Unknown Speaker 0:00 Hello everyone, today I'm going to be reviewing
cyberghost VPN. I'll be examining the privacy policy speed streaming and torrenting capabilities
as well as features and security. And if at any point you want to check out pricing or
discount codes, you'll find what you need in the description below. Now, almost all
VPNs in the market claimed to have a strict no logs policy. And cyberghost is no different.
I have no problem with such statements, but only when there's evidence to back up such
claims and in terms of privacy policy, cyberghost is going to score pretty low and there are
many reasons for that now cyberghost is secure in the encryption department as it uses 256
bit AES encryption with a 2048 bit key. The Privacy problem stems from a few issues with
the service. While it does protect anonymity prevents IP and DNS or any potentially user
identifying data leaks. its lack of obfuscation technology means it's not safe for use in
censorship heavy countries like China, Turkey and the UAE were using VPNs to counteract
restrictions is illegal as cyberghost will show ISP is that your traffic is indeed shown
as VPN traffic which could get you in trouble if you live in such countries. Another point
of concern is the apps list of Google trackers. Now Earlier I spoke of evidence backing up
privacy policy claims such evidence is usually presented in the form of third party independent
audit reports. Typically, VPN providers will allow independent audit firms to conduct security
checks on the providers network and operations, all of which is to be disclosed for the public
in order to really back up the privacy claims of VPN providers. VPN, like Express and Nord
go through such audits on a regular basis, which further solidifies trust levels among
users. But cyberghost hasn't undergone any audits since 2012. Though cyberghost do publish
their own yearly transparency report and quarterly updates, that is still coming from cyberghost
themselves, and not a full on third party check over their entire operation and use
of activity logs. So as of now, there's really no way to verify how they handle user information.
According to a cyberghost spokesperson cyberghost does have the ability to help law enforcement
by activating a limited user tracking feature, the only way to do it is if that user is still
in the system. And if the law enforcement knows the IP and could provide also a warrant
to track that IP. He also said, we can activate a special feature like a logging feature for
that IP. But we have that ability to prevent malicious actions when using our service,
but only if that user is still active. And we have proof of what exactly is wrong, what
IP he is using, and so on. So we've got to bring that in order to activate that to be
sure we don't activate it on a regular user. Otherwise, we cannot help any law enforcement
company and reading through the terms and conditions. I also found this exert you understand
that cyberghost undertakes no responsibility for your actions in case of statutory violations
by the user cross writer may cooperate with public or private authorities at its sole
discretion as provided by law. Now, to what degree will they cooperate with law enforcement?
I'm not exactly sure. When it comes to high profile cases, I'm pretty sure that most if
not all VPNs will have to cooperate anyways. But let's say law enforcement asks cyberghost
for some kind of information on a user because he or she played pub G and a country where
they're not supposed to play pub G, that I'm not sure if so take that as you may. In 2019
cyberghost took a small hit when a customer survey company type form was breached. The
company said that 120 email addresses and 14 cyberghost usernames were compromised,
but no passwords were included in that leaked data. Another issue with cyberghost is its
parent company's troubling history and reputation cross writer now known as cape technologies,
according to Malwarebytes, and many other reputable online security websites, cross
writer was hiding malware and software bundlers which would then infect the user's computer
with adware and other monetizing methods. In 2017, cyberghost was acquired by a company
called cross writer for 9.2 million euros. Then in October 2018, Cape purchased zenmate,
a German VPN provider for an undisclosed amount later in December 2019. Cape acquired Private
Internet access and in order for the company to distance itself from its struggling past,
it changed its name to Cape technologies in 2018. But in the terms and conditions, you
can still find them referring to themselves as cross writer, which isn't really helping
Unknown Speaker 4:47 their cause. Another concerning matter is
that cyberghost privacy policy does say that cyberghost can share your data with its unnamed
parent company, we may disclose your personal data to any member of To our group of companies,
this means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and all of its subsidiaries.
Insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy, the document says,
there's a little bit more to unpack with the privacy policy and how customer disputes are
handled. But I think that's enough. I don't want to make this video too long. But all
in all, cyberghost is not doing so well in the privacy sphere, especially when looking
at the history of cross writer or cable technologies. They're essentially the same thing. Now moving
on to the speed test. Keep in mind that usually any decrease between 10 and 20% is considered
very good. And anything from 20 to 40% is fine as long as your base speed is fast enough.
And the results will vary depending on your own connection, your ISP and the servers you're
connecting to. Now, as you can tell from these results, it's not exactly the fastest, I tested
a few servers on all three protocols, but for some reason, there was a high degree of
inconsistency with the results. The Wire guard protocol is supposed to be the fastest protocol,
but it wasn't in cyberghost, whereas it was always the faster protocol in Nord VPN and
surf shark. And another thing to note is that the servers seem to be very heavily populated.
Oddly enough, even though there are many servers available, most of them seem to be a little
bit over 50% capacity, or just nearing 50%. And regarding the speeds, it's not exactly
slow, per se, but the inconsistency was a little bit off putting I've run many tests
on Express Nord and surf shark. And no matter how many times I refreshed the speed test,
it always gave me a similar value, give or take about 0.3 megabits per second. But with
cyberghost, I was getting some wild numbers, the speed and ping would fluctuate with every
refresh. And to confirm that I use Express VPN to test out the connection to make sure
the problem wasn't my own connection. Express gave me very consistent results with each
refresh. And annoyingly enough, I was even getting cyberghost ads saying that it's the
number one VPN, which reinforces the aggressive advertising, that cross writer engages in
through cyberghost. The most consistent results I got were from the Italian and polish servers,
and not really sure what's causing these ping and download speed fluctuations, but it's
not so good to see. While it's not necessarily slow. Ideally, you want consistency with your
VPN to ensure efficiency and reliability. Now for streaming cyberghost works fairly
well, I actually really like that you can just look up whatever streaming service that
you're trying to unblock and it will show you the optimized servers that you can use.
Or you can just go through the streaming server list, which is also neat. I've tried unblocking
the US Netflix library and HBO Max, though it may take a little bit over two minutes
don't block the geo restrictions. That's not an issue as long as it does the job. Well,
I also unblock the Japanese library without any problems. For torrenting, I was able to
also download without any hiccups using the torrenting specialized servers. So it's good
to see that these
Unknown Speaker 8:03 servers really are optimized for the tasks
they're assigned to. And they do a good job at that. Now in terms of features. cyberghost
has a good variety of different useful features. I already mentioned the streaming and torrenting
specialty servers, but they also have a gaming server list. And you can sort these servers
by latency. So I tested the one with the lowest Ping. And this time, it actually maintained
that low ping throughout the different tests. And that low ping did hold up in Warzone.
And another server feature they have is the dedicated IP, which is an add on feature that
lets you get your own personal IP for five extra dollars per month on top of your subscription,
though Do note that this service is only available for those that made their purchase through
the cyberghost website. So it won't really work if you've got your subscription through
an activation code. Another add on is no spy servers, which costs just over $1 a month
on top of your subscription. cyberghost claimed that the servers come with extended bandwidth
and are faster than their regular servers and are also designed for greater anonymity
for torrenting. cyberghost boasts 256 bit encryption and while they do say it's the
strongest encryption, it only comes with a 2048 bit key which can only be possibly broken
with a quantum computer. But still, it's not the highest level that they claim, at least
not to the level of express or nords 4096 bit key, but it still is secure enough though
you've also got an ad blocker that blocks annoying pop ups here and there. But it's
not too effective unless you pair it with an independent adblocker. You also have an
automatic kill switch that cannot be switched off, which is a little weird. It's better
to give users the option to toggle the kill switch on and off a Wi Fi protection that
you can set the launch a VPN connection whenever you connect to a public or new Wi Fi which
is a nice feature to have considering how dangerous it can be to connect to public Wi
Fi as you also have split tunneling for websites but not for applications. The way it works
is that Selected applications will cause your VPN to connect to a pre selected server, but
it will connect your entire connection to the VPN. So it's definitely not your traditional
split tunneling feature and the settings you have a choice of three protocols which includes
wire guard ikf, two and open VPN with a UDP and TCP toggle for open VPN, and ask for the
one below. This option allows cyberghost to establish connections through randomly chosen
ports, which will be changed with each new connection instead of a fixed port, which
makes it easy for providers to slow down or block cyberghost connections. In this case,
your provider or network admin, such as hotels or airports, for example, does not allow VPN
traffic. The activation of this option might help to successfully connect to the cyberghost
network because usually only a few ports are blocked. So for the most part, this will only
be useful when using unsecured or public Wi Fi cyberghost has an impressive amount of
over 6700 servers covering 89 countries with unique locations that cannot be found in other
VPNs. So it's got a wide variety of countries to choose from. And on the website you can
tell which and which are not peer to peer supported or physical cyberghost is available
on all devices which includes iOS, Android, Mac OS, Linux windows, as well as streaming
devices and a router out and will allow for seven simul taneous connections per subscription.
cyberghost is one of those cheaper VPN that you can find on the market with a 1299 monthly
plan a 399 per month for the yearly plan 349 per month for the two year plan, and the cheapest
plan will come with a further discount at 225. If you're willing to commit for three
years, they do have a longer than usual money back guarantee, which gives you up to 45 days
in case you changed your mind and would like a refund. And a live chat support is also
available, which is helpful in such situations. I'll be sure to leave links to special deals
and discounts in the description below if I happen to find any so keep an eye on that.
Now to conclude this review if you're looking for a no log policy VPN that protects your
information and won't share it with its parent companies and has obfuscation that will protect
you from ISP is in case you're living in a restrictive country and you don't want to
be possibly sold out to law enforcement for playing a game of pub G, then cyberghost is
definitely not a good fit for you. However, if you're not living in a strict country,
and just want a VPN that works well with streaming, torrenting and gaming or change your IP address
or even have a cheap VPN that protects your information when using public Wi Fi, then
cyberghost does all the above very well and wouldn't be a ways to get yourself a subscription
plan since it's pretty cheap overall. Now if you do prioritize privacy and top speeds,
you can check out my top three VPNs video which I'll link in the description below.
Besides that, I hope you guys enjoyed this review. And if you did learn something, please
like the video and subscribe to help us out with the algorithm. You can leave any questions
in the comments below if you do have any. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll
see you guys in the next one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai