The 2016 Communications Intelligence Gathering Act authorized Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) extensive powers to monitor all internet traffic entering and leaving the country. Germany is a close ally of the United States, with the NSA basing its European headquarters in the country. Unfortunately, the definition of “metadata” used by the law includes a list of all websites visited.Ĭurrently, we are unable to determine if the Data Retention Act applies to VPN services based in Germany. This came into full force in 2016 and requires all telecommunications and internet service providers to retain user metadata for up to 10 weeks. ![]() This is a country known for its strong data privacy laws, and in 2018 was the first country to fully align its data protection legislation with the GDPR.Ĭontrary to this, it has also enacted the now invalid-on-human-rights-grounds EU Data Retention Directive into local law. The iOS VPN app looks almost identical to the Android VPN app but uses the IKEv2 protocol and does not offer random port scanning. There is no kill-switch, although Android 7.0+ has a built-in kill-switch that works with any VPN app. It works well, however, and offers random port selection and the ability to switch from UDP to TCP. Not surprisingly, the OpenVPN Android app is a simple affair. The Mac app uses OpenVPN only, though, and does not feature random port selection or the ability to switch from UDP to TCP. The macOS clientīar minor OS interface differences, ZenMate’s macOS VPN client looks identical to the Windows one. Now that both companies are owned by Kape Technologies, they seem to share a common server network. In fact, this is far from a coincidence and their similarities go even deeper. You would not be mistaken if you notice a resemblance between ZenMate's user interface and CyberGhost's client. This means the kill-switch uses system-level firewall rules to prevent connections outside the VPN tunnel, which is good. Force-closing the OpenVPN daemon did, but we were then no longer able to connect to the internet. Force-closing the app itself to simulate a software crash did not terminate the VPN connection. Similarly, the random port selection feature can be effective at defeating simple VPN blocks.Ī kill-switch is included. You can also choose between OpenVPN UDP and TCP, which is handy for defeating moderate levels of VPN censorship. You can choose between the OpenVPN, IKEv2 and L2TP/IPsec VPN protocols, with OpenVPN being the default. You can, however, sort servers for ones that unblock selected streaming services and allow torrenting. In keeping with ZenMate’s mantra that simple is the best philosophy, you can select server locations, but you cannot select individual servers. ZenMate’s Windows VPN software looks good and is easy to use. ![]() Unfortunately, we could not find the required config files anywhere on the website as all the links redirected to pages that were not useful. Manual OpenVPN setup guides are also available for all major platforms, including Linux and Chrome OS. Dedicated apps are available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Android TV, Amazon Fire Stick, Chromebook, and routers. ZenMate runs special Netflix servers based in the US, UK, Germany, and France.īesides reliably unblocking different Netflix regions and BBC iPlayer, ZenMate can unblock the following streaming services from around the world:Īs already noted, only an email address is needed to sign-up for the free trial, and paying for the full service only additionally requires providing necessary payment details. We tested these servers using our benchmark Netflix US and BBC iPlayer services, and sure enough, they successfully unblocked both platforms. ZenMate offers special streaming servers, optimized to unblock a selection of popular streaming services in different countries around the world. ![]() To test your VPN, check out our VPN leak testing tool. We cannot test mobile devices using an IPv6 connection at this time, but on an IPv4 connection detected no IP leaks of any kind. The DNS translation was being handled by ZenMate’s servers, though, and so does not constitute a DNS leak. We detected no leaks at all in macOS, although in both macOS and Windows we were a little surprised to see some DNS queries being resolved at a location very close to our true physical location. Alternatively, ZenMate offers its own WebRTC Protect browser add-on for Chrome. In Windows we detected the odd IPv6 WebRTC leak, so Windows users should disable WebRTC in their browsers or disable IPv6 at the system-level.
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