Perfect Privacy  Review

Perfect Privacy claims to have a kill switch, but we couldn’t find it in the new Windows app. In our previous Perfect Privacy review of its old app, we were able to switch between different kill switch modes. Since we couldn’t see the kill switch this time around, we had no way to ascertain whether the kill switch actually prevents data leaks. 

Perfect Privacy claims that NeuroRouting makes your internet traffic harder to track by using AI to determine the best way to route your traffic. NeuroRouting might be a good idea if you receive or share sensitive information over the internet, but forcing traffic into a specific path may slow your connection down. 

Perfect Privacy’s TrackStop is an ad and malware blocker that blocks content from unwanted domains. Aside from ads and malware, you can set up Perfect Privacy to block content from fake news sites, adult content and social media sites. 

We activated TrackStop and checked to see if it blocked adult domains. Unfortunately, it was hit-and-miss: Some newer adult content sites made it through, likely because they aren’t on Perfect Privacy’s database. 

Perfect Privacy allows you to connect to multiple servers in sequence. Changing your IP address many times makes you harder to track and reduces the chance of exposure due to a single server failure. Most VPNs with multi-hop let you connect to two servers, but Perfect Privacy allows up to four “cascading” hops.

We tested this feature and noticed two issues. First, it took a while for the servers to connect — sometimes up to 10 minutes. In some cases, we had to retry multiple times to get all the servers to connect. Second, even when we connected to the four servers, our internet speeds were painfully slow, making browsing difficult. 

Perfect Privacy has a “stealth” feature to bypass deep packet inspection (DPI). It works by masking your VPN traffic to appear like regular traffic. That way, network administrators, internet service providers (ISPs) and VPN blocking systems can’t identify or block your VPN use. This feature makes Perfect Privacy a good option for browsing privately in restrictive countries. 

Perfect Privacy is one of the few VPNs that offer IPv6 support, helping it rank in our Best VPN for IPv6 article. If you’d like to learn more, read our IPv6 vs IPv4 guide.

Downloading and installing Perfect Privacy takes only a few minutes. Here are the steps to follow.

1. Download the Perfect Privacy App

   Visit Perfect Privacy’s website, click on “VPN apps” and download the client for your device. Alternatively, visit your device’s app store and search for “Perfect Privacy.”

   

2. Download and Install Perfect Privacy on Your Device

   Go to the “downloads” folder for your device and click on the Perfect Privacy executable file. Then follow the installation prompts to set up Perfect Privacy on your device.

   

3. Open the App and Connect to a Server 

   Choose a server from the server list to mask your IP address and initiate encryption.

   

Perfect Privacy is barely usable on desktop devices. Granted, its upgraded app does have a new look, but it still has many failings. Some buttons are imposed over others, making the app feel cluttered and disorganized. In addition, some buttons don’t work at all. For instance, the “dashboard” button doesn’t work when you click it. 

We had some difficulties connecting to Perfect Privacy’s servers. Sometimes, the servers took up to two minutes to connect. The wait time increased to five to 10 minutes when we tried the “multi-hop” feature. In comparison, our favorite service, NordVPN, connects almost instantly every time; check out our NordVPN review to learn why we like it.

Nevertheless, many of its features are easy to find, such as switching protocols or activating the “stealth” mode. We were able to change our preferences without any issues. 

Perfect Privacy has an Android app, but it might be unavailable on the Google Play store depending on your location. Your best bet is to download the installation file from Perfect Privacy’s website. Unfortunately, the Android app is a threadbare version of the desktop app: You won’t be able to change protocols, toggle the kill switch or activate the ad blocker. 

There is no Perfect Privacy VPN app for iOS, but it could be set up manually. In our opinion, though, check out our Best VPN for iPhone guide if you use Apple products.

Perfect Privacy has apps for Windows, macOS and Android. It can be set up manually (without the app) on Linux, iOS and Fire TV Stick. You can also install Perfect Privacy on routers that run DD-WRT and Tomato firmware.

Perfect Privacy offers unlimited connections, letting you use one subscription for as many devices as you want. Even so, we highly recommend using other VPNs for multiple devices — our Surfshark review covers one service with unlimited connections that provides apps for more than three platforms.

Perfect Privacy’s monthly plan costs $12.99 per month; although that’s about average in pricing, it feels expensive for what you get. For context, NordVPN — the best VPN on the market — offers the same monthly rate. 

Opting for Perfect Privacy’s annual plan offers a slight discount, reducing your monthly bill to $10 per month. This rate is still rather steep; ExpressVPN’s annual plan is more than a dollar cheaper per month and provides a substantially better service. See our ExpressVPN review to learn more.

Perfect Privacy’s cheapest subscription is the two-year plan, which costs $8.96 per month. Again, this plan feels like daylight robbery considering that most of the best VPNs provide a two-year plan for around $2 to $3 per month.

Perfect Privacy doesn’t have a free plan. You can try it using its seven-day money-back guarantee, but this refund window is short — the industry standard is 30 days. Some providers like CyberGhost even offer a 45-day money-back guarantee; read our CyberGhost review for more info.

Note that Perfect Privacy doesn’t refund purchases made with cash, gift cards, coupons or cryptocurrency. Contact the customer support team if you want a refund from Perfect Privacy, or go straight to our best free VPN roundup for some actual free plans.

From the table above, you’ll notice that Perfect Privacy runs at an average of 34% of our initial download speeds. In all our years of testing numerous VPN services, this is one of the lowest averages. For context, the best VPNs keep an average of 80% of our initial download speeds and 90% on servers close to our real location. 

Perfect Privacy’s upload speeds are also terrible. As you can see in the table, it barely managed 26%. Again, the average among the best VPNs hovers around 90%. We don’t recommend Perfect Privacy for uploading large files. While it does have port forwarding, which may help with torrenting, we still don’t recommend this VPN for BitTorrent.

Furthermore, Perfect Privacy’s latencies are extremely high. On average, it increased our latency by over 1,000%. This made us experience significant lags while using the internet, especially during online games. When we connected to a Perfect Privacy server in the U.S. and tried playing League of Legends, each input took forever to load. 

Perfect Privacy offers two protocols across its apps: OpenVPN and IPsec. 

OpenVPN is the industry-standard protocol that offers a good mix of speed and security. IKEv2/IPsec is ideal for mobile devices since it offers great stability when switching between mobile networks and WiFi. 

It would be great if Perfect Privacy offered the WireGuard protocol, as its lower processing needs are ideal for high-bandwidth activities. You can learn more about this protocol in our article, “What is WireGuard?” 

Using browserleaks.com, we checked if Perfect Privacy offers DNS leak protection. We connected to a Perfect Privacy server in the U.S. and checked if our original location details were displayed. 

The results showed that Perfect Privacy doesn’t suffer from DNS leaks. The VPN hid our DNS traffic, so our real IP address never showed up — it always displayed the encrypted proxy. 

WebRTC leaks happen when the WebRTC protocol — a tool that websites use to enable communication — leaks your original IP address. Perfect Privacy doesn’t appear to have any WebRTC leaks. 

Perfect Privacy doesn’t collect or store logs of IP addresses, connection timestamps or user bandwidths. 

Perfect Privacy’s RAM-only servers erase any information each time the server reboots. This is one of the common features of the best VPNs for privacy — even if third parties manage to access a VPN’s servers, there’ll be nothing to see. Its diskless servers support its claim to be a no-logs VPN, which doesn’t keep information that can be traced to individual users. 

For billing and customer support purposes, Perfect Privacy stores your login details, account expiry date and email address. However, these details are standard fare, and many VPNs require similar information. 

Perfect Privacy has a warrant canary where it shares information about any data requests, including court orders, warrants, national security letters and gag orders. Perfect Privacy updates this warrant canary at least once a month; However, NordVPN raises the bar as it updates the NordVPN warrant canary daily. 

In August 2016, Dutch authorities seized Perfect Privacy’s servers in Rotterdam. Interestingly, they didn’t report collecting any data. Perfect Privacy was confident that there was nothing to see, and the authorities didn’t compromise user details from the servers. This suggests that Perfect Privacy’s no-logs policy is legitimate.

Perfect Privacy has not undergone any independent audits. Such audits are important to provide a fair and independent assessment of a VPN’s claims. 

Perfect Privacy can’t unblock Netflix. We connected to Perfect Privacy’s servers in the U.S. and tried to access Netflix, to no avail. We tried Netflix’s Canadian server, but the result was the same. If you want a Netflix VPN, we recommend ExpressVPN; its servers in 105 countries are great at unblocking Netflix libraries.

We attempted to access other major streaming services with Perfect Privacy’s servers, including Amazon Prime Video, Max, Hulu and Disney Plus. Unfortunately, Perfect Privacy couldn’t unblock any of these platforms, no matter how many times we tried. Your best bet is to use any of the VPNs on our best streaming VPN list. 

Perfect Privacy has no servers in South America, Africa or the Middle East. In addition, we noticed that Perfect Privacy offers only a few server locations in the countries that it does cover. For instance, it has just three server locations in the U.S. For comparison, Private Internet Access has servers in all 50 states (read our PIA review).

Perfect Privacy’s paltry server network means that its servers are often congested, which may explain the slow speeds. It does provide bandwidth utilization numbers on its website’s “server” page, but having more server options would be helpful. 

Perfect Privacy’s ticketing system is quite cumbersome to use. You must select your operating system and fill in several mandatory fields, including the VPN protocol and settings. The ticketing page is filled with German content, so you’ll have to scroll down to find the English version.

When writing the review, we sent many tickets through the help center. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive any responses after several days.