Malwarebytes Privacy VPN is the company’s entrance into this highly competitive VPN field. VPNs are such an essential part of remote work and home network security that we had to review it.
Now I won’t go into what a VPN does except to say that you have two main expectations. First that it protects your identity while online, and second, that it has enough points of presence (PoPs) to ensure that your download speeds remain reasonably high.
Malwarebytes Privacy VPN meets these criteria, but there are more mature, and feature-full VPN’s out there. Let’s revisit it in a year.
Malwarebytes Privacy VPN
Website | here (should auto select Australia and AUD) |
Price | Five user $69.99 |
Warranty | 60-day money-back guarantee |
About | Malwarebytes Inc. is an American Internet security company specialising in protecting home computers, smartphones, and companies from malware and other threats. |
More | You can read GadgetGuy Malwarebytes news and review here |
Setup
Its all pretty self explanatory
Logs – no
It does not require you to sign in or establish an account (you can). It keeps no logs as you would expect, but you can’t avoid credit card purchase logs.
Static IP – no
Remote workers and small business don’t have access to static IP addresses for added security
Torrents – slower than they should be
We connected to torrent sites and were able to complete magnet downloads. But it achieved an average of 2Mbps compared to around 7Mbps with another VPN. This is not a definitive test as torrents downloads are highly variable.
Video streaming – geoblocked
We were unable to access US Netflix, Amazon Prime and other OS streaming services. It seems to respect geo-blocking with ‘proxy detected’ error messages.
Games – no
Most games will suffer too much latency using any VPN. You can set these to bypass the VPN.
Operating systems
The Android app has just appeared in Google Play. iOS is here – otherwise, it is Mac and Windows.
Kill switch – yes
The Kill switch is off by default (Windows) and blocks all internet access if the VPN goes down.
Router install – no
There is no OpenVPN, IPSec/L2TP, PPTP and Socks 5 proxy – may be a future feature
POPs
It claims 400+ servers across 30+ countries. No details are available on bandwidth or server numbers by location, but you safely assume that it uses third-party services and will eventually scale to meet demand.
It is quite US-centric, with 13+ servers there.
Speeds
For example, on an NBN 100/20 line at the Central Coast NSW (which usually gets close to that speed)
Malwarebytes Privacy off – Sydney Aussie Broadband
Privacy on – Sydney (reflects server congestion at the time – it should be higher)
Melbourne
New Zealand
US West coast LA
UK London
Hong Kong (no China servers)
These figures are what we expect of a next-gen VPN using Wireguard tech – mostly maintaining download speeds and simply increasing ping times.
Support
The US-based chat system seems to staffed based on US Time Zones.
Price
Five user licence is A$69.99, or a combo with MalwareBytes is $119.99 (usually $185.98).
Annoyance
Like Malwarebytes, it insists on running on the primary monitor screen in a dual/treble monitor setup, and you cannot move it or minimise it without leaving a grey patch.
GadgetGuy’s take
Malwarebytes is a reputable company. Its anti-malware product is one of the better ones. Its expansion into VPNs is logical, but it is in no way ready to take on the big guys like Private Internet Access (best for Australia 9.9/10) or NordVPN (10 points for marketing prowess).
While we like the company, the app is not there yet. A pass mark is 8/10, and we will give it that based on the future potential and few downsides. But there are far more mature Wireguard based products that are well ahead, so we cannot recommend it yet.