Privado – Spanish for private – is a relative newcomer to the VPN world. It’s registered in Switzerland, which is one of the best places for a VPN as its privacy laws are much more favorable than in countries such as the UK and the US.
Its network is relatively small, consisting of around 320 servers, but those cover 59 cities in 46 countries, so there are plenty of choices.
Most of those servers are owned and operated by Privado, which is better from a security point of view than renting from a datacentre provider. However, even the minority of servers that Privado rents are physical, not virtual.
Not only this: as well as the servers, in most of its locations Privado also owns the network itself which is peered with major regional ISPs – something that other VPN services cannot boast.
Apps & features
Being a fairly young VPN service, Privado doesn’t offer an extensive selection of features in its apps, but it does cover the basics, and it’s working on adding more features over the next weeks and months.
For example, it has recently added WireGuard support for Windows and Android (currently available as a ‘Preview’) and aims for it to be in the iOS and macOS apps by the end of March 2022.
Split-tunnelling – the ability to choose which apps use the VPN and which don’t – was also missing at the time of review but should be present by the end of February.
There are a few other factors that make the apps feel a bit basic: the Windows app docks to the Taskbar by default and though you can undock it, it remains a tiny size on high-resolution, modern screens.
Performance
With access to only a 70Mbps residential broadband connection in the UK, it wasn’t possible to test Privado’s speeds beyond this. What we can say is that when connected to one of the two UK servers – in London – there was no drop in performance at all.
It was also good to see no loss of speed when connected to a server on the US West coast in Portland.
Only when connecting to servers even further away, such in Tokyo and Sydney, was there a discernable drop in download speed, but even then, at 60Mbps it was more than fast enough for most activities, such as streaming video.
And that is where Privado does particularly well, unblocking Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ with no problems.
We also tried unblocking iPlayer from France, which worked without hitch, and only hit a roadblock when trying to watch shows from ITV Hub, which didn’t work.
Privacy
Overall, Privado ticks the important boxes for privacy. As mentioned, it’s registered in Switzerland, so authorities won’t ask it to hand over any data. Even if they did, there’s no data to hand over because of the no-logs policy.
Like many other VPN services, some data is logged for maintaining and improving the service but, importantly, none of it can tie any of your internet activity back to you.
Support
Although Privado doesn’t yet offer live chat as a support option, it does have 24/7 email support. And in our experience, responses are fast.
After submitting a ‘ticket’ via Privado’s website (help is not available directly in the apps) a response came through in just a few minutes. That’s no slower than live chat, although the benefit of being able to chat means you can ask for clarification, other questions and it’s generally preferable.
Privado is planning to add live chat in the future, but for now there is good support through the ticket system as well as FAQs and tutorials on its website.
Read More: https://www.techadvisor.com/review/privado-vpn-3813434/
