Bitdefender VPN Review

Bitdefender VPN isn’t a standalone VPN, it’s a part of the broader Bitdefender Security software. You literally cannot use the VPN without also installing the anti-virus software.

Under its current name, the Bitdefender suite of software was developed in Romania in 2001, but its predecessor – a program called Antivirus Expert – was developed under the company name Softwin in 1996.

Softwin itself was started in 1990 by founders Florin and Măriuca Talpeș.

Today, Bitdefender is a large multinational organization with around 1,600 employees and offices in Europe, America, and Australia.

The company is still based in Romania, which thankfully is not a member of the Five, Nine or 14 Eyes data sharing agreements. Romania is an EU member, though, so cannot be considered a privacy haven.

Bitdefender’s jurisdiction makes the quality of its logging policy all the more important – any EU-member government might be able to get its hands on Bitdefender’s servers.

Ideally, were the company compelled to give up its server logs, they would be completely empty, but Bitdefender VPN’s privacy policy falls far short of ideal.

Bitdefender’s privacy policy covers all home solution products, and includes just two short paragraphs about the VPN service:

Aura (formerly Pango, and before that AnchorFree) acts as a data processor for Bitdefender. This means that while Bitdefender collects and has authority over your information, Aura processes some of it on Bitdefender’s behalf.

Aura has been the subject of some controversy in the past, which you can read about in our Hotspotshield VPN review. The complaints centered around the company’s use of data from the free version of the Hotspot Shield app.

While these issues have been resolved, we think it’s important that users know about this before they commit to a VPN product managed in some capacity by Aura.

Because Bitdefender has a very vague privacy policy, Aura’s can give some idea of how your data will be handled.

Fortunately, the company does not logo any user activity:

But this does not make it truly no logs.

Aura keeps much more than we consider necessary to maintain a VPN service. It tracks:

• Your IP address – although encrypted, and only stored for the duration of your connection
• Connection timestamps – which are stored for up to three years
• Bandwidth used in each session – again, stored for up to three years
• Device information – including unique device identifiers, browser type, operating system and wireless network information
• Aggregated website logs – at the domain level (i.e. not full URLs) and not associated with the individual
• Approximate geographic location – derived from IP information (not GPS), and used to find the nearest VPN server

The only thing Aura guarantees is that it does not collect any data which connects you to your VPN browsing activity.

Since Aura is a data processor, not a data controller, it should only be storing information Bitdefender requests. In the absence of a fleshed out logging policy from Bitdefender, though, it is difficult to say for certain what it does or doesn’t log.

Your data should be handled by as few people as possible – having a second company involved is a needless extra step (not to mention confusing).

Bitdefender is one of a few VPNs to run on Hotspot Shield’s proprietary Catapult Hydra VPN protocol.

This is because Bitdefender has outsourced its VPN infrastructure to Aura, the company that owns Hotspot Shield.

Bitdefender isn’t the only antivirus company to do this. In our McAfee VPN review we explain how that VPN is also a white-label version of Hotspot Shield.

Like most examples of this we’ve seen, Bitdefender VPN is both fast and basic. It achieves some impressive speeds, but doesn’t include any additional features or security measures.

We’ve had a few problems maintaining our connection over longer distances, which can be a big problem without a dedicated kill switch feature.

These are great speeds from Bitdefender. Although we’ve seen other white label Hotspot Shield VPNs perform better.

There was some pretty bad latency across the board. Ping to the UK server was 10ms, which is fast enough for online gaming. The French server had a ping of 19ms, which should be okay for gaming, too.

Every other server had a ping of at least 30ms, though. This is simply too slow for lag-free online gaming.

In Europe we made great connections to the Netherlands and France servers, but a very poor connection to the server in Germany, which had a 90% drop in download speed.

Connections to North America and Asia were both respectable, with the exception of Japan which saw a 70% drop in both download and upload speeds.

These were our speedtest results for Bitdefender VPN around the globe:

• UK: 87.09Mbps (download) & 86.9Mbps (upload)
• USA: 48.65Mbps (download) & 65.02Mbps (upload)
• Germany: 8.67Mbps (download) & 19.31Mbps (upload)
• Singapore: 42.84Mbps (download) & 49.31Mbps (upload)

Bitdefender is quick to claim that its VPN can “unlock media from all over the world.” That’s not true, though.

We weren’t able to stream Netflix on any server, including the UK and US servers. Netflix fans should head over to our full review of ExpressVPN, our most highly-rated Netflix VPN.

On the flip-side, we were able to access BBC iPlayer through the UK server, which a lot of VPNs struggle to unblock.

Bitdefender VPN also streams geo-blocked content on YouTube, which is a lot more common, but still valuable if it’s blocked within your country, school, or place of work.

Torrenting is allowed on Bitdefender’s VPN network – great news if you want to use it for P2P file sharing.

Even better, Bitdefender’s strong speeds are ideal for getting large files downloaded quickly.

But, we don’t recommend torrenting using Bitdefender VPN.

During our tests we discovered that Bitdefender VPN leaks your DNS information. While this information does not identify your activity on its own, it could be used to identify you.

Your ISP won’t know what you’re torrenting, but it will know when and where you’re torrenting.

Because your DNS traffic will be unencrypted, you’ll be left vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks from malicious servers which could de-anonymize you, or worse.

It’s not worth the risk. Instead, use one of our highest-rated torrent VPNs. Or, see our NordVPN review, a good P2P VPN that’s also very affordable.

In fact, Bitdefender states on its website that it restricts use of the VPN in these countries:

• Belarus
• China
• Iran
• Iraq
• Oman
• Russia
• Turkey
• UAE

We don’t recommend using Bitdefender VPN if you intend to travel to any of these countries, because it probably just won’t work.

To beat web censorship, read our lists of the best VPN for China, Russia, Turkey or the UAE.

In its FAQ section, Bitdefender describes its VPN as a service which “secures your online activity”:

But is it really secure? Not as far as we’re concerned.

When we tested Bitdefender VPN we didn’t find any IPv4 or IPv6 leaks, or any WebRTC leaks. What we did find was DNS leaks on every single server we connected to.

Here is what our VPN leak test looked like:

Our IP address showed as in Denmark, but you can clearly see our UK DNS servers.

This means that while your ISP won’t be able to see what you are doing, it will be able to see and record the name of every website you visit while Bitdefender VPN is active, and prevent you from accessing any censored sites.

DNS leaks also increase your risk of falling victim to man-in-the-middle attacks.

DNS leaks are a fatal flaw for a modern VPN – particularly since the mainstream adoption of HTTPS means that your non-DNS is already end-to-end encrypted between you and the site you are visiting.

At least the VPN service employs AES-256 encryption, which hasn’t been broken to this day. As long as the VPN software operates properly, there should be no way for someone to brute force through the connection.

The VPN protocol behind Bitdefender VPN is Hotspot Shield’s proprietary Catapult Hydra. This protocol records very fast speeds, but its make up is less clear than other more mainstream protocols, like the open-source and industry standard OpenVPN.

Sadly, there isn’t an option to use a patched version of the WireGuard protocol. This is a relatively new VPN protocol which will likely challenge OpenVPN as the industry standard.

When we first reviewed Bitdefender VPN we found its customer support frustrating, but it’s made some definite improvements since then.

Livechat is quick and helpful (although not quite available 24/7 in our experience): perfect for customers all around the globe.

Bitdefender also provides setup guides and troubleshooting instructions for most common problems, which are well set out and should solve most issues you may encounter.

The forums are pretty helpful too, although these are mostly user-operated so aren’t the most reliable source out there.