Windscribe VPN Review – Still Secure after the Breach

It torrents are a major part of your online activity, you’ll want to check our review of the best VPNs for torrenting.

Windscribe Logging Explained (in detail)

Many VPN services claim to “keep no logs”, but what does that actually mean? In many cases it means absolutely nothing since it’s a complete lie. Here are some recent examples of “no logs VPNs” that actually kept logs, despite their privacy claims:

• PureVPN Logs Helped FBI Net Alleged Cyberstalker
• IPVanish “No-Logging” VPN Led Homeland Security to Comcast User

These VPN providers were all named in publicly available court documents, so you don’t have to be HG Wells to imagine that instances like these are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, it’s highly likely that many other VPN companies are keeping logs that they claim not to have, it’s just never been proven publicly.

Computer Science 101

Let’s take a closer look at the concept of logging. Firstly, it’s virtually impossible to operate any computer system (including the device you are reading this article on) without keeping logs. By logs I mean some kind of record that describes the state of a computer system. This includes virtually everything, but here are some examples:

• What applications are currently running
• Position of the browser window
• Amount of traffic sent through an interface
• That PornHub tab you have open right now
• The page your browser goes to when you click back

Keep in mind that these are just a few examples, there are hundreds more that I haven’t mentioned . These “logs” are usually stored in your computer’s memory, which is super fast, but suffers from a flaw — it loses data when power is disconnected. This is why most computer systems come with permanent storage (hard drive), where things can be saved for more permanent safe keeping. Windscribe’s servers work the same way, since they’re just computers that are architecturally identical to your PC, Mac, Android phone or TV.

What we store

States and logs can be split into 2 categories:

• Mandatory — things you absolutely must keep track of in order for the application or service to operate
• Nice to have — things that make lives of the operators easier, help assure the quality of the network and protect it against bad actors (and I don’t mean Tommy Wiseau).

Let’s talk about these in more detail in the context of Windscribe and our servers, and what it truly means to be a “no logs VPN”.

Mandatory “logs”

When you connect to a Windscribe location, a VPN server is chosen by our app from the available pool of machines at that data center (you see data-centers, not individual servers). Windscribe then initiates a connection to the server and supplies a set of credentials that are linked to your Windscribe account. The same credentials you see when you use our config generator.

These credentials are verified to check for two things:

• If they are valid
• If they grant you access to the specific server

Windscribe currently uses the RADIUS protocol to handle this step. It’s likely that 99–100% of all other VPN providers use the same protocol for this step, as it’s identical for all VPN services.

The most common implementation of the RADIUS protocol is a piece of software called FreeRADIUS. It comes with a lot of bells and whistles, including bandwidth accounting, permanent session logging (including the source IP address of the client), and more. By design, it’s neither private or anonymous, as it’s meant for a vastly different use case than a privacy oriented service.

It’s for this reason that we don’t use any of those fancy features and have them all disabled. The only thing we currently use FreeRADIUS for is authentication and ACL enforcement. We had to build our own “privacy oriented” bandwidth and parallel connection monitoring system, which I’ll discuss in the next section. We also have plans in motion to replace FreeRADIUS entirely with a bespoke authentication system, which will allow us to store even less information, in a similar fashion to our write-less session token system.

After your credentials are verified and access to the server is granted (the app will say that you’re connected), the server has to keep track of the session in memory. This session record includes your source IP address, which resides in the the server’s routing table, as the server needs to know who the packets are coming from when you request something (like a web page), and where to send the packets to (when you download the webpage). Operating a VPN service without this is not possible.

This is not a huge privacy concern, as this data is never written to any permanent storage (hard disk), and resides in server’s memory which is flushed when you disconnect or when the machine is rebooted.

Had we been using the FreeRADIUS built-in accounting system, all this data would get transmitted to a central location and stored in a permanent database. Providers that claim to keep no logs may prune this database and remove records that are stale (user disconnected), but they don’t have to. This data can simply be archived forever, which is precisely what is meant by “connection logs”.

We used the accounting system built into FreeRADIUS ourselves (until February of 2018), except we modified our instance not to store the source IP addresses of the sessions, which may also be done by other “no-logging” VPN services, but we can never know for sure. PureVPN and IPVanish definitely didn’t do this, and that’s how they were able to cooperate with law enforcement.

The records in this connection table persist forever, so they must be cleaned up. We had a script that pruned this table every minute and removed records from stale connections. Is it possible to prove the existence of this script, or that it ran? No, it is not.

Nice to have logs

Outside of the mandatory basic information mentioned above, Windscribe stores the following pieces of data:

• Bandwidth used since your reset date
• What servers you’re connected to right now
• Timestamp of your last activity (accurate to a 12 hour window)

I’ll discuss each one in more detail.

Bandwidth usage

Each and every Windscribe VPN server runs an instance of OpenVPN (technically 2 instances) and StrongSwan. This facilitates connections via OpenVPN and IKEv2 respectively. Both applications have a command line interface which allow an external application to query the status of the server process. The status of the process also returns a list of active sessions that are currently connected and the byte counts of what was transferred during the session. This data resides in server’s memory (as mentioned previously), so it’s not very useful if it remains there, at the same time we don’t much care for most of this information, all we care about is how much data you used.

This data is fetched every minute, and the byte counts for each connected users are sent over to our central locations, where the API resides. It’s then stored in a Redis database, which exists entirely in server memory. This allows for super high speed lookups which are the basis of our abuse mitigation system as will be discussed later.

Parallel connections

Every time you connect to a Windscribe server, we have to verify your credentials to make sure you’re allowed access. Once that’s done, we need to be able to apply your R.O.B.E.R.T. settings, as everyone’s are different. In order to do this, we contact our API at the moment of connection, fetch this data, and configure R.O.B.E.R.T. in real time. The request to the API includes 3 pieces of information:

• Your username
• Server hostname
• RFC1918 IP address that was allocated for your connection, not to be confused with your actual WAN IP address, which we don’t care about

We store the last 2 parts in a Redis database, in a hash key that’s unique to every user. Once you disconnect from a server, a subsequent API call is made at that exact moment which notifies our API that you disconnected, and this record is immediately discarded from Redis. R.O.B.E.R.T. is also notified that you disconnected, which clears your custom configuration from its memory.

While you’re connected, we can count how many active connections you have, as well as which servers you’re connected to, by looking at your hash key. This data allows us to do some neat things which we’ll get into in a little bit.

Last activity

All our apps use the Windscribe API in order to login, fetch the server list, VPN configs and credentials. If your account is actively making API calls, that means you’re probably still using Windscribe, or at least have it installed and running. We store the timestamp of your last API call within a 12 hour window, as doing it for every request would introduce a heavy write load on our database — something we’d prefer avoiding.

How it’s used

So great, you have all this data, but why do you need to store this stuff in the first place? There are a few reasons:

Abuse prevention

We offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited connections, however just like when you buy a soda at a movie theater that comes with “unlimited refills”, it’s going to be quite awkward when you show up with your entire family and everyone you know and demand 476,000 liters of Sprite. You will be politely asked to go away.

Windscribe is pretty similar, except we won’t be polite. A single Windscribe account is meant to be used by a single person, and I don’t mean your marital status either. It’s quite uncommon for individuals to be connected on 50+ computers, and 100+ phones at the exact same time. The bandwidth usage along with connection counts are used by our real-time monitoring system which looks at the “worst offenders” and makes a decision if this user is potentially abusive or not. Then a human makes a decision to ban the account or whitelist the “abuse” in case of a false positive.

If you share the account with your wife or brother, it’s likely fine, but that may set of a “sharing chain reaction” where they share it with someone, who in turn does the same. This is a sure way to get banned.

R.O.B.E.R.T. Syncing

When you make changes to R.O.B.E.R.T. on our website, and click on that sweet “ Apply to all connected devices immediately?” button, we need to know which servers you’re connected to, so we can notify R.O.B.E.R.T. running on those machines that your settings updated, and for R.O.B.E.R.T. to start enforcing the new set of rules. You can click here to learn about how R.O.B.E.R.T. works in detail.

Spam

Before you get your pitchforks, relax. The only thing Windscribe will ever spam you with is new Windscribe products, features, deals and those spicy memes. And we’re obviously using the term spam ironically, because everything we do is ironic, we also like saying ironic. What we mean to say is that we will gently and lovingly remind you of all the awesome stuff we are adding to our service via email and telepathy.

Windscribe doesn’t use any 3rd party services to ‘optimize our sales funnel.’ We believe that the limited data you entrust us with should stay in house, not transmitted to some 3rd party data mining company that will use it to train their (bullshit) AIs to deliver you more spam. In fact, we even use our own mail servers to send emails to avoid any of your information being sent to other businesses. This is in stark contrast to other VPN services that use 3rd party mailing services like SendGrid, Mailchimp, and Mailgun. Sure, these apps make it super convenient to manage email campaigns since you don’t have to worry about maintaining your own servers, IP reputation, monitor deliverability, etc. However, this convenience comes at the cost of customer privacy.

So what does this have to do with the data we store? Well, it allows us to send out customized emails in certain scenarios, for example:

• You signed up but didn’t use any bandwidth — Are you having problems?Did porn get unblocked in your country (yay for you!)?
• You didn’t use Windscribe in the last 6 months — Come back, we miss you!
• You are connected to 200 servers in parallel and used 300TB of data — Hey, you’re banned!

Well, there you have it. Now you know what Windscribe is up to behind the scenes! We know that there isn’t really any way for you to verify our privacy claims, and asking you to ‘trust us’ is asking a lot. Rest assured we have been hard at work developing a plan to allow tech savvy users to empirically verify our claims. Stay tuned.

Windscribe VPN Review – Still Secure after the Breach?

Windscribe is an interesting VPN out of Canada that refers to itself as a “meme focused VPN” on social media. Unfortunately, focusing on meme’s does not equate to real-world performance and security with a VPN service.

Windscribe is a VPN service based in Canada. Since our last look at this service, they have added a number of new features to their already above-average feature set. With a mix of interesting advanced features and some notable drawbacks, Windscribe hasn’t broken in to the first tier of services yet.

One major strike against them came in the Ukraine, where they suffered a security breach due to servers that were left unencrypted. Because the servers were left unencrypted, Ukrainian authorities were able to obtain Windscribe’s private key when they seized the VPN servers, putting Windscribe users at risk.

While this incident demonstrates that Windscribe does not follow “industry best practices” (by their own admission), they have pledged to beef up their security. But before we dive into all the details of this Windscribe VPN review, let’s first cover an overview of this VPN.

VPN	Windscribe
Based in	Canada
Logs	Timestamps & Bandwidth
Price	$5.75/mo.
Support	Email
Refund	3 days
Website	Windscribe.com

+ Pros

• User-friendly applications
• Good leak protection features
• Ad blocker (ROBERT)
• Free plan with 10 GB of data per month
• Browser extensions

– Cons

• Slow speeds
• Server security issues
• Based in Canada (Five Eyes)
• AI-based support system
• Issues with professionalism

Additional research findings:

• Windscribe logging policies
• Windscribe is okay for Netflix
• Windscribe is okay for torrenting
• Windscribe VPN prices and refund policy

Now let’s get into the results of this Windscribe review.

Windscribe VPN Pros

1. User-friendly applications

For this Windscribe review, I tested out both the Windows and Mac OS VPN clients. The VPN apps were user-friendly and simple, while also having some nice features.

Here was the Windscribe Windows VPN client I tested:

Note: The section at the bottom right in the preceding image is showing the amount of data available in the free version for the current month.

Clicking the three lines in the top-left corner of the VPN client will open up additional options and features for you to select. You can select startup options, auto-connection, customize notifications, and also modify the layout of the VPN client.

Overall I liked the look and feel of the Windscribe VPN clients. They are simple, clean, and intuitive. Although I did not test the Windscribe mobile apps for this review, they look similar and also have a decent rating (4.0) in the Google Play Store.

2. Good leak protection features

Another “pro” with Windscribe is the leak protection features.

In both the Windows and Mac OS clients, Windscribe offers a “Firewall” setting to block traffic if the connection is not active. The Firewall feature gives you three options: Manual, Automatic, and Always On.

Windscribe also allows you to configure DNS settings within the client. Below you can see both the Firewall options and DNS settings in the Windows VPN client. The “Firewall Mode” basically functions as the VPN kill switch.

Ok, now on to the tests.

I ran Windscribe through a round of basic VPN tests and checks to identify any issues. The test results were good. I did not identify any leaks with Windscribe.

Here I’m testing the Windows client for IP address leaks and DNS leaks:

Above you can see that everything checks out (no leaks). I also ran the Windscribe Mac OS client through the same basic tests and the results were the same: no leaks.

Encryption – The Windscribe VPN desktop client uses an AES-256 cipher with SHA512 auth and a 4096-bit RSA key. The browser extension uses TLS 1.2, ECDHE_RSA with P-256 key exchange and an AES_128_GCM cipher.

WireGuard – Windscribe now supports the WireGuard VPN protocol. WireGuard is a protocol that aims to be much faster and more reliable than legacy protocols, while also upgrading the security. We’ve found that VPNs with WireGuard can really outperform those using legacy protocols, as you can see in the NordVPN vs ExpressVPN speed comparison.

We will update the speed test section of this review once we get a chance to redo the testing with WireGuard enabled.

In terms of basic security settings, Windscribe does well.

3. Windscribe’s ad blocker (ROBERT)

Another cool feature that Windscribe offers is an ad blocker. The Windscribe ad blocker is called ROBERT. I’m not sure if “ROBERT” is an acronym for something, but either way, it does quite a bit of blocking.

Windscribe offers basic filter lists, which will block the following categories of URLs:

• Malware
• Ads + Trackers
• Social media
• Porn
• Gambling
• Fake News + Clickbait
• Other VPNs
• Cryptominers

This is a pretty robust filter feature. It is similar to the TrackStop filter, which we covered in the Perfect Privacy review. However, one cool aspect with Windscribe’s ROBERT is that it is customizable. In other words, you can create custom white-lists for domains or IP addresses as well as custom block-lists.

To customize R.O.B.E.R.T’s settings, you need to log into the Windscribe website. This is a server-side ad blocker, which means it works independently of the VPN client with any device you are using. If you want a good VPN ad blocker solution, this may be an option to consider.

4. Free plan with 10 GB data/month

Another thing we like about this VPN is Windscribe’s free plan. Windscribe offers a free plan with the following restrictions:

• Only 10 GB of data allowed per month
• The ROBERT feature only includes the “Malware” filter list (no blocking of ads or trackers)
• Limited number of servers

On a positive note, Windscribe does give you a few different ways to increase your bandwidth allowance, including through promotional tweets and inviting friends.

While I generally do not recommend free VPN services, this may not be a bad option if you don’t need very much data. This is arguably the best free VPN with a free plan at 10 GB, while most others have a smaller data limit.

5. Windscribe browser extension

When you go to download Windscribe, you notice that they recommend downloading both a VPN application and a browser extension.

More and more VPNs are offering browser extensions that can be used with VPNs. We covered this trend in our guide on the best VPN for Chrome browsers. Some VPNs use the browser extension as a proxy. Others use it just to control the desktop VPN client.

So why use the VPN together with the browser extension? Windscribe shows some of the benefits of combining the desktop client with their browser extension below:

Using a browser extension may be good in certain situations. However, it’s also important to note that browser extensions are not VPNs. Instead, they are HTTPS proxys, which do not offer the full protection of the VPN, as explained in our Proxy vs VPN guide.

6. Enhanced features

Windscribe has added some more useful features since we last reviewed it. Here are two that you should know about:

Static IPs

Static IPs (more completely known as Static IP Addresses) are actually regular IP Addresses. Normally when you connect to a VPN server, you get assigned one of the available IP Addresses. When you connect to a VPN server that supports Static IPs, you get assigned the same IP Address every time.

Windscribe has 13 Static IP server locations. Connecting to one of those will result in you using the same IP Address every time. Taking it one step further, Windscribe actually offers 2 “flavors” of static IPs:

• Data-center IPs, which look just like any other IP address you might be assigned by Windscribe.
• Residential IPs, which look as if they are one of the IP addresses that gets assigned to a home user. We’re not sure how these look different.

If you would like to find out more about when and why you might want a Static IP, check out our guide to Static IP VPNs.

Split tunneling

Split tunneling is a way to make data from some websites and apps go through the VPN tunnel, while making other data go direct to the internet outside the tunnel. Split tunneling can be very useful for games, where you want the fastest connection possible, and aren’t concerned about encrypting the game data flowing back and forth.

A split tunneling VPN is also useful with services like online banking. Many online banks will not work with a VPN, period. Without split tunneling, you have to disconnect the VPN whenever you want to log into the banking service, leaving you unprotected while connected to the bank. With split tunneling, the connection to your bank can go outside the VPN, while everything else is safely protected by the VPN.

We see more and more VPNs adopting some kind of split tunneling feature, as we noted in the Proton VPN vs NordVPN comparison.

Windscribe’s split tunneling has 2 modes: one where you select the applications and sites you want to exclude from the VPN tunnel, and one where you select the applications and sites you want to include in the VPN tunnel.

You can see other new and advanced features of Windscribe here.

Windscribe VPN Cons

Now let’s examine the cons of Windscribe.

1. Windscribe slow speeds

One big drawback with Windscribe is the performance with the OpenVPN protocol. To check for speeds with Windscribe, I used a 160 Mbps baseline (non-VPN) connection and tested many VPN server locations throughout the world. My physical testing location was in Western Europe.

Note: I configured the VPN client to only use OpenVPN UDP, which offers better performance over OpenVPN TCP.

The Windscribe VPN client gives you the option to connect to the “Best Location”, which should offer the best speeds. Here were the results:

“Best Location” speed test with a nearby Windscribe server in Germany: 28 Mbps

This is definitely not a good test result for a nearby server, which should be offering near full capacity bandwidth.

Next up was a Windscribe server in Switzerland, which gave me even slower speeds around 18 Mbps.

I also tested a few Windscribe servers in the UK, which gave me about 30 Mbps.

If you want a fast VPN for the UK, Windscribe would probably not fit the bill. There are certainly better options to consider.

Next, I tested Windscribe servers in the United States. The test results were equally disappointing.

Here is a Windscribe server in New York giving me about 10 Mbps.

Even with the longer distances, this is still very slow.

Fortunately, there are a few different options for you. You can skip on OpenVPN and select the IKEv2 or WireGuard VPN protocols, which may be faster than OpenVPN.

Comparison – The fastest VPN we have tested so far is NordVPN. We were able to hit speeds up to 445 Mbps on a 500 Mbps internet connection.

2. Windscribe server security issues

We wrote a detailed article on the Windscribe security breach right after learning how it unfolded. You can read the original article, but here are the main highlights:

• Windscribe left its VPN servers in Ukraine unencrypted and unsecured.
• When Ukrainian authorities seized the servers, they also obtained Windscribe’s private key.
• With the private key, Ukrainian officials could decrypt traffic and spy on Windscribe users.
• Windscribe admitted that it does not follow “industry best practices” with its server network, but promised to change.
• Windscribe is in the process of upgrading server security and hopefully undergoing a security audit.

This incident highlights a major flaw in how the VPN itself is operated. We have seen other VPN services, include ExpressVPN and Perfect Privacy, also undergo server seizures. However, these other VPNs actually secured and encrypted their servers properly, which resulted in no customer data being affected.

Fortunately, Windscribe promises to upgrade security. However, the damage to its reputation is done, similar to IPVanish after the IPVanish logging incident.

3. IKEv2 is default protocol (rather than OpenVPN)

Another interesting thing with Windscribe is that it uses the IKEv2 protocol as the default option in the VPN clients.

While IPSec/IKEv2 is generally considered to be secure, it does have some noteworthy drawbacks. For one, IKEv2 is not open source and has not undergone extensive auditing like OpenVPN. Within the privacy and VPN community, OpenVPN is generally considered to be the gold standard, with WireGuard challenging for the leadership position.

The default protocol for the Windscribe VPN client is set to IKEv2, rather than OpenVPN. Windscribe probably decided to make IKEv2 the default because it offers better speeds than OpenVPN. Once again, however, there is a security tradeoff here and OpenVPN should probably be used as default.

Switching to a more secure protocol is easy. Simply open the settings, then select Manual and choose the protocol you want to use. Be aware that the interface abbreviates OpenVPN TCP to TCP, and OpenVPN UDP to UDP in the protocol list.

4. Based in Canada (Five Eyes)

Another drawback with Windscribe is that it is based in Canada, which is not a good privacy jurisdiction.

As we have discussed before, Canada is a member of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance, along with the United States, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Canada also has mandatory data retention laws and abusive surveillance practices. We discuss these issues more in my guide of the best VPNs for Canada. Jurisdiction is an important consideration when choosing a VPN because this determines what laws and governance the VPN must operate under.

Copyright violation laws are another aspect to consider with jurisdiction. Canada has some strict laws against copyright violations, along with data retention that is used to prosecute piracy (copyright infringement) cases.

5. AI-based support system

One thing that I found rather annoying with Windscribe is that they are using a robotic AI-based support system, which they call “Garry”. When attempting to get help with some connection problems, I fired up a chat window. Garry did provide some suggestions and tips, but ultimately I wanted to speak with a human, rather than an AI bot.

After growing frustrated with the AI bot, Garry eventually offered me the option to “talk to a human”. This opened a screen where I could submit a support ticket and get help via email. There was no option to chat with a human.

Most of the top VPN providers, such as NordVPN and Surfshark, offer 24/7 live chat support with real humans. On a positive note, however, someone did email me some suggestions within 24 hours. Nonetheless, live chat support with a human being would be a lot better.

6. Issues with professionalism

One strange thing I noticed with Windscribe is that it really seems to be lacking in the professionalism department.

Here you can see that Windscribe refers to itself as a “meme focused VPN” — whatever that means. You can see this below with their Twitter account.

Another red flag I noticed was during the Windows client installation process. If you choose “Custom Install” you will see the following options under the “customize the experience” tab:

• Slow down the connection
• Disconnect randomly
• Show random errors all the time

Below this, you see in light grey letters, “Just kidding. These checkboxes actually don’t do anything.”

I guess this is Windscribe’s idea of a funny joke. Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but given the importance of security and privacy, I don’t see this as the best venue for jokes about VPN errors and problems.

Additional research findings

Below are some additional findings for this Windscribe review.

Windscribe logging policies

In my previous Windscribe review, I called them out for falsely claiming to “delete everything” – a claim that does not align with their own policies.

Previous false claims:

On the Windscribe features page, you can see they are now claiming to have “no identifying logs”.

Current logging claims:

So let’s examine the fine print.

At the very bottom of the Windscribe End User License Agreement (EULA) you find the following:

Now let’s examine the Windscribe Privacy Policy:

“When you use Windscribe, we keep the following data associated with your account:

• Total amount of bytes transferred in a 30 day period. Bandwidth reset date is in your “My Account” section.
• Timestamp of your last activity on the Windscribe network.

This data is used to enforce free tier limitations, prevent abuse and weed out inactive accounts.”

Verdict: In terms of logging policies, this isn’t too concerning.

Many VPNs record timestamps (see our ProtonVPN review) and/or data transfer, which alone cannot be used to identify users.

If greater privacy is a concern of yours, there are also a handful of no logs VPNs that have been verified.

Windscribe works moderately well with Netflix

Although Windscribe does indeed work with Netflix to a limited extent, it’s not the best VPN for Netflix I have tested.

First, I found that Windscribe does indeed unblock Netflix. I tested this with Windscribe’s Windflix US and Windflix Canada servers. Both worked without getting blocked.

I did run into some problems, however, with playback speed and buffering. The connection did not seem very stable and consistently fast. To verify these issues, I ran some speed tests with the Windflix US server, which gave me around 5 Mbps.

Overall, Windscribe might be an OK option for streaming, but it’s not the best VPN for Netflix due to the speed issues.

Firestick – Maybe you want a good VPN for Firestick, since this will help unlock stream channels. Windscribe VPN might be a good option because they have a dedicated app for Firestick in the Amazon Store. With that being said, the slow speeds may affect HD streams.

Other streaming services – Maybe you are looking for the best VPN for Amazon Prime. Well, according to people on Reddit, there are issues when using Windscribe with Amazon Prime.

Or perhaps you need the best VPN for Hulu. Again, I’ve seen lots of complaints.

Now granted, opinions on the best VPN on Reddit can vary considerably, but these posts are still worth considering.

Windscribe is okay for torrenting

Windscribe may not be the worst VPN for torrenting, but it’s also not the best. The main issue is the speeds. After all, torrenting with a slow VPN can be a real drag.

Windscribe’s official policy is that they allow torrenting on most servers. From their website:

You can use the Bit Torrent protocol in any Windscribe server location except India, Japan and WINDFLIX. Simply connect to any other Windscribe location in our desktop applications and use any torrent client as you normally would. That being said, we don’t condone using Windscribe for any illegal activity.

There are other good VPNs for torrenting, although Windscribe certainly is not the worst choice.

Windscribe VPN prices and refund policy

The prices for the paid plans with Windscribe are about average for the VPN industry.

The “Build A Plan” option allows you to select which server locations you want and pay accordingly.

Although Windscribe is not one of the cheapest VPNs, it still offers a pretty good value when you consider all the features.

Windscribe refunds

Windscribe’s refund policy contains some fine print. Here are three important points to keep in mind before you purchase a subscription:

• The refund window is for 3 days.
• The refund policy only applies if you purchase directly from Windscribe (no third-party sites like StackSocial)
• If you use more than 10 GB of data your refund will be void.

This is certainly not a good refund window – but at least they don’t have a “no refunds” policy, which we discovered in our TunnelBear review.

A shorter refund window is not too surprising since they encourage people to test out the free VPN service before going with a paid subscription. You see these trend with other free trial VPNs.

Windscribe VPN Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about Windscribe VPN:

Does Windscribe work with Netflix?

Windscribe does work with Netflix. However, we found it to have trouble streaming the content at full speed. The Windflix server for the US was slow, leading to a lot of buffering during playback. So while Windscribe does work with Netflix, it isn’t the best Netflix option.

Here’s our list of the best VPNs for Netflix today.

Is Windscribe good for torrenting?

As with Netflix, Windscribe does work for torrenting. However, the slow speeds we experienced during testing make using it for a lot of torrenting a sub-optimal experience.

It torrents are a major part of your online activity, you’ll want to check our review of the best VPNs for torrenting.

Is my data safe with Windscribe?

In general, your data would be safe with Windscribe. But there are two things that you need to consider carefully. First, Windscribe is based in Canada, which is not a good privacy jurisdiction.

Second, Ukraine was able to get user data off a Windscribe server because the company had not encrypted that server. The company has vowed to make sure that all their servers are securely encrypted so theoretically that problem no longer exists.

Whether your data is sufficiently safe under these circumstances is something you will have to decide for yourself.

Is Windscribe free?

Windscribe does have a free version, and that free version has a pretty generous 10 GB per month data limit. This could be a good free VPN option is your data needs are limited and you don’t mind the drawbacks of the service that we have listed elsewhere.

Windscribe made it into our list of the best free VPNs.

Windscribe review conclusion

Windscribe has both pros and cons, as we have detailed above in the review. And they continue to add features to the service, for which they deserve credit, as we noted in the Windscribe vs NordVPN comparison.

I’d say the biggest “pros” with Windscribe are the features, particularly the robust ad-blocking feature (ROBERT). The VPN apps are also user-friendly and offer some great options and leak-protection settings.

However, we are still unhappy with these three big issues:

1. Windscribe is based in Canada, a bad privacy jurisdiction.
2. It is slow (at least based on my tests with the OpenVPN protocol)
3. Windscribe suffered a major security incident and was not following industry best practices (by their own admission)

The Windscribe security breach, as we noted above, seriously undermines the reputation of this VPN service. Can they be trusted if they somehow failed to secure their VPN servers, exposing user data to a potentially hostile government? You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

The performance issues are another big drawback, as this affects browsing, torrenting, downloads, and even streaming Netflix. For a seriously fast VPN with consistent performance, consider one of the alternatives below.

While Windscribe has made some improvements, there are better options to consider.

Best alternatives to Windscribe

Click the VPN name below to read our full review – or grab the discount for the best savings. All three of these VPNs have a 30 day money-back guarantee.

1. NordVPN review (with a 68% discount coupon)
2. Surfshark review
3. ExpressVPN review
4. VyprVPN review

You can also check out our guide on the Best VPNs for the latest recommendations.

If you have used Windscribe VPN, feel free to share your honest review (good or bad) below.

This Windscribe VPN review was last updated on February 16, 2023 with new information and test results.

About Sven Taylor

Sven Taylor is the lead editor and founder of Restore Privacy, a digital privacy advocacy group. With a passion for digital privacy and accessible information, he created RestorePrivacy to provide you with honest, useful, and up-to-date information about online privacy, security, and related topics.

Reader Interactions

Comments

1. Ex_Windscribe subscriber September 11, 2023

@John and everyone reading and must be emphasised. “They’ve given their 50GB free early customers until Sept 1 to buy a pro subscription at a reduced rate “never to be offered again” (or perhaps until the definition of “never” or “lifetime” is changed according to Windscribe’s diktat?)”
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Well, not exactly. Windscribe wrote this:
“When we said lifetime of free bandwidth, we meant President Putin’s lifetime. We are restoring all of your early 50/60 GB plans to their original sexiness, for fairness. That’s right, you will all be re-upgraded from the downgrade of your previous upgrade. We are still going to downgrade these free 50/60 GB lifetime plans, but only when Vladimir Putin aka Putler aka Senator PalPutin dies. Yes we are serious. When Putin dies, all Big Gig plans will be downgraded. It could be tomorrow, it could be in 20 years. We don’t know and neither do you. Your new conundrum is that if you want your Big Gig plan to last longer, you will have to actively try to keep Putin alive. The sooner he dies, the sooner you lose the plan. That’s what we in the business call a “quandary”. We know this downgrade will still upset you, but at least when it happens you can be happy Putin is dead. At the end of the day we are a self-funded business and we need money to hire more people to make our vision come true. We tried training mice to manage our infrastructure, as they don’t require paychecks or have bank accounts, but the mice ended up demanding more pay than our human employees. In the future, all “lifetime” statements (if there are any) aimed at free users will be pegged to the existential span of specific people or animals.
The longer he lives, the longer you keep your plan” Additionally, frankly, it was disrespectful of us to offer you the $29/year Pro deal as consolation for downgrading your Big Gig plans. You deserve better as our oldest and dearest users. The idea of offering a $29 deal was hatched by an employee who has been “taken care of.” And by “taken care of” we mean we sent them to Siberian “Disneyland”. But don’t worry, they are enjoying rides like “Hold On to the Snow Shovel While Security Beats You” and the world famous “Don’t Eat for Four Days as Punishment for Your Mistakes Adventure.” We expect toilet paper postcards any day now. Wait, do they even have ink at Disneyland Siberia?
Yearly Pro Subscription for $10 Suddenly, our CEO burst into our lantern-lit conference room and yelled out “GIVE IT TO THEM FOR $10 A YEAR.” “For life?” we asked, knowing how contentious that word had now become. “For as long as we or they are alive – and the user doesn’t cancel the plan,” he replied. The reaction was palpable. We looked at each other in disbelief… that’s about 83 cents a month for Windscribe Pro – the cheapest it has ever been. And it’s only available to our OG’est of OG users. It will never be available to anyone else. It cannot be shared, it cannot be posted anywhere and it’s exclusive so you must be logged into your 50/60 GB account to get the deal. This offer will only be available until September 1st, 2023, after that it’s gone forever.”
======================================================================== It’s apparent that their promises are nothing more than empty words. I initially had the 50GB plan, but they failed to reinstate it when I reached out to them. Upon inquiry, I was met with a response from someone named Igor M, who is known to be associated with Windscribe on Github and has been with the company for a long time. Igor informed me that the 50GB plan had been discontinued, and instead, he tried to persuade me to purchase the $10 plan. However, when I shared what Yegor, the owner/founder, had previously written about reinstating the plan before September 1st, he responded by stating that I wasn’t eligible. Additionally, Yegor mentioned that premium members during that period couldn’t apply or stack the voucher code for this offer due to their existing premium plans. These premium subscribers who were now left without premium features surely “deserve better,” but it appears that this sentiment was nothing more than lip service. Yegor went to great lengths to rationalize and justify the termination of the 50GB plan. When I persisted and requested Yegor (in early years he would handle issues when escalated) or a supervisor to take over my ticket, my pleas were ignored. Igor refused to escalate my request, and this silence speaks volumes in itself. Furthermore, as I perused Windscribe’s support page on Reddit, I came across numerous comments where people overwhelmingly supported Yegor and their company’s childlike sense of humor, praising it as funny and enjoyable. It’s quite astonishing, I really wonder how old those supporters are. Sadly, this kind of warped mindset seems to be the norm these days especially on Reddit. In conclusion, it’s evident that Windscribe is a company with questionable practices. While not necessarily engaging in criminal activities, their actions are unethical and immoral in my opinion.