Trust.Zone VPN Review

Video Review

About Trust.Zone

Trust.Zone, which was founded in 2014, is based in a country that you’d probably want to vacation in: the Seychelles Islands, which sit northeast of Madagascar, are said to be some of the most beautiful islands in the world. If working for this company meant I could sink my toes in that white sand every day, I would definitely apply.

But seriously: For our purposes, the fact that Trust.Zone is in Seychelles is a big deal. The country is located outside of all Five, Nine, and 14 Eyes jurisdiction, which means this VPN will not be subjected to those nosy surveillance alliances that want to track your data for God knows what.

They currently have 165 working servers across 35 countries, which isn’t the most expansive network I’ve seen (for example, CyberGhost has 3,157  across 60 countries). But this might not be a problem for me if I’m located near most of their servers and I find that their service is top-notch.

Trust.Zone Features

Now let’s talk about the VPN itself.

Will Trust.Zone Log My Data?

Good news! Trust.Zone will not log your data, save for the email address that you register with. Most importantly, they will not log your IP address, traffic, web activity— you know, the stuff you got a VPN to protect in the first place!

Does Trust.Zone Have a Kill Switch?

Trust.Zone does have a kill switch, also known as a network lock feature. That means that if the VPN fails for whatever, reason, all of your browsers and activity will automatically shut down. Think of it as a Plan B if Plan A, the VPN, fails.

What Kind of Tunneling Does Trust.Zone Offer?

Trust.Zone does not offer split tunneling, so you won’t be able to be on a private and a public network simultaneously. From that, I can conclude that Trust.Zone uses more bandwidth than a VPN with split tunneling, but we’ll get more into that when we do our speed tests.

Can I Use Netflix with Trust.Zone?

The answer is sometimes. Netflix works on one server in the U.S, one in the U.K, one in Canada, and one in France. It does, however, take some special configurations, but Trust.Zone provides really clear step-by-step instructions. Unfortunately, Netflix will not work on the majority of Trust.Zone’s servers.

Trust.Zone Encryption

Encryption is what turns your data into code so no one can figure out your traffic. Let’s see how Trust.Zone encrypts your data.

AES-256

The Advanced Encryption Standard is just that, a widely used method for encryption and decryption, measured in bits. In case you were wondering, 256-bits is currently the industry standard, so props to Trust.Zone for including it. They also encrypted our web traffic twice, a process called Double VPN.

RSA-4096

RSA is a way to make sure that the right person is using your VPN using multi-factor authentication. This could be as simple as a push notification or one-time password, or as complicated as biometrics or hard and soft tokens. Basically, RSA-4096 will make sure that the right person is using the software (namely, you).

IPSec

IPSec can be used in two ways, either encrypting the data packet message itself, or the entire data packet in tunneling mode. Used in tandem with other Internet protocols, it’s great for creating secure Internet communications.

Trust.Zone Protocols

Internet protocols determine how data is transmitted across a network. How does Trust.Zone actually transfer your data through the encrypted tunnel and to the server itself?

OpenVPN

OpenVPN is known as the most secure way to bypass firewalls, the perfect combo of speed and security. Instead of being created by a company, it’s crowd-sourced and is constantly being altered to avoid interference by surveillance agencies.

L2TP

Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol generates the tunnel through which your data will travel, but it doesn’t actually do any encryption.

Alright, now you know everything there is to know about Trust.Zone…right? Well, let’s get out hands dirty and actually test this thing out!

Testing Trust.Zone

When it comes to testing my VPNs, I’m looking for two things— speed and security. To get the most accurate results, I make sure I’m the only one on my Optimum network from my home in Brooklyn, New York. In addition, I do all my tests on both a Macbook Air and a Windows computer. Let’s see how Trust.Zone actually performs!

Speed Test

When it came to download speed, Trust.Zone performed much better on my Windows computer, with a slowdown of only 14%, compared to my Vivobook, which had a download speed slowdown of 44%.

Download Speed Tests

The trend carried over to upload speed, as I saw only a 13% slowdown on my Vivobook compared to a 34% slowdown on my Mac.

Upload Speed Tests

The final component that I test is ping, or latency.

Ping Speed Tests

For latency, the trend was reversed. My Mac only had about a third more latency, while the Vivobook’s latency was 54% slower with the VPN. Despite this, overall Trust.Zone was faster on my Windows computers than it was on my Mac, although it worked well on both.

Of course, you should keep in mind that your Internet speed is going to differ greatly based on a number of factors— your distance to the nearest Trust.Zone server, your Internet Service Provider, hardware, browser, etc.

DNS Leak Test

You probably type these 1,000 times a day, but do you actually know what a domain name server, or DNS, is? Domain names are the names of websites that you type in, like Security.org. Each domain name stands for an IP address which actually tells your computer where to go. Think of the DNS like “the big red house on the corner” and the IP address as “123 Main Street”. Obviously, if you’re using a VPN, you don’t want people knowing what web traffic you have going on, so it’s important that Trust.Zone has no DNS leaks. Well, I’ve got great news for you. Trust.Zone passed the DNS leak test!

WebRTC Leak Test

WebRTC stands for Web Real-Time Communication, and it’s what allows web browsers to communicate directly with each other rather than through an intermediate server, creating faster speeds for things like file sharing, livestreaming, or video chatting. However, the downside of WebRTC is that it requires knowing the other user’s private IP address, information that I definitely don’t want getting leaked outside of my perfectly encrypted VPN tunnel. The verdict? No WebRTC leaks!

Trust.Zone performed well on all of my tests, although I would recommend it to a Windows user over a Mac user.

Trust.Zone Subscriptions

Okay, now it’s time for the fun part: pricing.

Options

One of the coolest things about Trust.Zone is that you can try it out for free and see how it works on your computer. I love this, as so many factors influence your VPN’s performance: your distance from the server, operating system, your hardware, etc. Once that trial is up, Trust.Zone offers subscriptions for one month, one year, or two years. The only difference between the plans are their monthly prices. The longer you sign up for, the less expensive your monthly cost will be, ranging from $2.66 to $6.99. This is a very reasonable price for a VPN, so I’m happy.

Manual Configurations

Trust.Zone works on Windows, Apple, Android, Linux, Router, Xbox 360, Play Station, Smart TV, and the Amazon Fire TV/ Fire TV Stick.

Supported Browsers

Trust.Zone will protect your web activity and traffic on any browser, including Mozilla and Chrome.

Trust.Zone Customer Support

To contact Trust.Zone’s customer support, you can either fill out an online form or look at their section of FAQ’s, which is pretty robust.

Unfortunately, Trust.Zone doesn’t have any reviews online from real customers, but I can tell you that in my experience, they took about a day to answer my emails. The answers I got were really straightforward and well-written so overall, I’m satisfied with Trust.Zone’s customer support.

The OpenVPN for Android App

While Trust.Zone doesn’t currently have an app in the Apple store, you can use the OpenVPN app in the Google Play store. The app has a great rating of 4.3, with the large majority of the reviews at a perfect five-star.

“Superb! Ditch the official app and go for this. One click widget and pull down menu buttons are extremely useful. Works flawlessly,”

wrote Jason Ball in a recent five-star review. Just another feather in Trust.Zone’s cap!

Recap of Trust.Zone

I would definitely recommend Trust.Zone as a VPN. It’s fast, reliable, and secure.