Kaspersky Secure Connection Review: Is This Russian VPN Any Good?

If you’ve heard of Kaspersky before you probably think of it as a company that offers a wide range of internet security products. Its tools reach over 400 million users, and it has over 3000 employees.

We’re dealing with a big company here. Some of its products secure massive networks of data for huge companies. Sounds like a good thing, right?

Well, in this review, we take a close look at Kaspersky’s VPN service and all of its features, to find out whether bigger is necessarily better in this field.

Let’s get to it.

What is Kaspersky VPN?

One of the ways VPN services are able to provide increased privacy is by hiding your real IP address by replacing it with one from their servers. This objective is the same with Kaspersky VPN, it wants to secure your internet connection to give you more safety and privacy online.

The big question is, does Kaspersky VPN do this well, and what other features does it offer to enhance your experience online?

From the outside looking in, Kaspersky appears to be doing a good job as it utilizes industry-leading encryption, top-notch protocols, and has no DNS leaks.

So far, so good. Let’s now take a look at its pricing.

Pricing Structure of Kaspersky VPN

It is not easy finding a simple pricing structure on the Kaspersky website. Since it has so many products, we kept getting redirected to different items available for purchase. When we finally found what we were looking for we found a truly affordable VPN.

Here is the pricing of Kaspersky VPN:

With this product, you can pay using debit or credit card and PayPal. Unfortunately, it does not have an option for you to pay using cryptocurrency or cash.

What We Like About Kaspersky VPN

We’ve already mentioned some of the things we like about Kaspersky VPN, but now we will go into further detail on this service’s most standout features. There is a lot to get into so buckle up.

Best Encryption and Protocol

We say what we mean, and we mean what we say. With Kaspersky VPN, you get the best of the best. It offers 256-bit encryption alongside OpenVPN, which is government-level security. You will never have to worry about some “run of the mill” hackers gaining access to your private information.

No DNS Leaks

We pay close attention to DNS leaks because this is a major weak point in a lot of VPN services. The last thing you need to deal with is your IP getting exposed when you think everything is fine.

During our research, we identified a few tests of Kaspersky VPN, and everything checked out well. Kaspersky was also checked for viruses and none were found across five different tests.

We like the sound of that.

Russian Jurisdiction (this is more neutral)

We say this is neither a pro nor a con because it’s a double-edged sword. On one side, you don’t have to worry about the 14 eyes alliance because Russia does not participate in the data sharing.

On the other side, you have to deal with a government heavy on surveillance and online censorship. At any point, the Russian Government could demand that Kaspersky forfeit all of its information.

What We Dislike About Kaspersky VPN

With Kaspersky, you get some of the best security and encryption available. While that may be fine and dandy, there are some serious issues we need to get into.

Logging…

No VPN will ever advertise that it stores or logs its user’s private information. You have to dig deep to find out the truth about many VPN services logging policies.

During our research, we discovered that Kaspersky does a little more logging than it would like to mention.

It doesn’t come right out and say what information it logs, but it does say that it will forfeit your “personal information” if prompted by authorities.

At no point does Kaspersky explain what the ‘personal information’ would be or what could cause the authorities to demand it. The main reason we don’t like this is because of its location in Russia.

Slow Servers

We’ve seen worse, let’s start with that. We’ve experienced server speed drops off as much as 90% in the past, so no need to get too alarmed. During our research, we found that US servers operating with Kaspersky have around a 50% drop in download speeds. EU servers experienced about a 60% drop.

This speed is not horrible, but it will prevent things from running smoothly. For the best speeds, you might want to check out some of our other VPN reviews.

Forget Netflix

Many people turn towards VPNs to get past geo-restrictions and stream content on Netflix.

Netflix knows this, so it has cracked down and put measures in place to prevent you from doing it. More and more VPN services are no longer able to access Netflix as their servers have been blocked. During our research, we found many users having a hard time streaming Netflix using Kaspersky VPN, which indicates that most of its servers have also been blocked.

Our Verdict

Well, what can we say about Kaspersky VPN? The most important thing to keep in mind when shopping for a VPN is whether or not you are protected. You need a service that looks out for you and keeps your identity anonymous.

We think Kaspersky VPN does a great job at providing top of the line encryption with the best protocols. Are we worried about the Russian jurisdiction, limited servers, and logging policy?

Yes.

Do we think it’s a deal breaker? Yes. Honestly there are so many good alternatives nowadays that there just isn’t any real reason to choose them over a vpn which has all of the above and more.

PIA, Ipvanish & Nordvpn are just some of the great ones which we like.