VPN In Touch Review

Promising to put customers first and deliver an unbeatable performance, VPN in Touch suffers when users put those commitments to the test. If anything, this is a missed opportunity to create a user-friendly, accessible privacy tool.

VPN in Touch is a German company that briefly flickers into life as a privacy contender, before crashing and burning by the wayside. The claims on the website are solid – from great encryption and leak protection to lightning fast speeds, unblocking content, and offering value for money. Translating those claims into reality proves to be a frustrating experience. Still, there may be reasons to give this provider a try. Before you do though, check out our VPN in Touch review to get the low-down on everything it has to offer.

Security and privacy

If a VPN falls down on the security side, it has little value for users, so it’s often the best place to begin. Here’s what VPN in Touch has to offer:

• AES-128 encryption

It’s been a while since we’ve seen such a “list” of security features.

Superficially, VPN in Touch talks a good game, but its home page leaves a lot unsaid. It promises to minimize your vulnerability to malware and pop-ups, to encrypt data before sending it across the web, to lock down public wifi and prevent hacking, and to allow access to censored online content. But all of this is fairly vague, and it’s not easy to find information about the type of encryption you’ll benefit from when you download the client.

You won’t find any enlightenment in the VPN’s Google Play or iTunes listings, and there’s no FAQ section to help us out. It’s all a bit disheartening because the headline promises are encouraging.

We’d like to know whether there’s a DNS leak protection feature, whether there’s a kill switch, a stealth protocol, as well as how the tool handles IPv6. But this VPN is light on details and heavy on marketing. That’s definitely a major red flag from our perspective.

Does VPN in Touch keep logs?

Although the VPN in Touch website is more or less useless, it does offer some insight through what it omits. There’s no mention of a no-logs policy, which is usually foregrounded by commercial VPNs.

When you dive into the Privacy Policy, things don’t become reassuring. When users log-on, the VPN will collect location information, “device-specific information,” and “anonymous, aggregate” information about the sites you visit. It may be anonymous, but it’s still logging.

For example, user information is shared with third parties to provide promotional or advertising services, as well as for vaguely defined “business purposes.”

Customers may also feel slightly uneasy about the company’s German location. While Germany isn’t the worst place to base a VPN, it is a 14 Eyes alliance member, and services based in more privacy-oriented jurisdictions are always available.

Speed and performance

VPN in Touch offers users the chance to “surf the web at lightning speeds.” Our speed tests suggest that this isn’t actually the case. We had mediocre results with a baseline speed of 300 Mbps. In continents other than Europe or North America, the connection will probably be sluggish. If you’re not happy with your current internet speed, most likely you will never want to use it with a VPN in Touch turned on.

Server coverage

As usual, VPN in Touch isn’t forthcoming about where its servers are located, simply mentioning locations in the UK, Japan, USA, Germany, Canada, France, Singapore, and the Netherlands. When we loaded up the free VPN client, that was exactly what we found, and there’s no sign that the premium version offers anything more extensive. That’s a grand total of 8 server locations – pretty miserly by today’s standards. That might be one reason why the lightning fast speeds failed to materialize.

Ease of use and multiplatform support

If you’re still keen on downloading the client, VPN in Touch is officially available on the following platforms:

• Windows (although we couldn’t find the app)
• Android
• iOS
• Windows Phone

It’s good to see a Windows Phone app, but straight off the bat, you’ll notice that there’s no client for Mac or Linux. And there’s no VPN in Touch router app, either. The creators intended this to be a lightweight, entry-level tool and focused solely on the major platforms, but it seems that getting VPN in Touch is hard for any type of operating system.

The version for smartphones is easy to access and download. We had less luck with the Windows version, which is mysteriously hard to track down. We tried everywhere, but couldn’t find a download link, so in the end, there seems to be no Windows app either.

As far as the smartphone apps go, things couldn’t be simpler. It’s easy to use and clearly laid out but bears a suspicious resemblance to the Hotspot Shield VPN app. In fact, when you power up the mobile app, you’ll briefly see a “powered by Hotspot Shield” message, which suggests that VPN in Touch has bought the software powering its privacy tools. So why even use their services when another company is responsible for developing them?

Unblocking Netflix and other streaming platforms

While the service advertises its ability to work around geo-restriction across the globe, the actual user experience is very different. We had no luck accessing Netflix neither in the US nor in the UK, and the BBC iPlayer showed the same old restrictions. We’d have to assume that users trying to access Hulu have the same issue: intense frustration.

Additionally, there’s no option to install VPN in Touch onto streaming devices like Roku or Amazon Firestick. A good VPN can unblock your favorite TV show and protect your activity for less money. So streaming is another washout.

Check out our list of Best VPNs for Netlfix

P2P and torrenting

VPN in Touch doesn’t mention torrenting on its website, and there’s no information about the inclusion of P2P-friendly features like a SOCKS5 proxy or a kill switch. That’s not unusual for a German provider, as that country is well-known for cracking down on anyone abusing a P2P connection. German VPNs are required by law to submit to official security audits as well – another issue which suggests that this is one of the worst VPNs around for torrent downloads. Don’t even risk it.

Check out our list of Best VPNs for torrenting

Online censorship in China and elsewhere

VPN in Touch is bad for China and other countries with restricted internet freedom. For one thing, the Terms and Conditions are heavily weighted towards governments rather than users. They state that “You agree not to violate any laws of any jurisdiction you are originating from, or terminating into,” which could include submitting to censorship or the provision of information to surveillance agencies.

What’s more, there’s no “stealth protocol,” which would help to conceal the fact that those in repressive regimes are using a VPN (and help to bypass Deep Packet Inspection). Because of this, it’s tough to envisage VPN in Touch vaulting over the Great Firewall of China or negating censorship in Belarus or Saudi Arabia.

Customer support

Sadly, this is another area where VPN in Touch fails almost completely. Despite the company’s name, getting in touch is a painful process, with long delays in email responses, and the provision of misleading or irrelevant information when representatives do respond.

There’s no live support at all, and no FAQ section to provide quick answers to basic security questions. You can’t launch a live chat or give the company a call, and the whole website is almost utterly faceless. We got the feeling that VPN in Touch leaves customers totally on their own.

Pricing

VPN in Touch offers the following pricing packages:

• 1 month for $9.99
• 6 months for $2.99/month
• 1 year for $2.49/month

Because the Windows client seems to be totally unavailable, the only ways to pay for those packages are via the iTunes Store and Google Play – making anonymous payments out of the question. While those prices aren’t outrageously high, they aren’t the lowest available. However, given the quality (or lack thereof) offered by VPN in Touch, the reality is that they don’t represent any form of value.

There are some bright spots though. The company offers a 7-day free trial and there’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, which isn’t always the case with budget VPNs.

However, the company itself takes no responsibility in managing its refund policy. Everything is outsourced to the payment providers involved (Google and Apple), so the promises are slightly hollow.

The policy also isn’t as generous as it might look. For example, users cannot use more than 500 MB of upload and download data – a comparably tiny amount. Almost anyone using the VPN for a week will reach that level, rendering the guarantee worthless.

None of that is surprising, given the other details we know about VPN in Touch. It’s just another piece of evidence that suggests your money is better spent elsewhere.

Bottom line

Have we ever seen a worse VPN? Yes. Is this a VPN worth considering to protect your online privacy, optimize your streaming experience, and maintain acceptable speeds? Not at all.

Sadly, VPN in Touch is well adrift of industry leaders. Its website is pathetic, lacking basic information. Users can’t download the Windows app, despite it being clearly advertised. There are major security, logging, and performance issues. Support is dismal, and the refunds? Best forget them. Unless you want a 7-day free trial and aren’t too fussed about performance, this is a provider to avoid.