StrongVPN Review

I used to use Strongvpn however due to the weak encryption a hacker was able to do a man in the middle attack. RSA 1024 is already known to be weak, they refused to use stronger encryption so I left to another provider.

I used this for a two year period while living in China. We went through a few periods of connection problems at the beginning, but these ended within our first 6 months in the country. File sharing and downloading worked well with StrongVPN, but speeds were clearly throttled. I generally left the VPN off for any file sharing and turned it on only to use Youtube and Facebook.

Setup was easy. The subscription service is a bit frustrating, however. Even when you purchase the year program, the service is automatically renewed unless you are fast enough to actively cancel the service. I missed an email from the company at the beginning of our second year, and was surprised by the $85 charge to my credit card.

I’m only now finding more affordable VPN services with better features and greater anonymity. I wish I had done my homework to begin with.

Having said that, we haven’t had any problems with StrongVPN at all. I just believe that there are better services out there.

They are expensive, you get access to just one location, if you wish to switch you pay. There are just a few free switches included. They use outdated protocols with cheaper plans – PPTP is fully cracked. L2TP/IPSec is also ancient protocol and the way they deploy it is totally unsecure. Even tho this service costs an arm and a leg (if you wish OpenVPN), the speed is not so impressive. Support was not able to help.

In China, don’t mind the US flag, guess what ! I’m using a VPN.

been with strongvpn a number of years now, after I give up on witopia

while strongvpn could be better big hint: could allow free server switch.

otherwise they are ok,.

At least they can somewhat combat the latest Chinese attack (Nov-Dec 2012)

but problems with speed and blocked ports do exist caused by static IP

and ports, and the stupid backward Chinese.

I agree with Ant Forshaw. This company has no goal to protect your privacy. Also I would not recommend HMA either – they are UK company and there was an incident where they handed off all the logs to the FBI. So beware, both HMA and Strong log your traffic.

StrongVPN also locks you to one server and you have to pay to switch. That’s just bad for privacy protection. The IP you are using is dedicated only to you – so you are easily tracked back. Everything you do on the web, leads to you. Forget to use torrents with StrongVPN. They will close your account.

If you want StrongVPN for just video streaming, I would not recommend it much. The speed was fast enough to watch most of videos in SD. HD videos buffer and I don’t think it’s my Internet problem. When I switched to another VPN, I had no speed issues at all. Support was not much helpful to fix the speed.

StrongVPN is expensive comparing to other providers if you take into consideration you get access to just one server and if you need to switch, you will have to pay. It’s a cool advert they have tons of servers and tons of IPs – but all you get is just ONE ! They have just few free switches. These switches are limited so they can better track you, no other explanation. Most providers offer unlimited switches.

StrongVPN lacks client software so for any issue you can count to hang for hours with their Belorussian support staff. Some are nice, but some are not polite at all and try to get rid of you quickly blaming that the problem is on your side.

So as conclusion, the name sounds “strong”, but the service overall is poor comparing with other services.