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 #24 (at the time of the roll, CrypticVPN)

Last Updated Oct 20, 2016

Signing up for the service: Signing up for the service was quick and easy. CrypticVPN requires you to provide an email address upon sign-up, which is the most I’m ever comfortable providing when doing so. Prices were quite reasonable, with a month of service starting for $2.50. Their website is very simple and provides you the bare minimum amount of information to use the service, which is fine by me. The simpler the better – assuming you can quickly and easily find the information and files you need on site, which was the case. Getting the manual config files was a snap.



Configuring the service: While getting the files for CrypticVPN was easy, one minor annoyance was the need to break the certs out of the ovpn files. It kind of bugs me when this happens as I think it shows some short-sightedness on the part of the service. I may be in the minority when it comes to manually configuring my VPN, but enough services out there support it, that I always raise an eyebrow when others don’t. Regardless, I was able to get the service up and running with minimal issue. This occurred in the last review as well, but after connecting, I looked through the log and found:

“WARNING: No server certificate verification method has been enabled”.

The server configs were not set up to verify the server certificate (to know for certain it’s connecting to the actual server and not one in disguise). The cause of which, was that the files contained no lines to accomplish this task, which typically appears in one of the the following forms. This is insecure, and they denied any problem or wrongdoing further down as you will see.

ns-cert-type server

or

remote-cert-tls server

Speed & Stability tests: At the start of the tests, the speeds I was getting were quite respectable, but towards the end of the tests, I got a miss here and there with two of their international upload tests (UK, Desktop, Trial 3 and Hong Kong, Desktop, Trial 1), and then a whole messed up server (South Africa). CrypticVPN’s website has a server status page, which did not indicate an outage for any of these servers. All tests were run using UDP.



Speed Tests – CrypticVPN – Desktop Latency Download Upload No VPN Trial 1 9 ms 96.02 mbps 11.97 mbps Trial 2 10 ms 97.62 mbps 11.89 mbps Trial 3 10 ms 96.97 mbps 11.87 mbps Average 10 ms 96.87 mbps 11.91 mbps US West Trial 1 64 ms 76.03 mbps 11.64 mbps Trial 2 62 ms 85.64 mbps 11.64 mbps Trial 3 61 ms 82.34 mbps 11.55 mbps Average 62 ms 81.34 mbps 11.61 mbps Comp to Bench +53 ms 83.96% 97.48% UK Trial 1 316 ms 15.27 mbps 4.60 mbps Trial 2 300 ms 15.41 mbps 3.33 mbps Trial 3 293 ms 15.47 mbps 0.00 mbps Average 303 ms 15.38 mbps 2.64 mbps Comp to Bench +293 ms 15.88% 22.19% Hong Kong Trial 1 412 ms 11.59 mbps 0.00 mbps Trial 2 412 ms 10.93 mbps 1.39 mbps Trial 3 404 ms 8.79 mbps 1.29 mbps Average 409 ms 10.44 mbps 0.89 mbps Comp to Bench +400 ms 10.77% 7.50% South Africa Trial 1 635 ms 0.00 mbps 0.00 mbps Trial 2 636 ms 0.00 mbps 0.00 mbps Trial 3 628 ms 0.00 mbps 0.00 mbps Average 633 ms 0.00 mbps 0.00 mbps Comp to Bench +623 ms 0.00% 0.00%

Speed Tests – CrypticVPN – Mobile Latency Download Upload No VPN Trial 1 11 ms 69.06 mbps 14.12 mbps Trial 2 11 ms 72.66 mbps 14.15 mbps Trial 3 10 ms 74.88 mbps 14.21 mbps Average 11 ms 72.20 mbps 14.16 mbps US West Trial 1 65 ms 23.03 mbps 13.47 mbps Trial 2 64 ms 26.08 mbps 13.39 mbps Trial 3 62 ms 21.69 mbps 13.25 mbps Average 64 ms 23.60 mbps 13.37 mbps Comp to Bench +53 ms 32.69% 94.42% UK Trial 1 301 ms 6.25 mbps 11.14 mbps Trial 2 296 ms 4.02 mbps 11.09 mbps Trial 3 312 ms 3.43 mbps 10.19 mbps Average 303 ms 4.57 mbps 10.81 mbps Comp to Bench +292 ms 6.33% 76.32% Hong Kong Trial 1 421 ms 2.35 mbps 7.03 mbps Trial 2 432 ms 3.89 mbps 3.61 mbps Trial 3 420 ms 3.10 mbps 5.93 mbps Average 424 ms 3.11 mbps 5.52 mbps Comp to Bench +414 ms 4.31% 39.01% South Africa Trial 1 626 ms 1.99 mbps 4.36 mbps Trial 2 629 ms 1.46 mbps 3.84 mbps Trial 3 628 ms 1.34 mbps 4.35 mbps Average 628 ms 1.60 mbps 4.18 mbps Comp to Bench +617 ms 2.21% 29.54%

Getting support: As mentioned, the website was quite simple. There was a support desk tab in the sidebar of the main control panel. At the bottom of the site was a “contact” link, however when clicked, a plain white page appeared indicating that the “Contact Form [is] coming soon.“, which felt a little unprofessional. I sent a message using the form provided – however, after filling it out and submitting it, I got an error, saying “Title must not exceed 35 characters. Details must not exceed 255 characters.” This erased my message that I had just been writing and wouldn’t let me change and resubmit, I had to rewrite the entire thing. Very annoying and inconvenient.



I got a response back telling me to not submit the same ticket more than once (so, they were being submitted regardless of the warnings) and they closed the support ticket without responding. This is a joke.

Getting a refund: I followed up on the closed ticket with a refund request. When I tried to go back to see the status of the ticket, my login credentials no longer worked and they provide no password reset option. What company doesn’t provide a password recovery option? This is unacceptable and useless…



Concerns in Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy: While the terms on CrypticVPN’s site weren’t the longest I’ve seen, they were every bit as much disavowing any and all responsibility as some of the more obtuse ones. They still earn the stamp. Only a couple of standouts, but they’re doozies.



The materials on CrypticVPN.com’s web site are provided “as is”. CrypticVPN.com makes no warranties, expressed or implied, and hereby disclaims and negates all other warranties, including without limitation, implied warranties or conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement of intellectual property or other violation of rights. Further, CrypticVPN.com does not warrant or make any representations concerning the accuracy, likely results, or reliability of the use of the materials on its Internet web site or otherwise relating to such materials or on any sites linked to this site.

Make your VPN purchasing decisions accordingly, people.

The materials appearing on CrypticVPN.com’s web site could include technical, typographical, or photographic errors. CrypticVPN.com does not warrant that any of the materials on its web site are accurate, complete, or current.

Does that mean that there’s a chance that this statement was made in error? If that’s the case, does that mean it’s not true? And if that’s so, does that mean-…

Final thoughts: Like so many services, CrypticVPN strikes me as another dime-a-dozen bore. They offer nothing that 75% of the other services on the comparison chart don’t. A website being simple is fine, however so was their server config, to the detriment of the actual security of the user. Being bare bones is okay when the core service is intact, and it WAS NOT in this case. Their service department and tech setup was a joke that is clearly not taking their responsibility to their customers seriously. I can’t really recommend CrypticVPN for anything other than it’s price. Bottom line: There are much better VPN solutions on the market than CrypticVPN, including those that have heard of customer support.

Update (10-20-2016): CrypticVPN have reached out to me with the following updates. I have not verified any of the following.

Server configs have been updated to enforce certs and no auth caching

Support ticket system has been updated – titles and content can now be a more reasonable length

Provider of the South Africa server has been dropped due to poor support.

Term declaring that CrypticVPN does not warrant the accuracy of any content on their site has been removed.

FROM THE VPN COMPARISON CHART CATEGORY VPN SERVICE CrypticVPN JURISDICTION Based In (Country) USA Fourteen Eyes? Five Enemy of the Internet Yes LOGGING Logs Traffic No Logs DNS Requests Logs Timestamps No Logs Bandwidth No Logs IP Address No ACTIVISM Anonymous Payment Method Email Accepts Bitcoin Yes PGP Key Available No Meets PrivacyTools IO Criteria No LEAK PROTECTION 1st Party DNS Servers No IPv6 Supported / Blocked No Offers OpenVPN Yes OBFUSCATION Supports Multihop Supports TCP Port 443 Yes Supports Obfsproxy Supports SOCKS Supports SSL Tunnel Supports SSH Tunnel Other Proprietary Protocols PORT BLOCKING Auth SMTP P2P SPEEDS US Server Average % 83.96 Int’l Server Average % 8.88 SERVERS Dedicated or Virtual SECURITY Default Data Encryption Strongest Data Encryption Weakest Handshake Encryption Strongest Handshake Encryption AVAILABILITY # of Connections 1 # of Countries 15 # of Servers 18 Linux Support (Manual) Yes WEBSITE # of Persistent Cookies 0 # of External Trackers 0 # of Proprietary APIs 2 Server SSL Rating A SSL Cert issued to CloudFlare PRICING $ / Month (Annual Pricing) 2.09 $ / Connection / Month 2.09 Free Trial No Refund Period (Days) 0 ETHICS Contradictory Logging Policies Falsely Claims 100% Effective Yes Incentivizes Social Media Spam POLICIES Forbids Spam Requires Ethical Copy Requires Full Disclosure AFFILIATES Practice Ethical Copy Give Full Disclosure

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