Best VPN for Australia

Using a VPN in Australia is absolutely necessary.

Various aspects of digital life in Australia make a VPN one of the best tools to safeguard your online privacy.

Not convinced? Here are four reasons why we think you should use a VPN:

1Australia’s Privacy Unfriendly Laws

Since April 2017, Australian law forces ISPs to collect ‘metadata’ about their customers’ electronic communications. This data is stored for at least two years.

Moreover, encryption laws passed in December 2018 are equally concerning. This legislation compels companies operating in Australia to give intelligence agencies access to encrypted communications. This includes emails, chat and social media messages.

And, if using public WiFi wasn’t risky enough, Australian Police can now break into public WiFi networks to obtain information on ‘people of interest.’

Unsurprisingly, many Australians have turned to VPNs in response to Australia’s mass surveillance.

Why? Because a VPN hides your web activities from your ISP, the government, and hackers.

The diagram below shows you how a VPN works, and how it protects your online privacy:

2Crackdown on Torrent Sites

Australian ISPs have also been guilty of aggressively blocking many websites.

In fact, over 1,000 file-sharing domains are currently blocked, with ISPs regularly filing more blocking requests.

Luckily, VPN software can bypass these blocks as your ISP can no longer see the websites that you’re visiting.

3Limited Video Content

Australia lacks the streaming options other countries enjoy – that’s a fact.

Even Netflix Australia is vastly limited compared to American Netflix: 2,000 titles versus the USA’s 5,600!

Unsurprisingly, Australians are using VPNs to unlock videos from US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu and many more streaming services.

Not all VPNs can unblock these streaming services, though. Only the best streaming VPNs will do the job.

Using a VPN in Australia is completely legal, no questions about it.

That means using ExpressVPN, NordVPN or any of the other top VPN services is perfectly fine in Australia.

But using a VPN doesn’t mean you can ignore state or national laws (including copyright laws).

Outside of Australia, VPNs are mostly legal although there are a handful of countries that either restrict VPN use or ban them entirely.

Australia is one the hardest countries for VPN services to get right when it comes to speed. Especially when you’re trying to connect into the country from abroad.

After thousands of hours of speed testing, we can safely say that ExpressVPN is the quickest VPN for Australia.

Connecting from London to Sydney, we only saw a 38% speed loss with ExpressVPN – believe it or not, that’s very impressive. In comparison, NordVPN suffered a 77% speed loss!

You’ll be relieved to know that all the VPNs in this guide are fast enough for Australia. Here are three other fast VPNs for you to consider:

• Private Internet Access
• ProtonVPN
• Hotspot Shield

Not ready to buy a VPN yet? Obviously, plenty of free VPNs are available and many promise to be just as good as paid ones. That’s simply NOT true.

Worryingly, many free VPN apps are not safe to use. The graph below shows the results of our research into free VPNs:

When you use a VPN, you entrust the company with your personal data. Unfortunately, many free VPNs abuse that trust by:

• Selling your web browsing data to advertising companies
• Sharing your data with foreign governments
• Installing dangerous malware into your device(s)

What’s the best free Australian VPN?

Despite the large quantity of risky free VPNs, we found two free VPNs that will work rather well in Australia.

Both TunnelBear and Avira Phantom VPN are trustworthy VPNs with servers in Australia.

However, remember that free VPNs aren’t very fast, there are monthly data caps, and server locations are limited.

VPNs and torrents go hand in hand. But many readers ask us whether using BitTorrent is legal in Australia.

Basically, downloading and sharing copyright-free digital works is completely legal in Australia, and elsewhere in the world.

But, if you download and/or share a movie or mp3 that is copyright-protected, then you’re breaking copyright laws.

The 2018 Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill gives Australian ISPs the right to block sites that classify are ‘pirate’: mainly torrent and streaming sites.

No wonder then that over 1,000 ‘pirate’ domains are blocked in Australia. Some of these blocked websites include:

• Putlocker
• The Pirate Bay
• Torrentz
• TorrentHound

If you want to avoid your ISP throttling your torrent speeds and, more importantly, avoid hefty fines, you need to start using an anoymous VPN.

Use of one these safe torrent VPNs to hide your torrent IP address from your ISP and from other prying eyes hiding in the torrent ‘swarm.’

If you are worried your ISP is logging your web activities, including your torrent activity, then you need an anonymous Australian IP address.

Here’s how to get an Australia IP address with a VPN:

1. Find a VPN that has fast Australian servers (the five top VPNs in this guide have them)
2. Download and install the VPN software on your device.
3. Find and click on an Australian server to connect to it
4. When you’ve successfully connected, you’ll have a new Australia IP address

You can check that you definitely have an Australian IP address by running a leak test on browserleaks.com.

The screenshot below shows the leak test results when we connected from London (UK) to an ExpressVPN server in Sydney:

Clearly, you can see an Australian IP address at the top, which means there are no IP leaks.

With a working Australian IP address you’ll also be able to stream Australian TV from abroad.

And rather easily too. Connect to an Australian VPN server and access Seven, Nine, ABC, Stan and much more from outside Australia.

Sometimes, it’s worth asking your VPN provider’s customer support which Australian servers unblock your favorite Australian streaming services.

The US Netflix library has by the far the largest video catalogue, with over 5,500 titles compared to Australia’s 2,000.

No wonder then many Australians want to tap into this treasure trove of movies and TV shows.

The question is: how do you unblock American Netflix from Australia?

It’s actually very easy – here’s what to do:

1. Choose and download a working Netflix VPN
2. Connect to a US server that unblocks Netflix
3. Visit the Netflix site or open up the app*
4. Start streaming

*Sometimes Netflix cookies stored in your web browser can interfere with the ‘unblocking’ process. Make sure you wipe your browser cookies clean before visiting Netflix.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of VPNs that aren’t suitable for Australia.

Primarily, it’s because they don’t have VPN servers in or near Australia. Simply put, the further away you are from a VPN server, the slower your VPN speeds are likely to be.

For this reason, you should avoid using these three VPNs in Australia:

• AirVPN
• AzireVPN
• Thunder VPN

As we said earlier, Australia’s surveillance laws have got a lot worse in recent years.

In fact, the Australian government passed two laws that severely threaten Australians’ privacy rights.

The Telecommunications Amendment (Data Retention) Act

From April 2017, the Data Retention Act requires internet service providers (ISPs) to store ‘metadata’ of their subscribers’ electronic communications.

Personal information like your Name, Address, Email Address, and Date of Birth will be stored for at least two years. Plus, these communication details will be recorded:

• Type of communication: voice, sms, email, chat, social media, etc.
• Your location at the start and end of the communication
• Address and details of the recipient
• Your IP address
• Network used to communicate (ADSL, WiFI, VoIP, etc.)
• Bandwidth used

While the legislation doesn’t require ISPs to record the websites visited, the current landscape suggests that Australian ISPs could well be storing web browsing histories.

The Assistance and Access Bill

Since December 2018, the Assistance and Access Bill, forces companies in Australia to hand over encrypted communications to intelligence agencies, when asked to.

In short, the Police can force companies/services like WhatsApp and Signal (which use end-to-end encryption) to give them access to encrypted messages. This is achieved by creating technical functions, also known as back-doors.

Originally, the bill was introduced to combat terrorism so that the government could read messages exchanged by suspects.

However, we’re concerned, like many other digital rights advocates, that this legislation gives authorities unfettered access to private and personal communication.

Not to mention that criminals will continue to communicate with each other regardless, by using services that are either not complying or not subject to Australian laws.

The Five-Eyes Alliance

Australia is part of the Five Eyes Alliance, a data-sharing pact formed with the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand.

All these five countries have agreed to share personal information on targeted individuals with each other.

Considering Australia’s approach to state surveillance, it’s not surprising that it’s also part of the Five Eyes.