Talk about going one step forward, two steps back: Now, let's test their “Threat Protection” feature which promises to do “everything CyberSec does and more”, maybe there’s hope after all!Ĭolour me surprised, Threat Protection blocks even fewer trackers than CyberSec.

Let’s put CyberSec to the test and see if they stay true to their claim! You’ll notice that they seem to have a good understanding of what third-party trackers are and claim to “block trackers so that you can enjoy the highest level of privacy”. Take a look at NordVPN’s Threat Protection feature overview. NordVPN’s CyberSec (“Threat Protection”): Besides sponsoring scores of clueless YouTube/TikTok/Instagram influencers, as well as numerous review sites, to shill its offerings to customers for cold hard affiliate cash (incentives offered are up to 100% of the sale value), NordVPN has been tracking users on it’s very own website.Īt Windscribe, we thought it would be a fun exercise to see whether the ad, malware, and tracker blocking services offered by competing VPN companies actually blocked the ad and marketing trackers on their own websites (note: they shouldn’t exist on their websites in the first place). In the past, NordVPN has even been called out by a UK-based ad regulator for its misleading claims about WiFi connections being inherently insecure (when in reality, most websites and apps these days use strong encryption standards like HTTPS and TLS by default). That’s a pretty bold tweet from a company that commits the very same shady and unethical practice of aggressive targeted marketing it promises to protect you against. These VPNs talk a big game about stopping trackers but use trackers themselves. Top 3 VPN companies that block advertising trackers. (The last thing they should do is turn over their users’ logs like IPVanish, PureVPN and HideMyAss did). Therefore, one would assume that tracking customers and bombarding them with ads would be the last, or second to last thing a VPN provider would do. Many, dare I say most, VPN companies falsely market their products as some sort of bulletproof solution to digital prying eyes. If you look at competing VPN services, you may come across conmen (some of whom are featured in the Panama Papers), hackers for hire who indulge in state-sponsored surveillance of human rights activists, cryptocurrency scammers (see more here, here, and here), and even princes! In an industry where hypocrisy and ever-waning standards of ethics are the norm, one would think that there are no more rules left to break.īut you’d be wrong. 3 VPN companies who claim to stop tracking.

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