TunnelBear VPN Review
Yes, TunnelBear is safe and legit. This review shows you how we found out the TunnelBear is stable and reliable VPN service.
So, if you are looking for the best and unbiased TunnelBear reviews, you have come to the right place.
Have you ever heard that man’s best friend is the dog? Those at TunnelBear definitely disagree with that. To them, man’s best friend is the fluffy bear.
TunnelBear is a VPN service provider; and like every VPN provider, they give users of their service online privacy and security. They do this by encrypting your traffic so that prying eyes cannot know what you’re doing and replacing your real location with one of their virtual locations so that monitoring elements will not know your real location. That might sound a bit technical, right?
TunnelBear entered the scene to make VPN useless technical and more fun-filled. With TunnelBear VPN, everything is bear-related in a fun way. For example; the company address is “the bear cave”, employees are “the bears”, server locations are “the tunnel”, the VPN features are GhostBear, VigilanteBear, SplitBear and so on. With TunnelBear VPN, you can get VPN protection and have fun while at it.
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Note: Since you have nothing to loss, it will be a very good idea to register from this post so we can be able to assist you by getting in touch with them if you have any problem in the future. We have the power to force them into rectifying their faults. However, we cannot do anything if you try to trick the system. Just make sure you comply with their rules and regulations to make it easier for us.
This review aims to help us determine if our beer-loving VPN service is only charming or if they can help us surf the web anonymously and deliver whatever else a VPN service in 2018 should deliver.
TunnelBear is safe, as of writing this review, we have tested and investigated TunnelBear and can confirm that it is highly safe and secure to use. Your information and privacy are safe and sound. And nobody has ever complained of their info being exposed.
TunnelBear is a VPN network with mix experience by its users. Although TunnelBear is legit, and you can order for their service and make use of it without problem. That is to say that TunnelBear is safe to use. But we do not guarantee you will have a good experience. You may read through some of the user’s reviews and feedback below to know what you may expect from TunnelBear VPN service.
“Used to be good but since BBC introduced enhanced security they can’t be bothered anymore. Unfortunately this happened a month after I had signed up for another year. This seems to follow a pattern. Companies offer a good service to build up their customer base and then just get lazy. My last few months with Tunnel Bear. I think you probably need a dedicated IP address or at least the ability to choose from a range of UK ip addresses. Recently I found I was actually being routed to the US when it said UK. “Support” couldn’t be bothered. AVOID.”
“started off so well but I think they might now be resting on their laurels. The first two years were fine. Lately though, things have gone downhill rapidly. Since mid-December, I’ve put in four requests and had NOT ONE reply. The issues I’m facing are that BBC iPlayer is consistently blocked by their servers on a regular basis. On top of that, Tunnel Bear constantly logs me out on my Windows machine and won’t let me login saying that the password is invalid. it’s not because I can log in on my Mac and all is well. After being ignored by them for over a month now, I’m looking for a new VPN when the year I’ve paid for runs out later this year.”
“I’ve always found TunnelBear great and the customer support team helpful and quick to respond”
“A very user-friendly VPN, with limited features. Works like a charm, and does the job! Would like to see more servers in the future, but overall a very good VPN!”
TunnelBear have a client for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. There are also browser extensions for Chrome and Opera. TunnelBear can do more in this area; there are VPN services that covers the five major operating systems (Linux included).
TunnelBear says their “app is so thoughtfully designed, a bear could use it”. Except I’m the only one who don’t know that tech devices and services are used in the non-human animal kingdom, that last part is definitely a deliberate exaggeration simply used to create a strong impression. But the first part, about the app being thoughtfully designed, is matter-of-fact. The TunnelBear app is made with an On/Off simplicity,
The main interface is user friendly and displays a colourful world map that enables you to visualize your connection. The interface allows you to get flying with VPN protection with one click of a button. The TunnelBear “Auto Tunnel” feature will use server pings to automatically connect you to the best server closest to you. Once connected you get a notification, a cute animation, and on Android, a bear growl.
VPN services encrypt your traffic so that governments, businesses, ISPs (internet service providers) and other monitoring elements will not know what you are doing online; but these elements will still know that you are using a VPN. As a result, many restrictive governments (like China) and businesses (like Netflix) identify and block VPN traffic altogether. That is why some VPNs can’t get past China great wall or Netflix blocking.
TunnelBear has a stealth feature called Ghost Bear that makes your encrypted data less detectable on your network, which results in it being harder to block. The Ghost Bear disguises your traffic so that it look less like VPN traffic and more like normal traffic. The monitoring elements will see the traffic as normal traffic and allow it fly in the network.
However, the Ghost Bear, like every stealth technology, will make the connection slower. TunnelBear recommends using the Ghost Bear either when you are unable to connect or cannot maintain a connection (as this could mean that the use of encryption have been detected and the connection is being blocked or throttled).
This is a TunnelBear feature that is used with Wi-Fi connections. It allow you to create a list of Wi-Fi networks that you consider safe or trusted (such as your home or office network). When you are on the trusted network, you can disconnect the VPN service, but as soon as you leave the trusted network, the service will automatically connect to ensure that your browsing is secure.
P2P activity allow one to connect to peers to download files. In the past, TunnelBear VPN clearly did not allow torrenting. Though, it is said in many quarters that TunnelBear now supports torrenting; the word is conspicuously absent on the website. Note that VPN services that fully support torrenting advertise it on the website as part of the service’s many features, and would even encourage using the VPN service to torrent anonymously.
Also, in TunnelBear’s Terms of Service, among the many things banned is “distribute copyright-protected material through our servers”. It cannot be argued that many of the file shared in BitTorrent falls in th a category.
Therefore, it is safe to say that TunnelBear is not an ideal VPN for torrenting. This comes as a big minus to our fluffy lovely Bear because torrenting is one of the major reasons people use VPN services.
TunnelBear is one VPN that still gives you access to Netflix’s vast resources. However, it must be said that not all server locations work with Netflix; and that getting a server for Netflix is simply by a connect-and-check game of connecting to one location after another and checking to see if it unlocks Netflix. While some of TunnelBear’s locations were able to unblock Netflix, there are VPNs with more streaming capabilities.
TunnelBear VPN does not explicitly state how many servers the service operates; they only highlight the number of countries that they operate their servers from, which is 20+ countries.
The server count which is conspicuously missing is an important information that most users look out for to help them determine whether a VPN server network is robust enough to serve their location needs. For example, one VPN service that operate from 25 countries has only 100 service; and yet another VPN service that covers 25 countries has 2000+ servers. Though they cover the same number of countries, the latter VPN service with more connection points will make for better anonymity and performance. Enhanced anonymity comes from having more options for spoofing your location, and better performance comes from being less likely to meet loaded servers.
How many servers does TunnelBear have in the 20+ countries, 100, 1000, 10,000? That’s anybody’s guess. What is clear is that they have more than 20 servers.
Also, the TunnelBear server network is not truly global. The countries covered include North and South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania; but the whole of Africa and the Middle East is neglected.
TunnelBear VPN has two plans – a paid plan and a free plan (which I’ll get to later). The paid plan has two billing options – monthly and annually; and you get access to the full features of the VPN service no matter your billing option.
The monthly subscription (which TunnelBear calls Giant) is priced at $9.99; while the one-year subscription (which TunnelBear calls Grizzly) is priced at $59.99 which breaks down to $4.99 per month and a 50% cost savings.
If you want to save more, you go for the one-year subscription of TunnelBear VPN; this follows the pricing model in the VPN world where the longer-term subscriptions are heavily discounted. TunnelBear does not have a mid-term subscription between the monthly and yearly deal, but this would have been splendid because it would suit users who need more than one month of VPN protection but don’t want the long commitment of one full year.
TunnelBear VPN prices are not really distinctive; the price of our Bear’s Giant (monthly subscription) is similar to the prices of the top players in the game, while our Bear’s Grizzly (yearly subscription) is even priced higher than the best deals of some of these players (who have best deals as low as $3.50).
TunnelBear makes making payment easy by allowing the regular payment options such as credit cards, debit cards and PayPal. They also allow users to pay anonymously by using bitcoin or cash (what they call “jars of honey”). To make cash payment, you have to include your registration email in the envelop and mail it to the Bear Cave (TunnelBear Canada office)
With TunnelBear VPN’s paid plans you get unlimited bandwidth; you are also allowed to connect up to five devices simultaneously with your one account. This is a generous offer as there are premium VPNs that allow only three simultaneous connections. With this offer, you can adequately secure your multiple devices and even extend VPN protection to family or friends without having to pay more.
TunnelBear is one of few VPN services that offer a free plan; which allows you to test the services without committing any financial resource. In my books, that’s a big plus for our fluffy lovely Bear.
TunnelBear call their free plan “little”. The name couldn’t be more apt because the free plan is very limited. Anyways, that’s what you should expect with a free plan; and there’s no VPN service that offer a full features free plan. How limited is our fluffy lovely Bear’s Mr. Little?
Monthly data usage is capped at 500MB, and you can get an extra 1GB by tweeting about our fluffy lovely Bear. However, that’s awfully small knowing that there is one VPN service that offers a 10GB per month free version.
TunnelBear VPN uses the popular VPN protocols – Open Virtual Private Network (OpenVPN), Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2), and Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)/ Internet Protocol Security (IPsec).
Android devices get to use the OpenVPN; iOS devices get to use either L2TP/ IPsec or IKEv2 (whichever works best on the iOS device); while Windows or Mac OS X devices get to use either OpenVPN or IKEv2 (whichever of the two connects first). This means a third-party OpenVPN client is needed to use OpenVPN on iOS.
Though many other VPN services provide the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) amongst others; our fluffy lovely Bear does not use the PPTP protocol. The PPTP is the easiest protocol to configure, but it is outdated and considered to be the least secured. TunnelBear says that “weaker encryption isn’t even an option“.
TunnelBear VPN uses strong AES 256-bit encryption by default. Data authentication is by SHA-256 (only older versions of iOS use SHA-1); and the handshake encryption is 2,048-bit Diffie-Hellman on Android and iOS, and 4,096-bit Diffie-Hellman on Windows and macOS.
The high industry-level encryption ensures that your data is secured; the only downside is that TunnelBear does not allow you to change encryption level.
TunnelBear VPN is designed in such a way that if the VPN loses connection for any reason, it automatically reconnects again as soon as it detects the internet. However, in those seconds between the VPN connection dropping and it reconnecting, your online traffic would be in the open, and anybody monitoring you would have all they need. TunnelBear have VigilantBear to protect you at those times when the VPN connection drops.
This feature is widely called the kill switch, but TunnelBear being TunnelBear calls it the “VigilantBear”. The VigilantBear is always vigilant to the VPN connection, and when it senses that the VPN connection is about to drop, it cuts off internet connection, ensuring that data is not transmitted data when the VPN service is down.
Most VPN services provide a settings option to toggle on/ off DNS leaks protection. TunnelBear does not have such an option; not because our Bear does not plug DNS leaks, but because our Bear realize that plugging DNS leaks should be a must and not an option.
Truly, I have often wondered why there should be an option to disable DNS leaks when DNS leaks are privacy and anonymity threats that can allow ISPs to see and monitor users online activity.
TunnelBear does protect against DNS leaks; and most importantly there are no additional steps required to “enable” DNS leak protection (once connected, all leaks plugged, and you are secured). I tested for DNS leaks anyway, and all tests were positive. TunnelBear VPN effectively plugs DNS leaks.
Recording and storing users’ data poses threats to user privacy. TunnelBear acknowledge this by stating that they have a no-logging policy because your privacy is paramount.
They state this: “TunnelBear does NOT log any activity of customers connected to our service. Period”.
If that was not clear enough, they explain:
TunnelBear explicitly does NOT collect, store or log the following data:
This is music to the ears of privacy-conscious users. However, I examined TunnelBear’s privacy policy to know if our fluffy lovely Bear is one of those VPN services that say they are a no-logging service but have fine prints (privacy policy) that suggest otherwise.
The fine prints show that TunnelBear collect some personal data; they describe this as “the minimal amount of information required to operate the service”. For example when you create a TunnelBear account, they collect; your email address, info about whether you are a paid user or a free user, and paid users’ subscription expiry date. This is not out of the ordinary; almost all VPN services collect some personal data to enable them to run their services. It should also be said here that despite collecting some personal data; Tunnel Bear remain focused on user privacy. They have shown this by no longer collecting users’ full name as part of the account creation process.
TunnelBear state explicitly that if they are served with a legal document and the applicable law requires them to comply, the extent of disclosure is limited to the Personal Data listed. And this wouldn’t be a problem because the information does not puncture users privacy.
TunnelBear also collect what they call “operational data”, and claim that it is required to operate their service and to ensure customer satisfaction. This include your device info (OS version), the TunnelBear app version, and bandwidth usage. While the first two wouldn’t give users any privacy worries, that cannot be said of the third (data usage). However, TunnelBear have taken steps to ensure that collecting this data does not invade users privacy. As opposed to some VPN services that record data usage per session; TunnelBear use a monthly data usage metric because this does not require collecting login timestamps. They also ensure that no historical record is kept by resetting the total monthly usage value to ‘0’ at the end of each month. Also, as a sign of good faith, TunnelBear provide you with the ability to delete your Personal Data with them.
Conclusively, it is safe to say that TunnelBear privacy policy is reassuring that no log keeping will threaten your privacy.
Because of the crisis of trust that the VPN industry has suffered in recent times, TunnelBear saw the need to go further to demonstrate to their customers that the VPN service can be trusted. They invited a respected security company (Cure 53) to do a complete audit of their servers, apps and infrastructure; and in a transparent move, they (TunnelBear) published the result despite the fact that the result had certain vulnerabilities that they weren’t proud of. Thus, TunnelBear call themselves the only VPN in the world that has published an independent security audit.
Where a VPN is located always come up when discussing the privacy capabilities of a VPN service. This is because a VPN service is subject to the laws of the land that they reside. Where there are anti-privacy laws (such as those mandating data retention), then there are serious threats to user privacy.
TunnelBear VPN is based in Toronto, Canada. This means they are subject to Canadian laws; and under Canadian laws, they are required to hand over user data to law enforcement agencies that come with a valid warrant. However, this shouldn’t cause any worries because TunnelBear does not keep logs that threatens users’ privacy.
Another cause for concern is that TunnelBear VPN has been acquired by an American company (McAfee). This means that they will now be subject to some American laws. Many VPN users will rather not have their VPN services in the U.S. because; anti-privacy laws have been passed in the country that effectively allow users’ data to be collected and sold to third parties, and some of the methods employed by U.S. intelligence agencies (NSA and FBI) in the past have been invasive. Lastly, the U.S. and Canada are members of the Five-Eyes intelligence alliance that have now expanded to include fourteen countries around the world. The member countries of this alliance work together to spy, collect and share information; this means that if any of the member country of the alliance is onto you, you are at the mercy of the intelligence agencies of all fourteen countries including those of unofficial members.
No matter how much security a VPN service gives, it would only see satisfied customers if it has appreciable speed. Users don’t want their browsing to be frustrated by slow speeds. The speed performance of TunnelBear VPN was done by checking the effect that the VPN service had on browsing speed without a VPN connection. If the VPN service reduced speed to intolerable levels, it is slow; and if speed drop is indecipherable, it is fast.
TunnelBear say on their website that they have lightning-fast speeds. However my test of the service would disagree. On the average TunnelBear VPN increased latency by 248%, this would rank the service as average in the speed log. Also, average upload speed was reduced by 54%, while average download speed dropped by 61%. These result give TunnelBear the same average placing as in the latency test.
TunnelBear VPN has a help centre which can help you solve some of your issue yourself. This help centre is neatly arranged into categories such as; getting started, troubleshooting, and Bills & payments. There is also an FAQs section where you will find helpful answers to some of the questions asked by users in the past.
TunnelBear also allow direct contact; where you can submit a mail detailing your issue, and a Support Bear (a TunnelBear customer support staff) will get back to you with needed help. It takes about 24 hours to receive answers to queries; and that is relatively good.
TunnelBear supports only the email service. I couldn’t help but notice that the SupportBear icon (a bear wearing a headset) suggests telephone support which TunnelBear does not have. They do not even have the live chat feature which premium VPNs are adding to the support armoury. I will like to see our fluffy lovely Bear launch a live chat service and/ or a telephone support service; as these two services make for a truly modern 24/7 support service.
TunnelBear VPN is a VPN that perfectly blends tech and fun. Their bear theme and puns are simply charming and are packaged in a simple easy-to-use interface; interestingly, that does not take anything away from the security and privacy features on offer. The VPN supports only the most secure VPN protocols and uses high-level industry-standard AES 256-but encryption. It has features that protect when VPN connection drops as well as features that prevent DNS leaks. Also, they do not keep logs that would compromise users privacy; and they have a privacy policy that inspires confidence. It will be criminal if I fail to mention that TunnelBear offer a free version.
However, I don’t like TunnelBear’s silence on the number of servers in their network, and on whether torrenting is fully allowed. Also, this is the 21st century; a live chat feature for real-time help should come with any 21st-century support service.
Do you have an experience with TunnelBear? Good or bad, kindly use the comment section below to give us your brief TunnelBear review.
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