the invaluable moderators activities performed every day and for years and years with passion and dedication, and without any monetary compensation, the community forums could not exist as they currently do. The moderators also wrote valuable guides, created translations into various languages for Eddie Android edition (check the credits in the app), and assist other users relentlessly. For that, we and all the community owe to OpenSourcerer, LZ1, zhang888 gratitude and recognition.

Kind regards
 

[revsplus 8]

My flight was postponed and as a lone stranger in a strange land when the evening starts on a Sunday I have now plenty of available time. I'm posting what I promised, let me know where you agree and where you disagree and why. I provide my own reasons to explain each score modification from the original table. At the end I determine the new average score after the changes.

One score modification is pejorative, I provide good reasons in my opinion in that case too. The source table is the one linked originally when this thread was created. After a discussion I would like to publish the fixes wherever I can, especially in /r/vpnreviews (but the message could be deleted there) but first I would like to gather opinions, corrections and comments (or insults! ).

In brackets the scoring given by the table's author, followed by my reasons.

SPEED 5 (4)
For my job I spend my years in Spain, Italy, Germany, China and Japan and AirVPN is the fastest in each of these countries with plenty of different providers. Since Mullvad and NordVPN get "5" but are significantly slower than AirVPN for me, I assign to AirVPN a 5 too.In China AirVPN is slow but at least it bypasses the blocks, while all the other VPN I tested don't, except in luxury hotels in Shanghai and other major cities, where the blocks are lifted for tourists and businessmen.

PROTOCOLS 5 (1)
Because AirVPN offers a huge variety of protocols on a great variety of ports. While it lacks obfsproxy, it offers a combo over Tor/SSL/TLS/SSH, WireGuard with pre-shared keys, connectable to low and high ports unavailable on other VPN services rated "5". So a "5" is due to AirVPN as well.

RAM SERVERS 5 (0)
Because I trust AirVPN staff claiming this. "Running on" RAM disks is trivial and easy, I see no reason to doubt about this claim on such an obvious and easy to implement feature.

TRANSPARENCY BUG BOUNTY 5 (3)
Because the Vulnerability Disclosure Policy and Bug Bounty Program are clearly written, have their own page linked by the FAQ, provide clear and easy instructions to report, and publish transparently a vulnerability found by Fortinet labs.

PRICING 5 (3)
Because AirVPN offers by far the best price on long plans. It is even cheaper during promotions, it offers free access and trials very liberally.

BYPASSING RESTRICTIVE NETWORKS 5 (2)
Because it's the only VPN I can still access from various China cities.

ETHICS 5 (3)
Because AirVPN
- does not pay for reviews (verified through baits, sorry staff )
- does not pay ransoms to cancel a fabricated negative review
- had the guts and the intellectual honesty to support WikiLeaks and Assange during the outrageous smear campaign and character assassination plotted by USA, UK and Sweden. No other VPN spent a word at those times and not even by far they donated the tens of thousand bucks donated by AirVPN
- runs directly or indirectly many Tor nodes
- is an early supporter of Mastodon and PeerTube
- is a major monetary supporter of Xnet open source project to free European schools from nefarious Google and Microsoft online tools
- releases only free and open source software
- supported economically Chelsea Manning when she heavily needed money. AirVPN did so in defiance of all the pressures and the threats I and you all could read (in this forum too, do you remember?) against anyone who "dared" to support monetarily her
- offers a tracker free Android software

CUSTOMER SUPPORT 5 (3)
Because it is the only support service that was able to explain to me how to run an FTP server behind a VPN server and how to load balance from a single BSD / pfSense system two or more simultaneous connections to different VPN servers.

AD-BLOCKER 5 (0)
Because the AirVPN ad blocker is the most flexible and configurable tool I have seen in any VPN service with custom exceptions, additions, multiple public list choices and API support.

LEAK PROTECTION 5 (4)
Because the leak protection is well written firewall rules and more effective than NordVPN leak protection. Since Nord has 5, then AirVPN must have 5 too.

OTHER ADDITIONAL FEATURES 5 (2)
Because it's the only VPN offering:
- a tool to find contiguous remote ports to forward
- a good API to interact with several tools avoiding the web site manual interfacing
- multiple DDNS services which really work
- the cooolest configuration generator, accessible both from web and API
- a valuable and unique feature to decide which ports must be forwarded to which devices
- OpenVPN3 development which wiped out multi-year bugs in the original OpenVPN3 library
- OpenVPN over Tor "natively" (with this I mean that the user just need to run Tor and then the Eddie software does all the required adjustments and setup to connect OpenVPN through Tor) on Eddie for Windows, Linux, Mac

AVAILABILITY 1 (3)
Two points less, this is the only pejorative score in my opinion. Because:
- the AirVPN Suite for Linux, which on the other hand is impeccably documented, still does not offer WireGuard after 1 year that WireGuard is available on VPN servers, hinting to a dangerously slow development activity
- the AirVPN Suite for Linux does not even offer the most basic traffic splitting abilities, forcing the Linux users to custom solutions and unnecessary work, or to switch to Eddie with Mono
- Eddie for Windows, Linux and Mac documentation is shabby and lazy. Some interesting features of the GUI are completely undocumented.
- Eddie for Linux still needs the Mono framework for the GUI, hindering usage on embedded and low specs systems.

With the above corrections, the total score goes from 47 to 75 (+28), and the average score goes to 75/18 = 4.17. Pretty impressive.

Let me know what you think, if you find errors and anything else you want. Did I forget some fancy AirVPN feature? Did I forget some important flaw? After the discussion to improve me and fix errors, I will publish this as a review around, in Reddit, including r/vpnreviews (where it could be deleted, we'll see).

Greetings from somewhere in Japan. Hope to read you all when I am back to Europe.
 

Edited ... by revsplus

[fsy 34]

On 5/7/2023 at 12:55 PM, revsplus said:

ETHICS 5 (3)
Because AirVPN
- had the guts and the intellectual honesty to support WikiLeaks and Assange during the outrageous smear campaign and character assassination plotted by USA, UK and Sweden. No other VPN spent a word at those times and not even by far they donated the tens of thousand bucks donated by AirVPN
- supported economically Chelsea Manning when she heavily needed money. AirVPN did so in defiance of all the pressures and the threats I and you all could read (in this forum too, do you remember?) against anyone who "dared" to support monetarily her
-

It's not a surprise to me. AirVPN founders had a record of iron determination on matters involving fundamental rights so I am happy to see their attitude didn't change. I am curious and surprised though by the pressures you write about "in this forum too", do you have any link to this forum or anywhere else showing them?
 

Quote

With the above corrections, the total score goes from 47 to 75 (+28), and the average score goes to 75/18 = 4.17. Pretty impressive.

Holy * now that's a boost!
 

Quote

Let me know what you think, if you find errors and anything else you want. Did I forget some fancy AirVPN feature? Did I forget some important flaw? After the discussion to improve me and fix errors, I will publish this as a review around, in Reddit, including r/vpnreviews (where it could be deleted, we'll see).

It sounds fine to me. Your list includes a couple of features I wasn't aware of. Good to know. I also missed the ambitious Xnet project to offer a working open source alternative to schools, now I know it.  Great to know that AirVPN helped the project. The mission page is juicy.
If you decide to publish the whole thing as a sort of review in some places like Reddit and other forum where the audience is not exactly inclined to read long message maybe you can make the message a little shorter.
I hope you had a good flight.
 

[fsy 34]

Bloomberg published an article yesterday related to some problems mentioned in this thread:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-08/best-vpn-consider-whether-you-can-trust-that-product-review-site
"Many Product Review Sites Are Rife With Potential Conflicts of Interest"

That's only the tip of the iceberg. Windscribe embarked on a perilous task to disclose all the ties between news corporations, VPN review sites and VPN owners.
https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships/control-d

This research is a treasure chest, so rich of info. One of the many gems: "that one" guy who acted as a goody-goody he suddenly sold out to SafetyDetectives. You discover that SD is a brand of Webselence (which owns VPNMentor) which is property of Kape Media, a division of the Kape conglomerate owning PIA, ExpressVPN, Cyberghost, Zenmate, etc.
The Reddit table I mentioned is a derivative of that guy table, except that the new table has all VPN owned by the Kape conglomerate and NordVPN ratings increased, while Windscribe, AirVPN objective ratings decreased.

The linked Bloomberg article touches only the tip of the iceberg but it's good that mainstream media starts to talk of the problem and that they reported declarations by a Mullvad executive officer. Like AirVPN, it is outside the Kape conglomerate and away from NordVPN's clutches.

Let's wait and see: will the table author fix the objective errors or not? Since when I wrote the first message and more than a month after the author acknowledged the necessary corrections two new updates came out, the latest dated May the 3rd, 2023, but those updates left all the errors affecting independent VPNs there.

[Quallian 26]

1 hour ago, fsy said:

 "that one" guy who acted as a goody-goody he suddenly sold out to SafetyDetectives.

No source. I'll patch it for you:
https://www.reddit.com/user/ThatOnePrivacyGuy/comments/jmuty2/that_one_privacy_site_merges_with_safetydetectives/
After a few years his words sound as an ass-grab, just see how his site was devastated . It's strange he did not know that SafetyDetectives was Kape, Hard to believe it. Anyway I regarded ThatOnePrivacyGuy as a shady personage earlier on, from when he started an imbecile crusade against AirVPN and another VPN I can't recall the name now when he wanted that AirVPN worked as a copyright sheriff to defend copyright and suspend accounts.

[Stalinium 50]

@fsy you made a typo it's Webselenese (.com domain). What would you expect from a marketing company who has "Best Reviews" on its landing page? Why would any company pay another for "providing unbiased, relevant reviews and comparisons."? If it was really unbiased then it would be called an audit or consultancy and not in the form of favorably sounding articles.