Buffered VPN is a modest provider serving the VPN industry since 2013. The company claims that secure torrenting is one of its main priorities. I always strive to verify how VPNs walk the talk. Therefore, I conducted a research trying to figure out if Buffered VPN is good for torrenting (P2P) and whether it protects its clients every step of the way. Stay with me and you’ll get relevant and unbiased information on this matter.
Does Buffered VPN allow torrenting?
Torrent enthusiasts will surely appreciate that Buffered VPN does allow and supports torrenting P2P on all its servers. The selection of location is not that great, however. To date, the service’s network includes just 46 servers. If the company stays true to their current policy regarding p2p traffic, there is hope that we get a large torrent-dedicated service in the future.
As any respectable provider, Buffered VPN has no restrictions on bandwidth or server switches. The provider promotes itself as a super fast service and speeds turned out to be good indeed. However, I wouldn’t say the provider is in top 3 in speed test as it says. Anyway, connection speeds allow downloading files quite comfortably.
Buffered VPN Torrenting Features
Buffered VPN is registered in Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory. The country is a subject to the UK’s legislation. Don’t forget that the UK is also one of the ‘eyes’ of the 5 Eyes intelligence alliance. To make things even more complicated, the company says it stores all the user data in the Netherlands while the company’s headquarter is located in Hungary. Whatever it may be, neither the UK nor the Netherlands is really good for your privacy due to the surveillance programs those countries exercise.
Such privacy-hostile jurisdictions are threatening if a VPN provider collects some user data, and Buffered VPN does. The service logs your operating system, MAC address, system language, IP address, information about your network, DNS server addresses, session duration, etc. There is a quite long list of info the provider collects and they mention that logging is not even limited to stuff they posted on their privacy policy page. Moreover, the service frankly says that it shares some of this data with the third parties for advertisement purposes. Not good at all!
As for other security points, everything is quite common with Buffered. Top-of-the-line OpenVPN protocol with 256-bit cipher will reliably encrypt your traffic. IPSec, PPTP & L2TP protocols are also available.
If you fear data leaks, built-in kill switchwill protect your identity when disconnections occur. Please note that this option is compatible only with OpenVPN. I didn’t discover DNS and IP leak during my session with this provider.
How Much Does Buffered VPN Cost?
Buffered is definitely not the most budget-saving service. The best price you can get is $7.62 per month is you pick a 1-year plan (the whole package costs $99.00). With a shorter-duration plan, the provider will charge you $9.99 per month (billed as 59.94 every 6 months). Finally, if you are willing to pay monthly, the price rises up to $12.99 per month. You can cancel the service and get your money back according to the 30-days refund policy.
Buffered VPN Alternatives to Torrent Safely
Buffered VPN seems like a promising service but its logging policy may put many users off. If you want to stay absolutely secure while sharing and downloading torrents, we recommend the NordVPN. Its privacy policy is beyond any praise. The package of features is really impressive, including military-grade encryption, Tor over VPN, and double VPN data protection. NordVPN also has the biggest server network in the industry and they do allow torrenting. And last but not least its relatively affordable.
Summary
Buffered VPN does allow torrent traffic on its network but it cannot be called a torrenting-friendly service. Users are not sufficiently protected from data mining due to less than perfect logging policy. If you are not scared that Buffered saves your data, you may actually appreciate decent downloading speeds, data encryption, and DNS / IP leak protection.