Betternet VPN Review

Below is a summary of all the data that Betternet logs:

Betternet collects enough data to compromise your online anonymity. The service permanently logs your ISP, originating location, and VPN connection timestamps. All of this taken together can be used to identify you.

Your real IP address is logged by Betternet, but only for the duration of the VPN session. Although this can’t be used to identify you, we’d still prefer if Betternet didn’t log IP addresses at all.

None of this stops Betternet from using your IP address more generally, specifically for determining your approximate geographical location.

This is a concerning misuse of users’ IP addresses and we’re not sure how it assist in the functioning of the VPN service.

We’d feel less concerned about Betternet’s ambiguous privacy policy if we were presented with real-world evidence of its procedure, such as an independent audit of its logging practices or regularly published transparency reports.

In the meantime, there are far better and private free VPNs available, that won’t log your IP address.

Privacy-Unfriendly US Jurisdiction

Betternet is operated by Betternet LLC Inc., a part of the Aura group, which also owns a host of other VPN services, including:

• Hexatech
• Hotspot Shield
• Touch VPN
• VPN In Touch
• VPN 360

Betternet LLC Inc. is incorporated in California, USA, which is part of the Five-Eyes international intelligence-sharing alliance. It’s also subject to intrusive surveillance laws.

All of Aura’s VPN products share the same privacy and logging policy, but the group hasn’t had the smoothest run during the past few years.

For example, Hotspot Shield was embroiled in various past controversies. One of them involved the VPN injecting advertising cookies in users’ web browsers. You can read more about this in our Hotspot Shield review.

While the allegations didn’t mention Betternet, it’s worth remembering Betternet uses the same privacy policy, proprietary VPN protocol technology, and infrastructure as Hotspot Shield.

These issues have since been resolved and the Aura privacy policy rewritten, but it certainly damaged trust in the company at the time.

One saving grace is that Betternet Free doesn’t require you to make an account before using it. This means you don’t have to hand them personal information like a phone number or email address.

Betternet Controversy

Betternet hasn’t escaped all controversy though.

A 2016 academic report on VPNs revealed that Betternet’s Android app was riddled with malware and embedded tracking libraries. Betternet never publicly addressed this.

Betternet uses industry-standard AES-128 and AES-256 ciphers to encrypt traffic, but that’s where the positives end. Its privacy policy is questionable and there aren’t any security extras included – not even a kill switch to protect your identity in case of a sudden connection drop. In short, Betternet is not a safe or trustworthy VPN.

Our tests detected no IP, DNS, or WebRTC leaks when the “Prevent IP Leaks” setting was toggled on, but switching it off caused Betternet to expose DNS requests to our ISP.

The ‘Prevent IP leaks’ feature is switched on by default, but considering the main point of a VPN is to protect your privacy and prevent personal data from being exposed – we don’t see why this option is present at all.

The Chrome extension is even worse: we found it suffered from both WebRTC and DNS leaks, regardless of how you configure the settings.

In terms of advanced features, there is a domain whitelister you can use to route select websites outside of the VPN tunnel, but this doesn’t make up for the lack of basic security tools.

Security researchers also found malware and tracking libraries embedded in the Android app.

Betternet uses the same proprietary connection protocol as the other VPN services in the Aura group: Hydra. Unfortunately, there’s no technical information about the protocol available.

However, the website’s FAQs go some way to reassure us that Catapult Hydra doesn’t affect security:

“It is important to note that our proprietary protocol is focused only on the performance of the VPN data transport, while using standard encryption with perfect forward secrecy.”

Overall, Betternet is not a particularly safe or secure VPN service. It uses standard encryption but fails to provide essential security features such as a VPN kill switch or effective leak protection.

We calculated Betternet’s speed score by measuring the speed of the connection between our location and Betternet’s US server. As free users are limited to the US server, we were unable to carry out any international speed tests.

Here’s a table showing Betternet Free’s speed test results:

As shown above, our download speeds decreased from a baseline of 100Mbps to 93Mbps — a 7% speed loss.

This is more than fast enough for bandwidth-intensive activities, including 4K streaming, online gaming, and torrenting.

However, we can’t guarantee that Betternet will be as fast for users outside of the US.

In addition to Betternet’s unreliable speeds, the free app doesn’t reliably work with popular streaming services. This is true for many similar free services, including popular VPN apps like Touch VPN.

Only the best VPNs for streaming can bypass the aggressive VPN blocks put in place by the biggest content platforms.

We have been able to watch US Netflix on occasion, but it’s almost always blocked, bringing up the familiar proxy error message:

Netflix and other streaming sites actively block VPN traffic and most free VPNs don’t put resources into getting around the blocks.

There are no free UK servers so it’s impossible to watch BBC iPlayer, which requires a British IP address.

Betternet’s FAQs state that it currently supports torrenting on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. Our tests have always found P2P traffic to be blocked, though.

Simply put, Betternet is not a good free VPN for anonymous torrenting. Even if it allowed P2P traffic, Betternet is not an ideal VPN for P2P users.

Firstly, the unreliable speeds quickly become a hassle, particularly if you’re located far away from the free US VPN servers.

Secondly, Betternet’s logging policy and the lack of a VPN kill switch is a problem for safe torrenting.

If you need a VPN for bypassing censorship in China, Betternet definitely shouldn’t be your first choice (or even your 20th).

As a free user you can only connect to VPN servers in the US, which would bring your speeds down to halt.

Betternet doesn’t come with any additional obfuscation tools to overcome aggressive Chinese Firewall blocks, either, so you likely won’t even be able to connect. When we tried to connect from our Shanghai server, we found we couldn’t use Betternet to beat China’s censors.

Most free VPNs aren’t suited to working in China, or other high-censorship countries like Iran and the UAE.

You can find out which VPNs work in China right here.

The FAQs are fairly well organized, with sections for each supported device, but some are out of date and display incorrect information.

If you do try to email support without a premium subscription you’ll receive a short reply saying: “Sorry but we can’t respond personally.”

If you’re struggling with any issues, you’re pretty much on your own.