CyberGhost

What is CyberGhost?

Although its once-famous free tier is no longer in operation, CyberGhost’s virtual private network service aims to serve both privacy-conscious users and those who want to watch streaming video services in other countries.

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CyberGhost – Features and usability

CyberGhost provides specialised options for those who want to watch overseas TV programmes. CyberGhost’s Netflix and BBC profiles are designed to evade the streaming services’ VPN detection and work well at this. When using them, the rest of your traffic is still behind an encrypted VPN, so you can browse the web in safety as you watch.

The Windows client takes its design cues from Microsoft’s’ Modern UI, with built-in shortcuts to popular websites that are either region-locked – such as video streaming services – or frequently censored under authoritarian regimes, such as Wikipedia and Twitter.

You can also configure extra privacy settings, which by default block adverts and trackers, add exceptions that will automatically be connected to via your normal connection, rather than over the VPN – handy if you use a service that is locked to your IP address for authentication – and configure CyberGhost to automatically connect your VPN if you join an unknown Wi-Fi network.

CyberGhost also has an integrated kill switch that automatically suspends all internet traffic if your VPN is disconnected unexpectedly.

If you buy a three-year subscription, it works out to a relatively inexpensive £2.50 a month. However, its monthly and annual subscriptions are less economical. A seven-day free trial is available if you want to try out the service at no cost.

CyberGhost – Performance

The performance of CyberGhost’s UK and Netherlands endpoints slumped in our latest round of testing, although it’s important to remember that any speed test only provides a snapshot of a brief period of time.

UK FTP and HTTP performance hovered just under 5MB/s, throughput via Dutch endpoints was around 7MB/s, while US connections managed just 2MB/s. This is fine for standard web browsing and video streaming but could be a bottleneck if you have a fast internet connection and want to download large files while connected to your VPN.

We were pleased to find that, for the first time in recent years, we were able to maintain stable FTP connections during all of our tests, as well as HTTP connections

Related: What is a VPN?

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Why buy CyberGhost?

CyberGhost itself is based in Romania, where EU data retention laws have been declared unconstitutional, and does not log or store identifying data such as your IP address. If you need of an extra layer of anonymity, you can pay for your CyberGhost subscription in bitcoin or track down a boxed edition – these are can be found in the UK but most appear to be intended for sale in Germany.

Verdict

If you buy a one-year or one-month subscription online, CyberGhost is conspicuously expensive.

It’s easy to use, thanks to a friendly interface packed with shortcuts, and it’s especially good for streaming TV, but its relatively slow performance makes it hard to justify its price compared to faster streaming-friendly rivals such as Windscribe, which is also our favourite free service now that CyberGhost no longer offers a free tier.

If speed and a low price are most important to you, Kaspersky Secure Connection is a strong contender, while Private Internet Access is our recommended VPN service for the privacy-conscious.

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