Star VPN is one of the alternatives you’ll come across if you’re looking for a VPN that you can use on your mobile device. Is it worth downloading? We’ve put together a comprehensive Star VPN review to help you decide whether or not to use this VPN.
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Explaining Star VPN
The Star VPN app is available for iOS, Android, and Mac OS. When you connect to public WiFi, the firm claims to encrypt your internet connection. Unfortunately, the firm does not disclose the encryption protocols it employs, so we have no way of knowing whether or not Star VPN’s security is worthwhile.
The fact that Star VPN uses a TLS certificate was the only thing we could detect.
Simply told, Star VPN is a no-nonsense, no-frills VPN service. Star VPN does not include features such as a kill-switch, which would protect users online if their VPN connection was lost. We were also unable to identify the tunneling protocol Star VPN employs.
We were able to determine, however, that Star VPN did not use OpenVPN. OpenVPN is the most secure tunneling protocol on the market. This tunneling protocol is used by more than 90% of VPN service providers. Star VPN appears to be one of the ten percent of providers that do not use the protocol.
About The Company
Star VPN is a product of Senight LLC, a Georgian corporation based in Europe. It gives customers access to over 800 servers in over 50 locations, each with roughly 800-1,000 IP addresses.
Star VPN Price
The basic service from this company is said to be free. However, we couldn’t get it to work unless we upgraded to Premium (which appears to be a typical issue among free users).
Only two payment plans are available: monthly and yearly. The monthly option is $9.99 per month, while the yearly package costs only $2.99 per month ($35.99 per year).
Only PayPal and credit/debit cards are accepted as payment methods. You can also secure up to 6 devices at once with just one account.
If things don’t work out, the vendor claims to provide a 30-day money-back guarantee. Our refund was issued within one day.
Alternatives
While Star VPN has certain advantages, it falls well short of big VPN services such as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, or CyberGhost, owing to a lack of information on the website, live chat, extra features, and router configuration options.
Streaming
This seller claims to be able to unblock BBC iPlayer and Netflix, both of which have distinct specialized libraries that are frequently unavailable internationally. These assertions were confirmed by our tests.
Star VPN Privacy And Encryption
Star VPN uses 256-bit AES encryption and the OpenVPN transmission protocol to secure your privacy. Its apps only let you choose between UDP and TCP (or automated) protocols, as well as enable or disable the kill switch.
If your VPN connection is interrupted, a kill switch prevents you from accessing the internet, preserving your personal information. Do note that Star VPN’s kill switch is off by default, so you’ll have to turn it on yourself if you want to enjoy the complete protection.
P2P and torrenting clients are also supported by this VPN, allowing you to exchange huge files.
The developer of Star VPN, Senight LLC, “guarantees a strong no-logs policy for Star VPN Services, meaning that your internet activity while using Star VPN Services is not monitored, recorded, tracked, kept, or given to any third party,” according to the company’s Privacy Policy. It contains a list of all the information that isn’t collected, such as connection timestamps, bandwidth used, traffic logs, IP addresses, and browsing data.
However, it goes on to say that some information is gathered for marketing and analytics, including the device model, operating system version, “and similar non-identifying information,” as well as your mobile device’s identifier.
A report from an external auditor would help put at ease any user suspicions about what information may or may not be collected.
Customer Support
Star VPN has simple apps for Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS. The Android app has a rating of 4.1 stars (out of 5) and was last updated 4 months ago at the time of writing.
The iOS software has a higher rating of 4.8 stars, and its version history shows that it is constantly updated. The Mac software has received comparable accolades and is well-supported.
If you require assistance, it is quite unlikely that you will find it on the website. Even though there is a Help Desk with sections for FAQs and Announcements, they are both empty. Some information is scattered around the website, such as on the “Why Star VPN” page.
There is no live chat available. Alternatively, you may send an email message or use the website’s contact form. The service also has Twitter and Facebook accounts, but they don’t appear to be very active (last posts are from over a year before this review was written).
The email route for requesting a refund was tried, and the first email received a response within one hour. A day later, we received the official refund confirmation.
Star VPN Speed And Expirience
The apps from Star VPN are fairly basic, but that also means they are very easy to use. Our testing went smoothly because the app connects in a matter of seconds and displays a noticeable green notification once connection is established.
We used a 28.13Mbps connection at a location in Southeast Europe to test its download speeds. The results for an Italian server were remarkable, with barely any speed reductions at 23.52Mbps. Although a server in the United Kingdom didn’t perform as well as the others, it still managed to produce a very fast 14.58Mbps.
Then we tried it in a more distant place, the United States. Even if the rates are reduced to only 4.95Mbps, this is still one of the acceptable speed drops when compared to the original connection. Finally, we decided to try India and were pleasantly surprised, especially because the speeds were faster than those in the United States (8.66Mbps).
Please note that we had to open our browser in incognito mode in order to test the server in India, as the regular mode persistently recognized our real physical location.
Verdict
Star VPN has a long way to go before it can compete with industry leaders. Its programs are too simple, with little information available, no live chat customer assistance, and no ability to install on other operating systems.
It does, however, provide some excellent speeds, unblocks whatever streaming content you require, and supports torrenting. All of this for a modest annual fee and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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