EarthVPN Review

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Features

• No logs
• AES OpenVPN encryption (with 265-bit available)
• SSTP available
• Accepts Bitcoin payment and has a robust system in place to prevent other transaction being linked to users
• Up to 3 simultaneous devices (for a small fee)
• Good SSTP speeds

Speeds and Performance

We tested the VPN connection using our 20 meg UK broadband. The speed tests brought my connection speeds down by more than a half to around 9 Mbps on the London server and 12 Mbps on the Swiss server. This isn't terribly good, but not the worst VPN we have ever encountered either.

As we were a little disappointed with the initial OpenVPN tests, we tried connecting using the UPD protocol instead (which is in theory faster). However, this made little difference. The SSTP result, however, was very good, with speeds closer to 18 Mbps.

We decided to give the OpenVPN connection a bit more testing, and found the results were very server dependent, with many European servers proving faster than local UK ones. We did however sometimes have trouble connecting to some servers at all (most notably ones in the Netherlands). As far as reliability is concerned, we had no disconnections during our test period. One final test we performed was to check for DNS leaks and EarthVPN passed with flying colors.

Leak tests

Price

The basic VPN package comes in at an incredibly pocket-friendly $3.99 per month (or $39.99 annually), which makes EarthVPN just about the cheapest service we have yet reviewed. For such a low price you might expect a somewhat limited feature-set, but even its most basic package gives you access to features that many other VPN providers charge much more for *(or don’t offer at all), including PPTP / L2TP / SSTP / OpenVPN Protocols and access to 87 server locations in 32 countries (including servers throughout Asia, the US and Europe, and in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Panama and Brazil and Turkey). Additional options can be purchased for $1.99 each per month, and include:

• adding an additional device such a phone (up to 3 separate devices can be connected from the same IP address but not from spate locations without this option)
• upgrading OpenVPN to 256-bit AES encryption
• having a static IP address
• SSH Tunnel/Socks proxy enabled

Although other providers may supply at least some of these features as part of their basic packages, given the ultra-low cost of EathVPN’s basic pricing we think these optional extras represent good value for money to those who need them (although if you want them all it starts to get a bit more pricey). EarthVPN does offer no 'free trial' as such, but does offer a  no quibbles 7 day money back guarantee, which is pretty close. EarthVPN runs special offshore servers ‘on all continents’ which are specially optimized for P2P/torrent traffic.

Ease of use

The website 

The website is well laid out, professional looking (if not overly stylish), and easy to navigate. The public facing website features a Google map of its server locations, setup instructions, and an extensive and informative FAQ that answered all our usual queries regarding a VPN service. The customer area (which can be accessed from the sign-up page without actually signing-up) includes a moderately populated knowledgebase and, very usefully, a Network Status page with a service uptime history report. 

Customer Support

A speed test page is also included, but we prefer to stick with speedtest.net to obtain accurate performance results. Customer support comes in the form of a ticked email system. We did experience some issues during setup (see below) and it took around eight hours for the support team to get back to us (by which time our issues had resolved themselves).

Signing up

Signing up couldn't be much easier as all you are asked for is a first name, email address and password. Once the order is processed and paid for, and confirmation/welcome etc. emails are received, you can go to the website’s setup area and follow the instructions to set the service up.

The Windows client is a very simple and bare-bones affair that lets you choose which server you want to connect to, which protocol, and which port to use.  This covers all the basics, but gives you none of the fancy DNS leak protection, internet kill switch, server statistics etc. seen on some other provider’s custom VPN clients.

By default, the client connects over TCP, although we usually recommend trying a UDP port first. We did have a little trouble connecting at first, as the client would not accept our password. After some failed attempts to reset it (the reset process required you to enter the old password first, which is just bloody stupid), it started working just fine on its own.

Once you are connected, an icon will show in the Notification Area of the Task Bar to let you know everything is hunky-dory.

Other platforms

EarthVPN is fairly comprehensive when it comes to setup options. The encryption protocols for each platforms are as follows: 

• At the moment it only has a dedicated VPN app for Windows (with OSX and Linux clients on the way), but it has detailed manual setup instruction with screenshots for Windows, the encryption protocols it uses are; PPTP, L2TP, OpenVPN, SSTP and SSH/Socks Proxy. 
• The Mac VPN client OSX PPTP, L2TP, OpenVPN, and SSH/Socks Proxy. 
• The Linux VPN client uses; PPTP and SSH/Socks Proxy. The Linux client will need some manual set up. 
• And DD-WRT routers (PPTP and OpenVPN). 
• Their iPhone VPN app uses PPTP and L2TP (OpenVPN on the way) 
• Android VPN app uses PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN are also well supported).

Privacy and Security

Privacy is an area where EarthVPN excels. Based in Northern Cyprus. Although under the jurisdiction of Turkey, which does have mandatory data retention laws, it is our understanding that Northern Cyprus does not, and EarthVPN says it does not 'log any usage or user activity. Neither we nor third parties are technically possible to match an IP address to an account.’ Also, as noted above, it is happy to let users’ download using P2P/torrent software, as long they use its special servers (and since P2P traffic is blocked on their other servers, this should never be an issue). Encryption levels too, are good (although as usual we recommend avoiding PPTP with CHAPv2 authentication if possible).

Encryption Protocols

 L2TP/IPsec uses either 3DES or AES encryption with a 256-bit key, while OpenVPN uses 128-bit AES with an SHA1 hash algorithm and 2048 RSA key authentication. As we discussed in the pricing section, it is also possible to upgrade OpenVPN to 256-bit AES encryption. Windows Vista SP1 or later users can also take advantage of SSTP, which uses TCP Port 443 (as used by standard SSL transmissions, which makes it very easy to block) and 2048-bit SSL encryption, making ideal for use in highly restrictive counties such as China, Iran and Syria. 

All this is great, and is the sort of thing that warms the cockles of our heart here at ProPrivacy. Users can pay anonymously using Bitcoins (if necessary precautions are taken) or with PayPal, Credit Cards, Bitcoins, Alipay, Unionpay and Webmoney. EarthVPN makes sure that transactions are not linked to users by generating a unique key for every transaction so it can verify payment for the account is made, and then deletes that unique key. 

This is a great procedure, and one we wish more VPN providers would implement. All in all, EarthVPN appears to pay a great deal of attention to ensuring its user’s privacy, which leaves us impressed. Please review our note that the end of the article however, and follow the links provided before deciding to full trust EarthVPNs's security measures.

Final Thoughts

By and large we are quite impressed with EarthVPN, although the inconsistent speedtest.net results when using OpenVPN (the usual recommended way to connect via VPN) are a bit worrying. However, EarthVPN provides a surprisingly fully featured service at a very reasonable price point, and have top-notch privacy credentials. 

When all is said and done it is this last point that scores most with us, as technical issues can be fixed, but bad attitude less so. We, therefore, recommend EarthVPN 9but see out note below), although we do think it's important it looks into improving OpenVPN performance across the board. 

Important note: Something of a spat has broken out on Reddit regarding whether EathVPN has exposed both its public and private keys in its OpenVPN .crt file.  If true, then this is an unforgivable error, but the issue has not been raised anywhere else on the internet that we know of, and is strongly denied by EarthVPN. We admit to being somewhat confused by the argument and counterargument, so we suggest that our readers check out the discussion themselves. For the purpose of this review we will assume everything is ok and judge EarthVPN accordingly, but we do feel duty-bound to bring this dispute to our readers’ attention, and if the accusations are found to be true, we remove our recommendation. 

The relevant links are: http://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/comments/1kuhps/earthvpn_as_a_nonus_alternative_to_pia/ (original post) http://vpnsecurityreview.tumblr.com/post/59920711273/were-sorry-earthvpn-or-nope-youre-wrong-or-how http://www.reddit.com/r/VPN/comments/1lhu16/earthvpn_security_part_2/

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