Frequently Asked Personal VPN Questions
Frequently Asked Personal VPN Questions
What is SurfBouncer?
SurfBouncer is a Personal VPN service operating on our worldwide, encrypted network. It provides access to high-encryption VPN servers in order to secure your connection to the internet as well as unblock connections to the internet.
Also available are a VPN Appliance router for securing your entire home or small business network, a VPN Flash Drive for ultimate portability, a Static IP VPN service, a Virtual Machine VPN and others.
How long has this been available?
SurfBouncer personal VPN service has been available since 2006. We have customers around the world using the service to unblock web sites and as a hotspot VPN to ensure their privacy and protect against identity theft -- to include Belize, China, UAE (United Arab Emirates including Dubai and Abu Dhabi), KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Mexico, Brazil and others that block access. These customers use our VPN service to unblock Skype and unblock Vonage as well as to unblock web sites, giving them full access to the entire internet.
Payment Information:
Our payment methods are PayPal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Payments. By offering these methods, we ensure complete privacy with your credit card information since we never see your actual credit card number. In addition, by offering multiple methods, you can choose how you want to pay.
By using Amazon Payments or PayPal, you set up a recurring subscription that re-bills automatically. Your account is always current and you needn't worry about forgetting to send in your payment. Nor will you experience an interruption in service*.
By using Google Checkout, you set up non-recurring payments. We bill you when your current term expires and you have total control over when a payment is made. By offering both options, we strive to meet the varied needs of our customers.
The cost of the service varies, based upon the term of service chosen.
The personal VPN software we provide is open source and based upon OpenVPN -- a highly regarded and tested security product. You pay only the weekly, monthly, 6-month or yearly subscription fee for the service.
If you wish to use PayPal or Amazon Payments for a single non-recurring payment instead of Google, simply place the order then cancel the subscription. Your service will terminate when the term is over. You can do it yourself or we can do it for you, upon request.
With any of these payment methods, you are always in control of how you want to pay.
How quickly is my account set up?
Due to many attempted fraudulent credit card transactions, we have implemented a short delay between your order being placed and sending your login information. We do this in order to verify the transaction. This helps prevent scammers and spammers from signing up under false pretenses and sending data anonymously through our servers. By preventing this activity on our servers it prevents our IP addresses from being blacklisted. This in turn helps assure that when you log into the service the IP address you receive will be clean and not associated with spammers, hackers and other such activity. We realize that other providers may provide instant service. We prefer to provide our customers with quality service instead.
Canceling your service:
If you used PayPal or Amazon payments to purchase your subscription simply log into your PayPal or Amazon account and cancel the subscription. This will not affect your current term but will prevent it from renewing upon expiration. If you paid with Google Checkout there is nothing to do as the subscription must be renewed manually and will expire when it is finished.
Do you offer free trials or evaluations?
No. There are a great many spammers and hackers out there who would love to get their hands on free IP address from all over the world. This would allow them to send out millions of spam emails and make all sorts of purchases on fraudulent credit cards without anyone knowing who they are. We also found that these folks don't like to give their credit card information to get this kind of service. So, to secure our network and safeguard others, we do not provide free service. We offer a $4.99 weekly option for the purpose of trying out the service with very little investment. If you don't want to commit to a long term, just try it for a week. We are happy to refund any unused payment portion if you upgrade to a longer term option.
How do I set up personal VPN service?
Once you have subscribed to the service, we set you up in our servers and email you a user name and password plus instructions. You will need this information to log in and create your encrypted connection. We will send this information within a few hours of subscribing to the service. In the meantime, download and install the software on your computer. Once you receive your login information, you can run the program and make your secure connection. For Business VPN, VPN Appliance and VPN Flash Drive customers, see the product page for more details.
How do you protect me against search engine profiling?
Major search engines have begun profiling their users and identifying their browsing habits and web sites visited, to target advertisements. Many people prefer not to have their privacy invaded in this way. SurfBouncer uses multiple IP address and changes them often. We also never re-use an IP address. What this means is that, even if you go to the same search engine every day, over time you will be appearing to come form multiple locations. Since the IP addresses are short lived and there are many users, using these varying IPs stops the ability of the search engine to track you by IP address. Of course, you also need to take other precautions as discussed in the Personal VPN FAQ.
Do you have a maintenance window where your servers are shut down?
No. We run hundreds of servers and dynamically assign users to different servers. We can bring up or take down as many servers as we need, at any time. Therefore, unlike our competitors who use traditional, inflexible, fixed-hardware based solutions, our service is available 24/7 with no scheduled down time.
Without Surf Bouncer, is any consumer Wi-Fi network totally secure?
No wireless Wi-Fi network or hotspot is totally secure. Everyone who is using the network, with the right tools, can see everyone else on the hotspot or network. The tools to do this are available, for free, on the internet. Even a school kid can download these tools and use them to spy on you. It's up to you to shield yourself from these unseen threats and achieve VPN privacy.
Are there Cheaper VPN services?
Yes, there are some services that are cheaper. Some things you need to consider about these services: Does the VPN service provider have the ability to turn up an unlimited number of servers to handle traffic flow all day every day? Can the VPN service provider switch the IP addresses of their servers, instantly, to bypass blocks? Do they provide multiple protocols to unblock even the most restricted networks? Do they have servers in different locations to provide complete network fault tolerance? Does that competing service offer a VPN Appliance to secure an entire network? Do they offer high-encryption VPN servers for those who want maximum protection? How about a static IP address, virtual machine VPN or VPN Flash Drive? SurfBouncer provides all of these features and more!
Beware of VPN providers claiming 'No software required'. These vendors are using the less secure and unreliable PPTP protocol as a cost-saving measure. Although we offer PPTP for mobile devices that cannot use the standard VPN, we do not sell it as a cheaper, stand alone service. The bottom line is, if you find VPN services priced significantly lower than ours, caveat emptor (buyer beware).
What about free alternatives?
There are a few free applications out there that provide what may seem like viable protection from spying intruders. However, many of these free alternatives provide their own spam in the form of advertisements and links to other web sites. They limit your bandwidth, are often unreliable or don't work on some networks. Some of them even scan your data for marketing purposes and build databases based on your private data.
Because they only make money on the advertising data presented or gathered from you, they cut you off after they have marketed to or data-mined you sufficiently. For less than $15.00 a month, SurfBouncer provides industrial strength servers and encryption with no advertisements and no spyware. Unlike some services, we never sell, loan or share any of your personal information with anyone.
Be very wary of free or open proxy servers. They are universally slow and easy to block. A significant number of them are traps set up by hackers to compromise your personal information and computer. Don't risk your identity with one of these solutions when VPN security will give you complete peace of mind that your information is safe.
*Assuming all attempted charges are cleared by the payment processor
DID YOU KNOW? At a Las Vegas Hacker's Convention in 2006, hackers displayed the ease in which they tapped into the local wireless network and spied on everyone else on the network. They could read email
s, obtain passwords and other private information of people who were on the network.
In October of 2010 a new application named Firesheep was announced at a Hackers convention in San Diego. Unlike the previous methods from 2006 this new application can be downloaded and used by anyone with no special technical knowledge required. This application instantly was downloaded by untold numbers of want to be hackers, making every wireless hotspot in the world a danger zone.
Therefore, whether you travel often for business, share a Wi-Fi network with co-workers or simply frequent cafes, utilizing Wi-Fi networks will bring convenience...and threats that only a Personal VPN can protect you from.