6/10/2023 0 Comments Tunnelbear extensionFurthermore, its privacy-unfriendly Canadian jurisdiction, corporate ownership, and lack of a warrant canary work against it. TunnelBear doesn’t record any activity logs or identifying data, but it’s not a zero-logs VPN. Its privacy policy is better than the average VPN. To summarize, we trust TunnelBear to protect our activity logs and IP address, but you shouldn’t trust it if you need to hide your VPN usage from the authorities. While TunnelBear can be subpoenaed by Canadian and US authorities, it has a robust logging policy that prevents your IP address and browsing history from being leaked. Moreover, both jurisdictions are known to prosecute for minor copyright violations, which is important information if you want to use a VPN for torrenting. While TunnelBear’s headquarters are in Toronto, its new ownership means that it’s also subject to US data laws.īoth the US and Canada form an integral part of the Five Eyes data-sharing alliance, an organization designed for powerful nations to collect and share surveillance intelligence. That means it’s impossible to know whether it’s received more requests for user data, and whether it has confirmed more users with accounts. Since the incident, the company hasn’t released any further transparency reports. Moreover, TunnelBear used to issue an annual transparency report detailing any government requests for user data. While it’s a good sign that TunnelBear didn’t share any activity or connection logs, this incident highlights the drawbacks of a Canadian jurisdiction. Crucially, no further identifiable information was handed over to the authorities. In 2020, TunnelBear cooperated with US authorities by confirming a user’s account via their email address. Cooperated with Authorities to Help Confirm a User McAfee was also previously owned by Intel, but was sold to a number of private equity firms in March 2022, including Advent International and Permira. The VPN company still operates a separate team within McAfee, meaning the same employees continued to work on the VPN post-acquisition. In 2018, it was acquired by antivirus software company McAfee. TunnelBear was established in 2011 by Daniel Kaldor and Ryan Dochuk. This also ensures your ISP isn’t able to monitor your web browsing activity. TunnelBear operates its own zero-log DNS servers, and it doesn’t record any of the websites you visit. However, its logging policy means that it’s unable to provide the IP addresses and browsing history of its users, even if it were forced to. TunnelBear is also based in Canada, which is an awful location for user privacy. This level of data collection is relatively common for a VPN service and can be justified, but it holds TunnelBear back from being a top-rated no-logs VPN, like PIA or Perfect Privacy. TunnelBear collects some information to maintain its service: your email address, device information (OS version and app version), whether you’ve been active in the previous month, and total data used (deleted at the end of each month). You can read TunnelBear’s full privacy policy on its website. You can compare TunnelBear with other VPNs elsewhere in this review. Although no browsing information was handed over, TunnelBear has previously confirmed account holder information with authorities. We’ve tested TunnelBear in 2023 and found it struggled to unblock Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. You regularly watch Amazon Prime Video or Hulu.TunnelBear is a lot slower than its rivals when torrenting, and it doesn’t offer P2P optimized servers. TunnelBear Free has a 500MB data allowance, which is extremely restrictive compared to other free VPNs. Ideal for gamers, the VPN service has low ping and fast speeds for gaming on your mobile device. TunnelBear is a simple VPN service that’s safe and easy to use. TunnelBear Free has all the same server locations as the paid version, and all of the same security features. You want to try a VPN for free before purchasing.
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