Disclaimer: The below review is my opinion, which I will try to provide as many examples for and as much evidence as possible to support. Readers can learn more about how I conduct my reviews, my methodology, etc – here. More information on review badges here.

This review’s roll was #34 (at the time of the roll, FinchVPN).

Written Aug 20, 2016

Signing up for the service: Signing up for FinchVPN was relatively painless, with the registration process itself taking only a moment, and requiring only an email address. This is the most I’m comfortable providing to a service. I initially selected the “Pro” tier, which was a little less expensive than the “Premier” one. I chose the 7 day plan as that’s very suitable for a trial period, but was immediately yelled at – “FinchVPN 7 Days plan is only available in Premier Plan”. Well, why did you even give that to me as an option then?? There is a “Processing Fee” anytime the user wants to use a Credit Card, Debit Card, or Paypal, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen any VPN service require, but regardless, the service was very inexpensive.

Configuring the service: The downloads section is the first thing I look for after logging into the user portal of a given service, and FinchVPN’s was very easy to find and had a well organized list of platforms. This allows you to drill down into whichever you use and then select the protocol/port you prefer – next to a configuration file generator, this is one of the most comprehensive and easy ways I’ve seen a VPN service make their files available – you have a WIDE selection of options and any one is 2 clicks away. Each option is shown as a clearly labeled white button, with options that are typically used for specific purposes shown as green buttons. (TCP 443 for high compatibility, UDP 53 for DNS over UDP, etc). This was a great way to display a lot of options to the user without overwhelming them. At the bottom of this page is a drop down selector, which gives the user even more options that they might not have found above – essentially a generator! Very few companies have these, and I get excited when I see them as they are the best way I’ve seen to give the user lots of choice and the ability to quickly download configuration files individually or in a zip. More companies need to do this!



Speed & Stability tests: Unfortunately, what you’ve read to this point is about all of the praise I can give the service as signs of trouble started cropping up immediately during testing. Connections were intolerably slow, unstable, and inconsistent.



Speed Tests – FinchVPN – Desktop Latency Download Upload No VPN Trial 1 8 ms 95.93 mbps 11.90 mbps Trial 2 10 ms 95.60 mbps 11.85 mbps Trial 3 10 ms 91.96 mbps 11.95 mbps Average 9 ms 94.50 mbps 11.90 mbps US West Trial 1 32 ms 17.59 mbps 7.71 mbps Trial 2 33 ms 23.27 mbps 7.52 mbps Trial 3 33 ms 24.28 mbps 7.85 mbps Average 33 ms 21.71 mbps 7.69 mbps Comp to Bench +23 ms 22.98% 64.65% UK Trial 1 300 ms 2.35 mbps 0.76 mbps Trial 2 303 ms 0.00 mbps 1.20 mbps Trial 3 299 ms 2.67 mbps 1.21 mbps Average 301 ms 1.67 mbps 1.06 mbps Comp to Bench +291 ms 1.77% 8.88% Hong Kong Trial 1 338 ms 1.93 mbps 0.74 mbps Trial 2 379 ms 1.68 mbps 0.64 mbps Trial 3 336 ms 0.00 mbps 0.00 mbps Average 351 ms 1.20 mbps 0.46 mbps Comp to Bench +342 ms 1.27% 3.87% Australia Trial 1 408 ms 2.23 mbps 0.85 mbps Trial 2 414 ms 0.00 mbps 0.00 mbps Trial 3 409 ms 2.17 mbps 0.69 mbps Average 410 ms 1.47 mbps 0.51 mbps Comp to Bench +401 ms 1.55% 4.31%

Speed Tests – FinchVPN – Mobile Latency Download Upload No VPN Trial 1 8 ms 74.26 mbps 14.57 mbps Trial 2 11 ms 75.30 mbps 14.37 mbps Trial 3 20 ms 73.74 mbps 14.21 mbps Average 13 ms 74.43 mbps 14.38 mbps US West Trial 1 36 ms 28.97 mbps 12.96 mbps Trial 2 34 ms 52.26 mbps 12.39 mbps Trial 3 36 ms 33.14 mbps 13.54 mbps Average 35 ms 38.12 mbps 12.96 mbps Comp to Bench +22 ms 51.22% 90.13% UK Trial 1 305 ms 10.77 mbps 7.80 mbps Trial 2 305 ms 7.10 mbps 1.63 mbps Trial 3 306 ms 9.53 mbps 1.64 mbps Average 305 ms 9.13 mbps 3.69 mbps Comp to Bench +292 ms 12.27% 25.65% Hong Kong Trial 1 349 ms 5.67 mbps 1.98 mbps Trial 2 347 ms 9.81 mbps 6.01 mbps Trial 3 345 ms 5.59 mbps 6.68 mbps Average 347 ms 7.02 mbps 4.89 mbps Comp to Bench +334 ms 9.44% 34.00% Australia Trial 1 470 ms 5.97 mbps 5.60 mbps Trial 2 401 ms 7.66 mbps 9.07 mbps Trial 3 612 ms 4.93 mbps 8.00 mbps Average 494 ms 6.19 mbps 7.56 mbps Comp to Bench +481 ms 8.31% 52.54%

Certain tests:

Desktop – UK – Trial 2

Desktop – Hong Kong – Trial 3

Desktop – Australia – Trial 2

are shown as 0.00 mbps which is not a mistake, as these tests failed. All tests run using TCP 443 – Blowfish 128. BF-128 is known to have some weaknesses. but in theory runs more quickly than some stronger standards.

Getting support: As the config files didn’t show the level of encryption being used by default, this is the question I asked to FinchVPN’s support team via email. I asked about which form of encryption they were using. They responded in less than 24 hours. (The answer was Blowfish 128)

Getting a refund: I followed up on my question with a request for a refund. FinchVPN’s stated policy is no refunds. Their support rep asked if there was anything wrong, to which I complained about the poor speeds and stability from above. After 3 days of waiting, I decided that I’d probably gotten my answer. Not the most consumer friendly policy.



Concerns in Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy: And the bad gets worse.



FinchVPN respects and takes your privacy very seriously.

Wait for the other shoe to drop…

You acknowledge and agree, however, that we retain the right to monitor the Service and to disclose any information as necessary or appropriate to satisfy any law, regulation or other governmental request,

And there it is. That didn’t take long.

All sales are final. All FinchVPN sales are intangible goods that are digitally delivered, we therefore have a strict no refund policy.

No refunds, very unfriendly to consumers. There is technically a free trial, but it’s to one of a handful of shared “free” servers which a user probably won’t get the complete picture on, of what day-to-day use would be like.

Raising a billing dispute with our payment processors or charging back a payment made to FinchVPN will place the client’s account in bad standing. We reserve the right to immediately terminate all services without refund in such instances.

Sour grapes at that point…

Users’ privacy is very important to FinchVPN, we respects [sic] and takes your privacy very seriously. We are committed to safeguarding the information Users entrust to FinchVPN.

There’s the statement again, as I mentioned before, anytime you see this, there’s a good chance contradictory statements are coming…

we may ask you for personal information such as name or contact details.

While I wasn’t asked for personal details upon registration, this little nugget is buried in the FinchVPN privacy policy.

We will store a time stamp, traffic amount and user id when you connect and disconnect to our VPN service.

In other words: we log your connection meta data, (which is odd, because we just got done telling you – twice – how seriously we take your privacy.)

Overall, lots of mindless boilerplate. In other words…

Final thoughts: FinchVPN was a roller coaster ride. On one hand, they started out very promising with their useful configuration file repository and ease of signup – but immediately fell off with poor speed/stability and crummy terms. Support responded fairly quickly initially, but seemed to lose interest immediately after requesting a refund. Overall, I can’t recommend the service, even though I REALLY liked the detailed and useful file generator. At the end of the day, they fall short of what I’d consider anything close to a solid service – FinchVPN is a middle of the road service – neither outstandingly good or bad.



FROM THE VPN COMPARISON CHART CATEGORY VPN SERVICE FinchVPN JURISDICTION Based In (Country) Malaysia Fourteen Eyes? No Enemy of the Internet No LOGGING Logs Traffic No Logs DNS Requests Logs Timestamps Yes Logs Bandwidth Yes Logs IP Address Yes ACTIVISM Anonymous Payment Method Email Accepts Bitcoin Yes PGP Key Available No Meets PrivacyTools IO Criteria Yes LEAK PROTECTION 1st Party DNS Servers No IPv6 Supported / Blocked No Offers OpenVPN Yes OBFUSCATION Supports Multihop Supports TCP Port 443 Supports Obfsproxy Supports SOCKS Supports SSL Tunnel Supports SSH Tunnel Other Proprietary Protocols PORT BLOCKING Auth SMTP P2P Some SPEEDS US Server Average % 22.89 Int’l Server Average % 5.69 SERVERS Dedicated or Virtual SECURITY Default Data Encryption Blowfish-128 Strongest Data Encryption Weakest Handshake Encryption Strongest Handshake Encryption AVAILABILITY # of Connections 1 # of Countries 20 # of Servers 54 Linux Support (Manual) Yes WEBSITE # of Persistent Cookies 4 # of External Trackers 1 # of Proprietary APIs 15 Server SSL Rating A+ SSL Cert issued to CloudFlare PRICING $ / Month (Annual Pricing) 3.22 $ / Connection / Month 3.22 Free Trial Yes Refund Period (Days) 0 ETHICS Contradictory Logging Policies Yes Falsely Claims 100% Effective Incentivizes Social Media Spam POLICIES Forbids Spam Requires Ethical Copy Requires Full Disclosure AFFILIATES Practice Ethical Copy Give Full Disclosure

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