SkyVPN Review

SkyVPN, Inc. is based in Hong Kong with obscure, hidden links to Chinese ownership.

Our free VPN ownership research revealed that SkyVPN Inc. is owned by Tengzhan Hongkong Limited (騰展香港有限公司), which refers to itself as SkyVPN Inc, Secure Sentry Communications, and Dingtone, depending on where you look.

Its corporate address is registered at Rm 2103 Futura Plaza 111 How Ming St, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong.

The Tengzhan Group acquired Dingtone in 2015, according to this Chinese language disclosure document as there is no other reference in English language media. 

Tengzhen Hong Kong Ltd incorporated in December of that year with You Xiumie (游秀妹) as director and sole shareholder.

None of this is easily available to find. There is nothing on SkyVPN’s website that alludes to its ownership or corporate history anywhere. 

You can’t trust this VPN service. The Chinese government could potentially demand logs and information on any of its users whenever it pleased, and SkyVPN would have to cooperate.

SkyVPN has a huge list of logged data.

Its privacy policy states that it keeps a lot of information.

Excerpt from SkyVPN’s Privacy Policy.

SkyVPN collects all this data:

• Aggregate bandwidth usage
• Temporary usage data
• Real-time analysis of internet and data traffic, including originating IP and destination IP
• Cookies, tracking pixels, and related technologies for targeted ads
• Email address and contact details
• Information on support requests
• “Certain information” from your device
• Device make and model
• Mobile web browser type and version
• IP address
• Mac address
• Operating system
• Location information
• Mobile Country Code information
• List of applications installed on your device
• “Other technical data” from your device

Despite all that SkyVPN claims that unlike many VPNs that track you, “SkyVPN never does like that.” [sic]

SkyVPN is also quite open about how:

“Ads appearing on SkyVPN Software or any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies.” 

We always raise an eyebrow when we read an unspecific statement like “other technical data” and “certain information” which can include anything – a lack of specifics is never good. 

One thing SkyVPN is specific about is how it will hand over your data to whichever court asks for it.

Here are the results we recorded when connected to a nearby SkyVPN server:

Worldwide Speed Tests

SkyVPN can’t manage more than 10 Mbps in download speeds – it’s one of the worst sets of speeds we’ve ever seen.

We tested on the single UK server for BBC iPlayer and found it doesn’t unblock the streaming service.

SkyVPN also fails to unblock any of Netflix’s global libraries.  

Fans of Netflix or BBC iPlayer shouldn’t waste their time with SkyVPN.

That’s especially the case with SkyVPN’s one-server mobile app. It has no UK server and the single US one doesn’t unblock Netflix.

SkyVPN does allow P2P file-sharing on most of it servers. However, it explicitly states in its Terms of Service that P2P activity is not permitted on some servers, including:

• Canada
• France
• UK
• US

Therefore you shouldn’t attempt it as you’ll be violating the Usage Policy and could be suspended from using the service.

Torrenting is yet another activity we simply can’t recommend SkyVPN for.

SkyVPN has no obfuscation features to hide the fact that you’re using a VPN, and we don’t even know what security protocol it uses — because it won’t tell us.

If you need a VPN to combat internet restrictions, there are far better options. We recommend reading our guides on the best VPNs for the UAE and how to bypass Chinese censorship.

Similar to other low-tier free VPNs such as SuperVPN, SkyVPN reveals hardly any details about encryption or security on its website or app.

Don’t make the same mistake as its millions of users – this is our biggest concern yet.

SkyVPN talks about “military-grade” encryption and we did find mention of the claim it uses 256-bit AES encryption, which is a positive as this is strong encryption.

But there’s no information regarding SkyVPN’s chosen VPN protocol, so we have no idea whether it’s OpenVPN, IKEv2, or possibly something far less secure, such as PPTP. 

We’ve messaged SkyVPN multiple times to ask, but have received no response.

There’s no VPN kill switch, so if the SkyVPN connection was to drop without you noticing your true IP address would be exposed to anyone who wanted to see it.

SkyVPN comes with an extremely limited FAQ and an email address for support. 

That’s it. 

And its answers to the questions are bad.

Excerpt of SkyVPN’s FAQ

We contacted SkyVPN’s support email address multiple times to test how quick and helpful it was, but received no response.