The GhostBear feature aims to circumvent VPN blocking by disguising VPN traffic as normal HTTPS traffic. A TunnelBear representative told me that the company advises that users switch on GhostBear only when absolutely necessary, as it can reduce performance. Many other companies offer similar custom tools designed to circumvent censorship.
Blocker for Chrome
The speed of a VPN connection is very important if you want to do more than just browse the internet. If you want to be able to watch a movie or play online games, you will notice when a VPN isn’t as quick.
Moreover, you have to be able to bear some puns, because this provider excels at them. TunnelBear is a high-speed VPN that operates servers in 20+ locations. It offers some of the best security features around, including high-end encryption and an automatic kill switch.
TunnelBear Blocker
With TunnelBear you won’t need to worry about your online safety. They adhere to the highest international standard for encryption and offer some of the safest VPN protocols. However, some people view it as a disadvantage that the VPN service has ended up with an American company. Secure VPN through TunnelBear enables you connect to WiFi hotspots without putting your data or device at risk. Get internet security and private browsing on a virtual private network that keeps your phone and data safe.
Go searching for answers and you’ll find TunnelBear’s knowledgebase doesn’t have a lot of content, but what you get is well presented and gives you a decent range of information. The Connection Issues page doesn’t just offer generic ‘reinstall’-type ideas, for instance.
DataMask Pro
Overall, TunnelBear Blocker is easy-to-use, helps to provide some additional privacy online, and allows users to decide which content they do and don’t like. StreamingIn addition to the speed issue, many users and reviewers have found that TunnelBear is not very good at connecting to Netflix. While the Netflix vs VPNs battle is never-ending, other services such as ExpressVPN have better reputations for successfully connecting to Netflix. The TunnelBear app does include some advanced features, such as Trusted Networks, which is basically a whitelist of Wi-Fi networks you trust. This prevents data from slipping through your internet connection during the seconds it takes TunnelBear to reconnect should you become disconnected.
Perhaps the most important feature of a VPN is the level of security it can offer. People use a VPN to make sure their data stays private and their identity is hidden.
TunnelBear Blocker for ChromeTunnelBear Blocker is designed to be complementary to the TunnelBear VPN for increased privacy online. Some of the benefits include protection against browser fingerprinting, and the ability to block Adobe Flash, email tracking, and ultrasonic tracking. The TunnelBear Blocker may also speed up web page loading times. While no one can tell you’re a dog online (or a bear, for that matter), streaming companies like Netflix can tell where you live and will block you if you’re spoofing your location.
If you look at the amount of servers, the TunnelBear offer isn’t very impressive. However, they do have good servers in the most common locations. Moreover, all of their servers offer a stable internet connection. Below you can read how TunnelBear scores on the different aspects of a VPN. First you will see how this VPN will affect your connection speed and your online safety.
- Moreover, they only have servers in 20 locations, which isn’t a lot on the VPN market.
- For the more advanced VPN users, TunnelBear probably doesn’t offer enough.
- A downside to TunnelBear is that they do not support Netflix or allow torrent downloading.
Then you can read about their user-friendliness, server network, and additional option. Hopefully, our test run of TunnelBear will help you figure out if it is the provider that fits all your needs.
TunnelBear focusses on encryption and privacy, not on, for instance, bypassing geographical restrictions. They try to compensate this with GhostBear, but this still fails to lift the Netflix ban. Their speed is high, the servers are stable, and they offer great security and privacy.
NordVPN and others provide detailed information about specific servers, which can be useful when you need a connection in a very specific location. At last count, TunnelBear has around 1,800 servers across the globe. That’s a robust offering, besting the majority of VPN services, but it’s not among the largest collection of servers. ExpressVPN, Hotspot Shield VPN, Private Internet Access VPN, and TorGuard VPN all offer more than 3,000 servers, and both CyberGhost and NordVPN boast over 5,000 servers.
Supports
For the more advanced VPN users, TunnelBear probably doesn’t offer enough. A downside to TunnelBear is that they do not support Netflix or allow torrent downloading. Moreover, they only have servers in 20 locations, which isn’t a lot on the VPN market.
There were no DNS or WebRTC leaks to give away our identity, and the VigilantBear kill switch immediately blocked internet access when the VPN connection closed. TunnelBear provides a good VPN service that protects your online privacy and provides good security against snoops. The service is well-designed for beginners and people who just want to be protected without having to worry about a lot of technical gibberish. And the fact that TunnelBear doesn’t say anything about the number of actual servers it has makes us nervous. Many of the top VPN services have thousands of servers, while all we can tell from TunnelBear’s information is that it has at least 22 servers.
Moreover, it is refreshing to see how honest and open TunnelBear is about their logging policies. However, there are VPN providers that offer more safety and privacy. To be able to unblock certain content online it is important that your VPN provider has servers in different countries. If you want to access the American Netflix content, for instance, you need a VPN provider with servers in the U.S. You can also use the VPN to bypass censorship in your country by connecting to servers in another country.
We tested the speed of our connection to the TunnelBear servers to see if there was any lag. We did this by performing speed tests and by assessing the speed of the provider during our regular internet use. Recently, this VPN was bought by internet security company McAfee.
Simple & Easy Safari Ad Blocker
It links you to TunnelBear’s Twitter page to look for service information, suggests trying out the service on another network, and points you to settings which might help. While we can’t begin to compete with Cure53, we ran our own far simpler privacy tests on TunnelBear’s Windows app, and these also delivered positive results.
Below you can find all the information on the TunnelBear server network. First you will be able to see the results of our speed tests. We tested our regular speed first to see how the connection to the TunnelBear servers would influence the speed. After that we have tested the connection with a local server and a server in the U.S. Depending on your own internet speeds and locations the results can be different.
This collection covers the essentials, but is on the low side. TunnelBear’s offering completely ignores Africa, the Middle East, and much of South America, an omission that is, sadly, not unusual for VPN companies. ExpressVPN covers 94 countries and CyberGhost comes close behind with servers in 90 countries. If you want to be protected by a VPN but also be able to stream your favorite show on Netflix, you might be better off with ExpressVPN, Surfsharkor CyberGhost.
That’s because companies often have to honor geographic restrictions with the content they provide. Unfortunately, when I tried to stream a movie from Netflix while connected to a TunnelBear VPN server, I was blocked. That was true when I tested the service, but your mileage may vary—as is always the case when your try to use a VPN with Netflix.