Other VPN providers than PureVPN

Hi Fahad,

Thank you for your reply. You mention transparency, but when I look at the pricing mechanics of PureVPN, it is anything but transparent. I expect a predictable pricing of my service providers, I don't want to be lured in with special offers, I just want to have a straight and fair price. (maybe I'm not like the average consumer, although I guess people that are tech savvy enough to get a VPN subscription are generally not the average consumer anyway)

Second reason not to trust PureVPN is because it's the only one offered by default by Netgear. If no choice is given, it's more often than not a deal amongst befriended companies. Companies that offer the best product on the market for a fair price, don't need any such deals to be successful.

Third reason is because of the privacy policy of PureVPN that is unconvincing, find more about that on this page: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/purevpn. Quote: "The policy says that it does not store IP addresses, assigned VPN IP addresses, session timestamps, DNS requests, or (most importantly) browsing activities. That's great. Later, however, the policy says PureVPN does know the day of each connection, how long the connection lasted, how much data was consumed, and the VPN location used—it just doesn't use timestamps or IP addresses to do it."

Fourth reason: according to a review of Toms Guide (link: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/purevpn-review), there was an example of data being logged by PureVPN as recent as 2017. And not only was this data logged, it was also provided to the authorities on request, according to these sources (please let me know if this information is incorrect). Also a review from this Dutch VPN guide mentions that unnecessary logging of personal data takes place at PureVPN: https://www.vpngids.nl/reviews/purevpn-vpn-provider/. I'm reading that since 2019 this should be fixed, but that's too recent for me to have gained trust. If PureVPN was founded in 2006 and in 2017 it was still not fixed, that tells me they didn't care about the privacy of their customers.

Fifth reason: it's not clear to me where PureVPN is seated. Some sources mention British Virgin Islands, some mention Hong Kong. I think it's strange that I can't find the answer on the main page and not even on the 'About us' page on purevpn.com. In any case, both locations are not giving me peace of mind for a VPN provider: Britisch Virgin Islands is part of the UK and therefor part of the Five Eyes privacy-intrusive agreement, whereas Hong Kong is now getting more and more pressure and influence from China, which is also a country not known for their great respect of privacy.

Sixth reason: there are too many call-to-action buttons on your website. In general, this lowers my trust in a company, not specifically for your company, but in general. I know all the marketing / sales tricks and your company is using a lot of them. For a VPN provider, I want one that does not need any tricks to get me in.

So to sum up:

1. pricing scheme not straight-forward

2. lack of competition on the Netgear front

3. unconvincing privacy policy

4. incidents with logging of personal data

5. unclarity about the seat of PureVPN

6. too many call to action buttons on website

I hope my answer gave you something to work with. In case of any incorrect information in my post, please let me know and point me to the correct information and I'll gladly update my post.

Additional tip: if you could make a 'Reject all' button in your cookie message, this would improve my experience at your website and therefor slightly increase the chance of me buying your product.

Kind regards,

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