Overview of VPN services for Android

[CarderPlanet]

Hello, running in the shadows! Hello, random carder. Today we will look at several VPN services for your favorite Android smartphone.

Recently, a lot of VPN apps for Android have appeared on Google Play. And it is not surprising-with the current situation in the Network. Recently, WhatsApp was blocked in Brazil, and there not only the popularity of its competitors jumped, but also the interest in various VPN services grew (read more in one of our articles). So we decided to see what services Google Play generally has related to bypassing blockages and changing jurisdictions.

VPN for Android
First of all — a list of VPN applications under consideration:

• SuperVPN Free VPN Client
• TouchVPN Security Access (VPN & Proxy)
• Free VPN Proxy by Betternet
• Security Master / VPN Master (RU) Free proxy
• Seed4.Me VPN Proxy

In Google Play, all the listed apps are marked as free, but this should not be misleading — in practice, either a "free" VPN is given for a certain period, or its functionality is somehow limited (for example, the ability to connect only to certain ports). However, this is often enough for users who only need to "bypass the site blocking".

Let's take a look at the VPN review criteria for Android. We will compare the following characteristics:

• ease of use (everything is banal here — how many actions do you need to perform to connect to a VPN);
• supported encryption algorithms;
• operating principle;
• connection speed and stability;
• payment methods;
• traffic exit points.

SUPERVPN
The SuperVPN app provides a VPN with exit points in France, Canada, the United States, Germany, Japan, and England (the latter two are paid only). It's very easy to use: install the app, press the big round button... that's it! You don't even need to register.

The trial period is 20 days, then continuous access will be only for an hour with the possibility of reconnecting. Who provides this VPN is unknown — the app doesn't have a website. There are also no user agreements.

You can select a country, and no more advanced settings are offered. For ordinary users, of course, this is not very necessary — it is important for them that the VPN just works, without any dances with a tambourine. Nevertheless, it was possible to provide at least the ability to select a port.

Inside, this is the most common strongSwan. Profile data is generated on the server side based on device information (such as Android ID and IMSI). However, it is transmitted unhashed, which is fraught with consequences.

The addresses of exit points are not included in almost any of the black lists — an exception is an address in Germany that is included in one of the spam lists.

The connection speed is surprisingly very decent — however, it is possible that this is due to the trial period and after it ends, the speed will drop to a minimum.

The cost of a VPN month is $ 5. Payment methods include Google Wallet and PayPal.

In general, a VPN is suitable for bypassing simple blockages. To register somewhere, you should not use it, because it is not known who owns the VPN servers. The abundance of ads in the free version is annoying — but that's why it's free, and you'll only see ads when you connect to the server.

If you really want to, you can extend the trial period indefinitely — just mess around with the disassembled bytecode, so that instead of using system identifiers, the application takes them from somewhere in the file. However, if there are alternatives, this makes almost no sense.

TOUCHVPN
TouchVPN provides VPN access across the following countries:

• Sweden;
• Great Britain;
• Japan;
• Denmark;
• France;
• USA;
• Canada.

As in the previous app, there is a large round button that enables VPN. However, in addition to this button, you can also select a country on the home screen.

I didn't want to launch TouchVPN on my tablet in horizontal mode, so I switched it to vertical mode (it affects the focus on phones), so I had to deploy it using the app to force screen rotation.

VPN is declared as completely free, without any trial periods, working only at the expense of advertising. Unlike SuperVPN, the app at least has a website, a usage agreement, and a privacy policy.

In the settings (which can be accessed by "pulling" the left edge of the screen), you can enable scanning for unsecured networks, auto-disconnect the connection when switching to standby mode, and change the topic.

Inside, OpenVPN is used with a certificate and a username and password. Authentication data is generated based on a variety of values (including values taken from Google services, so if you have firmware without these services, then you will not be able to use TouchVPN).

Despite the fact that the end user still only needs to click one button to connect, the internal registration procedure as a whole looks much more complicated than in the previous application.

But there is an oddity with the traffic exit addresses: almost no address corresponds to the country in the list. For example, if "USA" is selected, the address will be in Brazil, "Canada" - in the USA, and so on.

At least three addresses are on one or two black lists; however, this is not so critical. The speed is higher than 2 Mbit/s everywhere, and YouTube videos are played quite decently and without jerks.

There is no trial period as such, but sometimes annoying ads pop up. In addition, the text of the terms of use and the decompiled bytecode mention premium accounts, but there is no information on how to get them.

In general, the service makes a good impression, protection from left accounts is built in such a way that it is difficult to find ends on the spot, but it remains unclear how it pays off. In addition, there are several issues, one of which is the discrepancy between exit points and countries.

BETTERNET
Betternet was one of the most popular services in Brazil when WhatsApp was blocked. It provides a free address in the United States, while paid addresses are available in England, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Japan, and Singapore.

There are both terms of use and a privacy policy (by the way, it is very loyal to users-it is claimed that no personal information is collected).

There are no settings, but you can log in with a premium account. It is not clear, however, why-after all, when purchasing a premium account, Google services are used. In this case, it would be more logical to purchase an account, linking it not to Gmail (which at least I have my own for each device), but to a regular email.

Inside, as in the case of TouchVPN, OpenVPN is used, and implemented using the same de.blinkt.openvpn library, which provides a wrapper around native libraries.

Getting authentication data is quite confusing, so it's pointless to bypass it.

The connection speed is decent, but lower than that of TouchVPN. However, streaming audio plays without any problems. The premium account costs 326 rubles per month.

The service looks pretty decent, especially the privacy policy and less advertising than TouchVPN, but for premium functionality, you could also make a trial mode.

SECURITY MASTER
The Security Master app provides 500 MB of traffic for free. There are both VIP servers (with less ping time) and free ones. List of countries:

• Netherlands;
• Germany;
• France;
• Great Britain;
• Canada;
• USA;
• Singapore;
• Japan (VIP only).

No terms of use or privacy policy are provided. The site is available, but it is actually an advertising page aimed at the Russian-speaking audience.

In the settings, you can enable auto-connection when starting both the program and the device. There is a nice widget for speed monitoring.

Inside is OpenVPN again. Registration is quite confusing, but it looks much simpler than in the previous two applications, so if you dig around, you can use fake data. It uses, among other things, IMSI, phone number, Android ID, and other data that is unique to the device. Apparently, they are transmitted in clear text and are not hashed at all, which, given the unknown ownership of the service, looks at least suspicious.

Some of the addresses have an acceptable speed, some of them are below 1 Mbit/s, and some of them can't be measured at all — connecting to a content server is extremely difficult. In addition, the app itself has a warning that if you try to use P2P, your account will be blocked.

About half of the exit addresses are included in one or more black lists.

I couldn't find out the cost of a VIP VPN account for Android.

Summary: The VPN service, although it provides a lot of exit addresses, seems to be the worst of all that was described earlier. Given the lack of terms of use and privacy policies, coupled with the collection of information such as IMSI, it is not necessary to apply it.

SEED4.ME
The app Seed4.Me — this is the only one of the described services that provides, in addition to the application, also a classic VPN. Servers are available in the following countries:

• USA;
• Great Britain;
• Netherlands;
• Russia;
• Ukraine;
• Hong Kong;
• Singapore;
• France;
• Spain;
• Germany;
• Italy;
• Canada.

The interface, compared to other applications, is a bit unusual — you need to select the "country of virtual presence", and then click "Connect" (this time the button is square). If you try to "flip through" the app, it turns out that, in addition to being able to connect, you can either "link" your account to an email address, or use an existing one — none of the apps described earlier have this functionality.

The site has terms of use. It should only be noted that, judging by them, the owners do not monitor users, but they reserve this right. There are no settings. The only thing you can configure is linking your account to an email address.

As a backend, it uses... yes, all the same OpenVPN. This time, however, a slightly different modification of it. In addition, the developers tried very hard to complicate decompilation: a huge bunch of small classes with unintelligible names, the control flow is almost impossible to track... if something like this happens on a PC, the antivirus would definitely suspect malware.

Due to obfuscation, it was not possible to find out what data is used for registration, but the call, for example, getLine1Number() is present in the decompiled code, which, like protection, makes you wary. But a closer examination showed that the data is still not sent in plain text — a unique identifier is generated based on it, which is used in the future.

Most of the addresses have a speed of about 2 Mbit / s, which, in principle, is quite enough for surfing. Only Russian and Ukrainian addresses are on the same blacklist. Methods of payment in the app there is only Google Wallet, but on the website are PayPal, QIWI, Yandex Money, Sberbank, and even Bitcoin. A month of access costs $ 5, but the VPN provider often holds promotions, so the chance of getting a VPN for free for a certain period of time is quite high.

Of the described services, this one looks the most preferable, it has more exit points than the others, payment is accepted not only by cards, and there is a possibility of a classic VPN connection using PPTP.

CONCLUSION

We will briefly describe all the described services.

* SuperVPN: few exit points, no additional settings, no user agreement. But only one address is blacklisted. A lot of fairly sensitive data is collected.

* TouchVPN: excessive advertising, inconsistency of the declared exit countries with real ones, inability to purchase a premium account — cons. The presence of a website and a user agreement, as well as the absence of a trial period, are advantages.

* Betternet: only US addresses are used on free accounts, and the lack of a trial period to try other addresses is a disadvantage. Good terms of use and a privacy policy are advantages.

* Security Master: relatively many exit points are a plus. Among the minuses, I note the disgusting speed at some exit points, P2P blocking, lack of a user agreement, a long wait for a response from a representative in one of the social networks, and about half of the addresses are blacklisted.

• Seed4.Me: the largest number of exit countries, the presence of a website and user agreement, a huge number of payment methods, frequent promotions to attract new users, the ability to link an account to an email and use a "classic" VPN-pros. The disadvantage is that some exit points do not provide speeds above 1 Mbit/s; however, it is easy to assume that the speed decrease coincided with the testing time.

If we talk about the disadvantages of such applications in general — oddly enough, almost all of the described applications are not designed for tablets, respectively, in order for them to work in landscape orientation, you have to use crutches. Another disadvantage is the collection of sensitive information about the device, which is most often sent to servers in clear form.

To summarize: VPN for Android, or rather, these applications are designed to bypass resource locks and sit on the network from unprotected wireless access points. For something that requires more privacy/anonymity, it is better to use either a classic VPN or other means.

You may also be interested in a free VPN in the mobile version of the Opera browser (read more about this in one of the articles on the forum).