Blog – I Want My VPN – Learn about the best VPNs for school and work

Cheap is a relative term. If you don’t want to spend money, you might choose a free VPN. However, you should expect to pay for your “free” service with your privacy and identity. That’s a high price, isn’t it? You should also expect to attract attention from marketers and hackers. If you want puncture-proof security that improves your life, you’ll need ExpressVPN. However, you’ll have to pay for it.

You may have to pay slightly more for ExpressVPN (Right now, one year costs $8.32 per month), but you also get more. In the end, you’ll get better service, industry-leading features, and a reliable guarantee for a surprisingly low price.

Continue reading this ExpressVPN review to find out why we believe that ExpressVPN is worth its weight in gold.

ExpressVPN Review

ExpressVPN’s daringly high price isn’t the only reason it gets attention. Your ExpressVPN subscription comes packed with features that other VPN services either can’t or won’t provide.

ExpressVPN Features

The Express VPN service comes with some vital features that your shouldn’t miss. Continue reading to learn about them.

ExpressVPN’s Trusted Server

For example, when ExpressVPN announced the decision to switch to TrustedServer, the company stunned the industry.

TrustedServer is a configuration that runs everything in RAM. In other words, the TrustedServer system makes logging impossible because no files are ever stored to a disk.

Although TrustedServer must store some data in RAM, it frequently overwrites those records, making forensics difficult, if not impossible. For this reason, this service has become one of the world’s safest VPNs.

Stop talking about the number of servers. Sure, ExpressVPN operates more than 3,000 servers in its worldwide network. However, what really matters is the number of locations in which it operates VPN servers.

Why does the number of VPN locations matter?

Suppose you travel from the USA to Eastern Europe. When you arrive, you’ll discover that you can’t access your favorite shows on Netflix. In such a case, you need to connect to a VPN server in the US. Afterward, Netflix will think that you’re in the US rather than in a European country.

Now, suppose the situation was reversed? You might live in Czechoslovakia and travel to the USA. How will you access Netflix from your country after you arrive? You can’t unless you have a VPN that has a location in your country.

With 160 locations, ExpressVPN has the coverage you need to enjoy a free, flexible life.

Buy ExpressVPN Now

Are you ready to buy your ExpressVPN subscription at the lowest price? Use our link to get started right now. After registering directly with ExpressVPN, you’ll have a chance to download the apps.

More ExpressVPN Features

Continue reading to discover more ExpressVPN features.

ExpressVPN Apps

Even if you understand why it’s to have a VPN, chances are you don’t know how a VPN works. Right now, you probably either don’t care how VPNs work or don’t have time to learn. That’s OK because ExpressVPN apps make VPNs easy.

ExpressVPN has free apps for all the popular operating systems and devices:

• Windows.
• MacOS.
• Linux.
• iOS.
• Android.

Knowing that most people will want to download the ExpressVPN Windows app, the company has spent a lot of time and money optimizing it. Consequently, it has one of the highest ratings in the industry.

ExpressVPN Windows users can use their app to choose their VPN protocol, encryption level, and VPN server. They can also use it to configure the app to use a kill switch to disable applications when their VPN disconnects.

You can configure many VPN-enabled routers to work with ExpressVPN. You may discover that this process involves some manual effort. However, ExpressVPN has a comprehensive documentation available that can help you quickly set up your router.

If you don’t want to protect all your computer’s data, you can choose to install the ExpressVPN browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

Simultaneous Connections

Many VPN providers allow you to simultaneously connect an unlimited number of devices to their service. ExpressVPN is different. The service limits you to five concurrent connections.

If you have five simultaneous connections to your VPN and want to connect another one, you’ll have to first disconnect one of them.

Does the connection limit apply to routers?

Your router counts as one device. So, you can connect as many TV’s, cameras, phones, and laptops as you want. In other words, your VPN considers your VPN-enabled router as a single end point. You can have as many devices simultaneously connected as you desire.

Non–5-Eyes, 9-Eyes, 14-Eyes

If you pay attention to the news, you know that the USA’s intelligence community is insane, unaccountable, and uncontrollable. Everything you do online is open to the FBI, CIA, police, and agencies you’ve probably never heard of.

Even worse, the US Government has a way to spy on US citizens within its jurisdiction without violating laws and regulations. Doing this requires US intelligence agencies to route their requests to spy on you through a 5-Eyes country (with whom the USA has reciprocal agreements).

5-Eyes countries include some of the world’s most powerful nations. These are the worst abusers of privacy and other human rights in the modern era:

• USA.
• Great Britain.
• Canada.
• Australia.
• New Zealand.

Some countries will cooperate with the USA’s spying apparatus, but not to the same level as 5-Eyes nations. These nations comprise the 9-Eyes alliance which also defies your human and digital rights:

• All 5-Eyes countries.
• Denmark.
• France.
• The Netherlands.
• Norway.

Fourteen Eyes is yet another extension of the USA-led effort to eradicate privacy. It includes five additional countries:

• All 9-Eyes countries.
• Germany.
• Belgium.
• Italy.
• Sweden.
• Spain.

Are there differences in the extent of abuse among 5-, 9-, and 14-Eyes countries?

Although you may discover some nuances here and there, 5-, 9-, and 14-Eyes are equal in their threat to personal liberty.

So what about 5-Eyes?

Now that you understand what the terms 5-, 9-, and 14-eyes means, you recognize the perilous position you’re in. Everything you do online is subject to the scrutiny of your potentially abusive government.

Do you remember DeepState’s “Russiagate” scandal? The FBI illegally surveilled an American political campaign on the behalf of the Democrat Party. As part of that operation, government agencies and political operatives downloaded the private information of at least one associate of the Trump campaign. The same thing could happen to you.

Obviously, a VPN can protect you against abusive surveillange. However, what happens if your VPN is located in the USA or another 5-, 9-, or 14-Eyes jurisdiction? Those countries could compel your VPN provider to give them real-time access to their system. That’s bad.

Choose a VPN that’s not based in a 5-, 9-, or 14-Eyes country. ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands. Therefore, you can depend on this service to keep their systems private.

Performance

Every VPN service requires bandwidth to operate, so you should look for one that minimizes its impact on performance.

In our tests, ExpressVPN caused speed degradations of less than 33 percent when connecting to servers in five different countries.

ExpressVPN’s performance depends on the quality, speed, and bandwidth of your internet connect.

Power Tip: Take advantage of the ExpressVPN 30-day money-back guarantee. If you’re concerned about VPN speed performance, create a benchmark for your device by visiting speedtest.net. Afterward, connect to ExpressVPN and re-run the test. If you’re unhappy, request a refund and try a different VPN.

ExpressVPN Offers

Your ExpressVPN subscription comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That means that you can use the service without any limitation for an entire month to see if you like. If you don’t, you lose nothing.

If you do like the service, you’ll gain an invaluable layer of safety, anonymity, and privacy.

You can choose one of three ExpressVPN offers:

• Monthly: $12.95 per month.
• Semi annual: $9.99 per month ($59.95 every 6 months).
• Annual: $8.32 per month ($99.95 per year).
• A trial period is available.

ExpressVPN payments

You can increase your online security by buying ExpressVPN anonymously using Bitcoin. Other payment options include PayPal, major credit cards and 11 additional payment options.

What can I do with my VPN service?

Express VPN gives you online freedom in various ways. The following examples only begin to illustrate what you can do with your VPN service.

Censorship

In the past, only people in Arab and Communist countries had to worry about censorship. Now, free speech is globally under assault. Express VPN can help you circumvent censorship so you can express yourself online.

Chinese government censorship pumps communist propaganda into the citizens’ mind day and night. Still, the government feels that unrest may develop if Chinese learn alternative perspectives from the outside world. Unfortunately, every internet service provider censors its users.

Big Tech does the same thing. Companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft want to control you. Therefore, they work with tyrannical governments, such as the US Government, to institute either official or de facto censorship policies.

Schools and employers may also attempt to control you by censoring your access to certain web sites and news.

If you want to fight censorship, you’ll need Express VPN. You can change its settings to make your VPN data look like ordinary HTTPS traffic. After tunneling through the firewall in stealth mode, you can access any internet resource without detection.

Best of all, since Express VPN is a verified “no-logs” VPN, no tracks exist that can connect your online activity to your ISP-assigned IP address.

Unblock video streaming

Express VPN is one of the fastest secure VPNs for video streaming. Regardless of whether you want to access Putlocker or try to unblock video on Netflix, you’ll have the ability to freely explore your entertainment options.

Get a new IP address

Most ISPs won’t give your router a new IP address. For this reason, you have no way to react when an or other website blocks your IP address.

Every time you connect to your VPN, your VPN’s server will assign to you an anonymous IP address that no one can trace to you. Therefore, if your IP gets blocked, you can instantly obtain a new one by connecting to your VPN.

Unblock Instagram

You can get by using your Express VPN subscription. Your school’s firewall will know that you’ve connected to an online server, but it won’t see what websites you visit. Therefore, you can enjoy freedom at school and work.

VPNs unblock your access to practically any blocked site by creating an encrypted tunnel through your school or employer’s firewall. This means that you can unblock porn at school and work. You’ll also enjoy access to all social networks.

Torrenting

Someone’s watching you when you download a textbook for free via a P2P torrent. Of course, practically every P2P download comes with risk. If you keep torrenting without protection, you’ll soon receive a cease and desist notice from either your ISP (at home) or your network administrator (at school or work).

Your VPN connection hides your online activity. Since Express VPN doesn’t store connection logs, IP owners, attorneys, and police can’t connect you to your downloads via your IP address. In other words, your anonymous VPN service makes torrenting safe.

Unlike NordVPN, Express VPN provides P2P support on all its servers. Furthermore, when you download torrents via ExpressVPN, you’ll never encounter throttling or bandwidth limitations.

Although NordVPN supports torrenting, that service will route your P2P requests via a small group of servers. Such a restriction can make your torrent downloads slow.

Some VPN services, such as Norton Secure VPN, don’t allow you to use their service to download torrents.

REMINDER: Never download a torrent without first connecting to a non–14-eyes, verified logs-free, paid, anonymous VPN service such as NordVPN or ExpressVPN.

Netflix

Did you know that Netflix provides different content to subscribers based on their location. For this reason, if you’re in South America and want to watch a show that’s only in Netflix’ US catalog, you’re out of luck.

Express VPN gives you a chance to connect to servers located in various countries. So, wherever you are in the world, you can unblock Netflix’ geographic restrictions.

Because VPNs create a tunnel within your internet connection, they consume bandwidth. For this reason, you can expect to notice some performance degradation. Our tests revealed that Express VPN performed well during video streaming.

Our tests verified that international users can access US Netflix servers from outside the country. Additionally, other video streaming services such as HBO GO, Hulu, and Amazon Video were accessible via Express VPN.

From the USA, Express VPN was able to unblock Netflix catalogs from Japan, Germany, the UK,a nd Mexico.

Geo-restricted content

Use the VPN to unblock geo-restricted content. Broadcasts sometimes restrict the availability of sports broadcasts to certain geographical areas. Consequently, you might not normally have access to see your favorite teams play.

If you first connect to a VPN that’s inside the event’s broadcast region, you can sit back and enjoy the game.

Shopping

Many online retailers have the ability to change their prices based on their shoppers’ location. For instance, counties surrounding Washington, DC have some of the highest per capita incomes in the USA. For this reason, they usually pay higher prices. But, what if you live in DC and want to save some money?

Use the VPN to shop for airline tickets, automobiles, and other products and services, check prices in different areas. After connecting your VPN app to different cities to compare prices. When you have the best price in your shopping cart, sign in and check out!

How is a VPN different from a DNS proxy?

A VPN proxy routes your DNS requests through an alternative server. Often you can use a DNS proxy to unblock Netflix and other georestricted content. A DNS proxy might also unblock Instagram for school or work. In that regard, a DNS proxy and a VPN achieve similar results.

If you choose to use a proxy service, you should beware of how it differs from a VPN.

• A proxy doesn’t encrypt your data. Your online tracks are open for everyone to see.
• A proxy may keep server logs. When you use a DNS proxy, a permanent record exists that associates your ISP-assigned IP address with your online behavior.

In other words, a proxy only unblocks some online content: It won’t provide you with any security, anonymity, or privacy.

Express VPN feature set

As an industry leader, Express VPN has practically every feature you could hope to find in a VPN. To give you a glimpse, review the following features.

Kill switch

Use the kill switch to prevent embarrassing and dangerous identity leaks. You can choose which applications to automatically close when your device loses VPN connectivity.

DNS

ExpressVPN uses its own private zero-knowledge DNS on every one of its servers. So, when you connect your devices to the service, you will automatically bypass your ISP’s DNS servers.

ExpressVPN’s DNS servers prevent your online activity from leaking to third parties. Additionally, they use 256-bit encryption to enhance your privacy. The servers to protect you against so-called “man-in-the-middle” attacks.

Governments and corporations can use DNS blocks to censor your online activity. So, suppose they didn’t want you to visit RushLimbaugh.com. In that case, they’ll remove the DNS record that will route that URL to the appropriate IP address. Express VPN doesn’t block any URLs via its DNS.

ExpressVPN encryption

VPN encryption uses advanced algorithms to scramble and descramble online data. ExpressVPN encryption uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit keys. The complexity of this form of encryption makes your data immune to brute-force attacks.

As you exchange data between your device and your VPN server, your VPN app encrypts and decrypts it in real time. Along the way, hackers, your ISP, and other snoops won’t have a chance to see information such as what websites you visit and the type of online content you view.

Split tunneling

When you connect to your VPN, all the internet traffic from your devices goes through that secure connection. Although this configuration provides complete security, it can cause problems. For instance, what do you do when you use a website that forbids the use of VPNs.

These sites may include banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, and writing sites such as Textbroker. With a typical VPN services, you must disconnect your entire device from the VPN to use those restricted sites. Split tunneling solves that problem.

Essentially, Express VPN gives you the best of both worlds. You can route some connections through your VPN while simultaneously routing others through your ISP.

RSA key

ExpressVPN’s RSA certificate is defined by SHA–512, a hashing algorithm that belongs to the SHA–2 family. It uses a 4096-bit RSA key.

Tunneling

Express VPN supports numerous tunneling protocols. The apps will automatically negotiate the best one to use. However, experienced users may choose to create custom configurations. ExpressVPN supports OpenVPN L2TP/IPsec PPTP.

Learn more about VPN tunneling: https://www.expressvpn.com/internet-security/vpn-tunnel

ExpressVPN VPN protocols

Express VPN uses the OpenVPN protocol with TCP and UDP which has become an industry standard. OpenVPN is a leading, secure VPN protocol that

Other available ExpressVPN VPN protocols include LT2P/IPsec and PPTP.

OpenVPN is extremely secure. Because it’s open source, OpenVPN experts from around the world can attest to its safety.

CAUTION: PPTP and L2TP-IPsec deliver weak security and should only be used for anonymizing your connection or for location changes.

Forward secrecy

Suppose a hostile entity gained access to your computer and could do the impossible: Decrypt your VPN traffic. Such a “successful” endeavor would last for less than an hour, because ExpressVPN employs “forward secrecy.”

Every 60 minutes, the VPN creates a new secret key. Furthermore, every time you reconnect to the service, you get a new secret key. So, even if criminals and government agents compromise your system, they can only obtain a limited amount of data.

Tor over VPN

Tor can help you anonymously use the internet. However, tor nodes can detect everything from your original IP address to the websites you visit. Even worse, US Government agencies may monitor Tor.

By connecting to Express VPN and then connecting to Tor, you add an extra layer of protection to your online experience.

NordVPN offers a similar feature.

Server Authentication

ExpressVPN uses a combination of your username and password for server authentication. The implementation used by Express VPN provides many advantages over certificate-based server authentication schemes.

The VPN service never transmits your user credentials via plain text. Instead, Express VPN apps create a secure TLS connection with the remote server. In other words, no one can intercept your username and password, even if you make a typographical error.

HMAC authentication

Hash Message Authentication Code prevents third parties from altering your data while in transit. OpenVPN and TLS protocols both use hashes.

Express VPN support

When you choose this service, you’ll have access to 24/7 customer service and support via live chat. You’ll also have the option to open a support ticket via email. In the rare event that you need help, it’s never far away.

In addition to support via live chat and email, you can get instant support via ExpressVPN’s self-service tools.

Testing and verifying VPNs

Express VPN provides free tools that can help you test and verify the performance of your service.

What is my IP address?

First, discover your external, ISP-assigned IP address by using . After that, connect to your VPN. Finally, rerun the test. You should now have a different IP address.

DNS leaks

Typing an IP address to visit a website can take a lot of time and effort. Additionally, IP addresses are difficult to memorize. For this reason, the concept of the URL emerged.

A URL let’s you type letters and words into your browser’s address bar. A URL looks something like https://iwantmyvpn.com. However, as already noted, web servers use IP addresses, not URLs. How, then, can you type words into your browser and reach a server that uses a numeric address? DNS is the answer.

A domain name server translates URLs into IP addresses.

What’s the problem with DNS?

A domain name server is a server. It keeps server connection logs. So, if your real IP address is logged on a DNS server log, you have lost your anonymity. Such a situation is a DNS leak.

** A DNS leak can give away your true identity. **

To make sure you’re protected, visit the Express VPN DNS leak tool. will reveal whether your browser is giving away your unique ISP-assigned IP address.

If you see your ISP listed as “provider” on this page, you’re not protected.

WebRTC

Another source of leaks is the WebRTC, a web-based, real-time communications protocol that can reveal your public IP address. lets you test for leaks.

NordVPN vs ExpressVPN

You might recognize NordVPN as another of the world’s leading VPNs. Naturally, you might want to know which product is the better option.

You probably can’t go wrong with either of these VPNs. However, you should spend some time comparing them to determine which is the best VPN for you.

ExpressVPN FAQ

The Final Word

ExpressVPN is a premium service that worked as advertised throughout our testing process. It’s a fast VPN that minimizes overhead and maximizes throughput. As a result of our ExpressVPN review, we award the VPN our highest rating: 5 stars. Learn more about Express VPN on our ExpressVPN FAQ Page.