If you’re a seasoned internet user, you’ve probably heard something about VPNs, and chances are if you’re a reader of Ausdroid, you know what a VPN is and probably have access to one. For everyone else, probably wondering why on earth they’d need one, there’s a few common reasons:
- You don’t want your ISP (or workplace, or WiFi hotspot operator) to know what you’re doing or looking at
- You want to appear on the Internet as coming from somewhere else (to access US Netflix, for example)
- You’re using an insecure network, but don’t want to compromise your security
Of course there’s many more reasons, but for the casual internet user, these are the most common, and there’s many, many options out there to consider with varying levels of support, configurability, compatibility and more.
Today, I’m telling you a bit about Trust.Zone, and yeah before you ask, this is a sponsored article. We run these from time to time to help keep the lights on at Ausdroid.
Here’s some of the key features of Trust.Zone VPN, some of which set it apart from other offerings:
- You can use OpenVPN or L2TP (some providers offer only one)
- Unlimited speed — within reason, of course
- Unlimited bandwidth — no need to worry about exceeding usage limits
- You can use Peer 2 Peer apps, e.g. BitTorrent, a common use for VPNs these days
With more than 130 servers in 32 different countries, including popular locations across Northern America, Europe, throughout Asia and around Australia too, you can use Trust.Zone VPN to access services overseas while you’re in Australia, and if you travel overseas, you can use the same service to access Australian-restricted services (such as geo-restricted streaming video content or Foxtel) from overseas. I’ve personally tried this, and it’s just like being at home — being able to watch Foxtel overseas, or ABC News 24, is really handy.
For advanced networkers, you can integrate Trust.Zone at your router level (if it supports L2TP or OpenVPN on device) to protect your entire network without having to configure individual devices. Of course, it might just be easier to run things on your devices as you need to, with support for iOS, Android, Linux, Windows and Mac (and if you’re careful, you can probably set it up on ChromeOS too).
So, what’s the rub? You can sign up to a month-by-month plan, a yearly plan, or a quarterly plan. The pricing is advertised in USD, but you can readily convert this to AUD through the check-out process. As at the time of writing, the options look like this:
- 1 month – just under $10
- 3 months – about $21
- 1 year – about $55
These prices include GST for local transactions, though if you’re reading/buying outside Australia, sales tax may vary. Obviously, the yearly package represents great value at under $5 a month. That’s about a cup of coffee (or with Sydney prices, maybe half a cup of coffee) a month for unlimited VPN services which you can use wherever you want.
If you want to try them out, you can take a free 3-day trial too.
I’ve tried it out, and wouldn’t recommend the service if it was no good, but if you want a more fulsome review, there’s this review on TheBestVPN.com which you can read too.
