Avast Secureline VPN Review

Why Use a VPN?

“VPN,” an acronym for “Virtual Private Network,” is a service that routes your Internet connection in such a way that it emulates a private network, and keeps your data separate from the rest of the Internet. There are many reasons you might decide to use one.

Privacy

It's in the name, right?

The traditional way that someone's online activity can be tracked and monitored is by their IP address. This is a series of numbers that correspond to the provider of the system's Internet bandwidth, or to the hosting service of the virtual machine in question. It also provides clues as to the physical location of the service through which they are connecting to the Internet.

What a VPN does is route your connection to another server, in another location, so that the data you send and receive is associated with an IP address that has nothing to do with you or your ISP. It's standard practice, as well, for any VPN service to rotate and randomize the location of the proxy server it routes your through, which means that someone trying to monitor your activity or harvest your data won't be able to tell that your activity on one day is the same person as the activity you perform on the next day. Without an IP address to tie all your activity to, any information about your online activity that might be accessed or stolen is meaningless noise…

...in theory. The truth is that browser fingerprinting is now being used by advertisers and governments to track who's who on the Internet. So even with random IP addresses, by testing the combination of browser settings, video and audio capabilities, and other factors that your machine needs to share in order to optimize your browsing experience, these entities can see if that combination is totally unique. If it is, your activity can still be tracked.

Security

Virtual Private Networks, when passing your Internet traffic from your actual IP address to the virtual IP address, and then from there to the Internet at large, encrypt all information transferred along with it.

So the information you send and receive through your VPN is encrypted when it enters the system, and then decrypted when it reaches its destination. That means even if someone were to break into the system (as a 'man in the middle' using wiretapping or working at an ISP, for example), the information they stole would be, to them, meaningless nonsense.

Access

Amid growing concerns about governments cracking down on the organization of protests and human rights, or about media companies, large corporations, and politicians abusing copyright law and DMCA takedowns to silence criticism, and some countries banning some information and forms of expression altogether, a VPN can be a vital tool for free speech, freedom of the press, and free access to information.

A standard example is how VPNs can be used to circumvent arbitrary gates and paywalls that apply in some countries but not in others: YouTube, for example, might block all access to some music videos in the United States, but not in France. If you access the video from a VPN whose proxy is a French IP address, then it will no longer be blocked.

So most VPN services will offer location spoofing as one of their features, allowing users to source their traffic from other countries, states, or regions as needed.

History of Avast

A large factor in the decision about which VPN to use is how much you can trust the company operating it. So it's relevant to look at the history of Avast as a company.

For a time, Avast was the antivirus and anti-malware program of choice for a large segment of the computer-using population. Ask someone of the right age, and the odds are they'll be able to tell you they remember downloading Avast Free Antivirus to their laptop in college. It was often preferred because it was less intrusive than programs like McAfee or Norton, it didn't produce frequent and interrupting pop-ups, and was free.

However, when Windows and macOS began having built-in virus and malware scanning, the need for the kind of free utilitarian protection Avast offered evaporated. They needed a new business plan. Providing VPNs was the answer. That's why we're doing an Avast Secureline VPN review and now an Avast Antivirus review.

Pros of Avast Secureline VPN

What, then, are the reasons you might choose Avast Secureline over another VPN?

• Secureline starts with a free 7-day trial period, allowing you to get an idea of how the service will impact your daily internet use before you need to invest in it.
• The program is easy to install and use. The installer walks you through the setup process and is designed with those who have no more than casual computer literacy in mind.
• Secureline uses AES-256 encryption, originally developed by the United States Government for the encryption of classified data. It works by rotating between using different ciphers for different chunks of data. AES is generally seen as one of the more secure symmetric ciphers in the post-quantum computing world.
• Secureline is compatible with macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android operating systems.
• Secureline includes DNS leak protection. A DNS leak occurs when your device's operating system, which isn't built to assume the use of a VPN, instead routes information through your default IP address, which results in information transmitting outside the privacy of your VPN. Leak protection prevents your connection from exposing information until your IP address is again assigned to and communicating with the VPN.
• Secureline includes a Kill Switch function. This is a feature of some VPN services that stops your Internet connection automatically if your connection to the VPN service goes down. Ordinarily, when a computer loses communication with a VPN, it would simply and automatically resume using the unencrypted and unsecured internet connection, often without alerting the user in any way. A killswitch prevents this from happening so that your private data does not wind up unknowingly exposed.
• Avast is a company based in the Czech Republic, which has no intelligence-sharing treaties, meaning that its national intelligence and surveillance services aren't required to share any information they may have with any other nation's intelligence services. This can be a great boon, particularly when looking at the data sharing and intelligence cooperation between the Five Eyes treaty countries.

Cons of Secureline VPN

There are also some drawbacks to Avast Secureline, which should be taken into consideration:

• Some personal information is recorded, specifically timestamps of when you connect and disconnect from the service, and the total amount of data transferred via the connection. According to Avast, this information is retained for 35 days, then deleted. Other information, such as error reports, is used for quality assurance and error fixing and is stored for up to 2 years before deletion.
• Access to unblocked streaming services is unreliable. Netflix, notably, has been reported to be occasionally unreliable while using Secureline VPN.
• There is, as of yet, no version confirmed to be compatible with Linux operating systems.
• Secureline has fewer available server locations than many other VPNs. Secureline has only 55 servers in total. A more typical number, for comparable VPN services, would be several hundred at least.
• Avast antivirus formerly ran a subsidiary called Jumpshot, which harvested and sold user information. When this was exposed in the press, Avast terminated the program. At the time, Avast claimed that no individual user could possibly be identified from any of the information harvested and sold, some information security experts disagreed. While there is currently no available evidence to suggest that Avast is currently operating any kind of similar data harvesting, or that any of it is present in Secureline VPN if it does exist, such a breach of trust may be insurmountable for some users.

Avast Secureline VPN Review

So there you have it, our Avast Secureline VPN review, with all of the facts laid out in the bright sunlight. Whether Avast is the VPN for you will depend on your specific requirements. The decision is yours.