Perfect Privacy VPN Review Overview
Devices
Unblocks
Pros
- NeuroRouting feature
- 3-level kill switch
- Military-grade encryption
Cons
- Low server count
Pricing
- 24 month plan - $8.96 per month ($214.95 total cost)
- 12 month plan - $10 per month ($119.99 total cost)
- 1 month plan - $12.99 per month ($12.99 total cost)
Review scores
VPN services with names like Perfect Privacy make us a little suspicious.
Experience taught us, more often than not, a name promising perfect privacy isn’t matched by the actual service.
But that just makes an independent review all the more important for getting the truth out there.
And if you’re familiar with our approach to VPN reviews, you’ll already know exactly what to expect here.
Where is Perfect Privacy Actually Based?
Right off the bat, Perfect Privacy has us feeling a little wary.
Their parent company, Vectura Datamanagement Limited Company, has its technical offices in Panama under the name Webinvest International SA.
However, the VPN itself is apparently based in Switzerland (according to their Imprint and Warrant Canary pages).
The Swiss office is also its legal headquarters and (according to their Privacy Policy) where all data processing is handled.
Yet, If you opt to pay cash, you need to send it to an office in Latvia.
And if you pay via PayPal, the company’s billing address is listed as being in the US.
This isn’t promising, as the US is part of the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes network.
Having offices spread out between Panama, Switzerland, and even Latvia is fine by us, but we typically avoid VPNs based in a jurisdiction like the US.
So we sent Perfect Privacy’s support team a ticket asking for clarification on the US billing address. We also asked a few other questions, as we weren’t sure how long we would have to wait for an answer.
Here’s what we got back from them regarding their US billing address:
It’s a bit sketchy, though not necessarily a deal-breaker – as the support agent said, having different business activities split between different entities and/or offices is a common practice.
We just don’t like the idea of a connection – however tentative it might be – between a VPN provider and NSA surveillance.
We’re also of the mind that, if you follow the money, you’ll discover where a company is really based.
Unfortunately, it only gets worse from here…
How does Perfect Privacy Compare to the Competition
Take a look at How We Rate VPN Providers!
An Ugly Response to an Ugly History
As part of our research preparing for this review, we discovered Perfect Privacy was once run by a group of Neo-Nazis. You can read about it in this 2014 article, or this one from 2012.
Those Neo-Nazi members are no longer part of the organization… at least, allegedly. They were all arrested in 2013, but very little else has come to the surface since then.
When we asked Perfect Privacy about this, their support agent (the second we spoke with) immediately became dismissive:
We politely explained we spent hours trying to find any response by Perfect Privacy online, but were unsuccessful.
We also suggested they might make a public statement on their website to avoid such questions in the future.
Here’s how he replied:
This isn’t how we would expect a company to respond to legitimate concerns over its past – especially considering almost nothing is known about its current structure.
Machine-Translated No-Logs Policy
Perfect Privacy made us cautiously optimistic with their privacy policy.
The only user data they collect are your login credentials and email address (you can even use a throwaway email address, as it’s only used to send your login credentials to you).
Other than that, anonymized diagnostic data is also collected to ensure their website and servers are running properly.
If you look at their No Logs page, you’ll see the servers run on “strongly encrypted RAM disks so that it is technically impossible for data to be stored on hard drives.”
This is another good sign.
The only reason we say cautiously optimistic is because the privacy policy has been machine-translated – and it’s the German version that applies for all legal purposes:
Even the best machine translators aren’t reliable enough for legal purposes.
Legal language is very technical and nuanced, so we’d feel far more comfortable if Perfect Privacy used a bilingual lawyer to do the translation instead.
Military-Grade Encryption and the Best VPN Protocols
Nothing so far makes us feel totally secure in trusting Perfect Privacy not to leak our data in some way or another.
But we don’t have anything to suggest they would leak our data either.
So now we turn to their security measures against external threats like your ISP and cybercriminals.
Like a few other VPN providers, Perfect Privacy lumps their encryption standards and VPN protocols together.
The good news is they use OpenVPN with 256-bit AES encryption – the best of the best.
You can also opt for IPSec (not as secure, and the encryption standard can vary), the SSH2 tunnel protocol with 256-bit AES, an HTTP proxy, SOCKS5 proxy, and PPTP with 128-bit encryption.
We recommend taking a look at our Beginner’s Guide to VPN Protocols for a better understanding of these terms.
Basically, so long as you stick to OpenVPN, you’re good to go (iOS users will be forced to use IPSec – this is an Apple issue, though).
Impressive Suite of Security Features
Where Perfect Privacy absolutely stands out from the crowd is in its suite of security features. As the section heading says, it’s pretty impressive.
First up is the kill switch, which offers 3 security levels.
At the default level, it’s automatically on (a great sign) and is deactivated only when you manually disconnect.
With the second level, the kill switch is only deactivated when you manually close the VPN app. This lets you switch servers without the risk of an IP leak.
Finally, the most secure level can’t be deactivated – your device must be connected to a VPN server for internet access.
For most people, we suggest sticking with either the default setting or the second security level.
Next up: DNS leak protection.
You have to dig into the FAQ section to discover this, but Perfect Privacy safeguards against DNS leaks with built-in protective measures.
Then there’s TrackStop, which is a fully customizable ad-blocking feature.
You can filter out almost everything, from tracking cookies to malware, phishing sites and ads, and even activate parental control or anti-Facebook and anti-Google filters.
It’s a pretty amazing feature we’d actually like to see more VPNs adopt to the same scope.
Finally, there’s also the Stealth VPN feature.
Once activated, you can (theoretically) bypass firewalls and anti-VPN software. Plus, your ISP won’t even know you’re using a VPN (again, theoretically).
TOR, Multi-Hop, and NeuroRouting
Sometimes, you just need (or simply want) an extra layer of protection that will obfuscate your location.
A regular go-to of ours is to use the TOR over VPN method. You first connect to a VPN server and then open your TOR proxy browser.
TOR (or The Onion Router, to give it its full name) is great for this, as it redirects your internet traffic via 3 remote servers.
Unfortunately, it can bog down your internet connection, making it slow and sluggish.
Another option – which also slows your connection somewhat, though not as much – is to use a Multi-Hop feature.
What excites us about Perfect Privacy’s multi-hop feature is, rather than the usual double VPN, it gives you the option of hopping through up to 4 VPN servers.
You’ll need to manually select the server locations, but this can give you greater freedom.
If you don’t want to do any manual selections, though, you can switch over to the NeuroRouter feature instead.
It works on the same principles, only it’s far more dynamic: the servers react based on the end destination.
So if you’re trying to access a website in the US while sitting in the UK, for example, NeuroRouter will create a connection via the 4 best-suited servers based on location distance.
It’s a bit technical, but an awesome feature to use no matter your proficiency level.
By using the shortest distance possible every time, you get to skip some of the delays inevitable with connecting to distant servers.
Tiny Server Network
Unfortunately, Perfect Privacy loses points for having such a tiny server network: only 57 servers in 26 countries.
This is next to nothing.
For newer VPNs, we can understand a network as low as 1,000 to 1,500+. But for Perfect Privacy – who’s been operational since 2008 – it’s practically unforgivable.
A small server network is bad for several reasons.
First, all your users have to share a limited number of servers. This can quickly lead to network overload, which throttles the bandwidth considerably.
Second, with fewer server locations, more users will need to connect to servers further away from them. The distance between your device and the VPN server will also slow your internet speed.
Speed
As a quick reminder, we try to standardize our speed tests by always using the same devices, internet connection, and server locations. This helps to get an even feel for how one provider compares to another.
With such a small server network, we didn’t have high hopes for the speed tests – so you can imagine our surprise when Perfect Privacy came out with competitively high speeds:
No VPN
US Server
UK Server
Device Compatibility and Connections
Perfect Privacy doesn’t earn many points for their device compatibility either. The only dedicated apps available are for:
- Windows
- Mac
- Android
That’s it.
There are, however, tutorials for manual configuration – expanding the list to include iOS (for which there really ought to be a dedicated app), Linux, routers, and smart TVs.
On the plus side, it does seem like you get unlimited simultaneous connections:
Subscription Plans and Pricing
The pricing tier is at least clean-cut and simple:
Here’s our biggest issue with it: even though you get relatively good savings on the longer subscription plans, Perfect Privacy is still rather expensive.
Their impressive suite of security features is obviously the justification, but you can get the same (plus better server performance) from a provider like CyberGhost for much cheaper.
Payment is kept just as simple: various Paymentwall options (including credit card), PayPal, Bitcoin, and cash.
Limited Streaming and Torrenting
Many people won’t admit it, but the most popular reason for using a VPN isn’t privacy: it’s to stream Netflix and/or torrent.
And that’s okay – we’re not judging! In fact, we’ve written guides on topics like How to Watch Netflix With a VPN and How to Open Torrent Files.
And if you’re interested in either activity, we suggest you open the next two links in new tabs while you finish reading this review
Perfect Privacy is pretty abysmal at both streaming and torrenting. We couldn’t get Netflix to work in any of the popular regions, and torrents are rather limited.
Some of the limitations we can understand:
At least they’re making sure 8 of their servers aren’t going to get shut-down because of torrenting.
The only problem is, it means you’ll need to connect to servers further away, creating more issues for your torrent speeds.
Once again, this could be (theoretically) solved by having a much, much bigger server network.
Torrentors wouldn’t be so severely limited and Netflix would have a harder time blocking servers.
Usability and Support
On the one hand, the app installation was quick and painless, and we didn’t need to do any manual configurations.
On the other hand, the app looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2008.
There’s also no server ordering whatsoever in the app to tell you which servers are best for what (many of them have low bandwidth).
And some of the features (like NeuroRouting) need to be activated by logging into your Perfect Privacy account online – you can’t do so from the app.
When it comes to their support, we have mixed feelings.
We don’t like being forced to rely on a sparse Help Center where there’s more information found shifting for hours through the forums than there are in the actual FAQ articles.
And if we need a quick response, we have to hope someone is on duty and responding to tickets.
This is why a VPN provider MUST have a live chat feature.
When we asked about whether or not Perfect Privacy was planning on introducing live chat in the future, this is the response we got:
Granted, with the first support agent, we never had to wait longer than an hour for a response.
That’s not too bad (unless we were a client with an actual issue, of course). Most of the responses were a little vague, but good enough.
But there’s no guarantee you’ll get a response in a “somewhat timely manner.” After asking how long we could generally expect to wait, we were told:
We waited a day and put Perfect Privacy through one last test. And as you saw earlier (“An Ugly Response to an Ugly History”), the results weren’t good.
How to Cancel Perfect Privacy and Get Your Money Back
If you’re finding yourself frustrated with the server performance and lack of live support, you’ll be just as frustrated with their cancellation and refund policies.
First, it seems the only way to cancel your membership is by simply not paying the next bill you receive. If you paid with PayPal, you’ll have to cancel the automatic payments.
Second, you can only get a refund within 7 days of making a purchase – even if you paid for a 2-year subscription.
You’ll need to open a support ticket and go through the process of convincing them that yes, you really do want to cancel and get a refund.
And if you paid via BitCoin or cash, forget about getting any kind of refund at all.
FAQs
How much does Perfect Privacy cost per month?
Does Perfect Privacy work for Netflix?
Is Perfect Privacy legitimate?
However, there is nothing concrete to confirm this.
