Avira Vpn Review – Is It Safe in 2024

While consumers choose a VPN provider, they would prefer to know some details about this service. Commonly, there is a pity for valuable information on the top, and indeed, it is a long shot to create a holistic opinion about a particular vendor and VPN as a service in general, together with its technical stuff. 

Due to our robust expertise, we are all set up to supply you with accurate, clear, and comprehensive descriptions of those providers who offer free plans. This information will be enough to exhaust your questions and give a reasonable imagination about VPN possibilities.

We investigate the privacy policy, security core, speed rates, and other paramount qualities. In the following 10-15 minutes, you will be observing material supported by screenshots from the ongoing VPN and corresponding explanations. We hope our job will help you.

Pros

• Easy Installation
• No registration
• Available for desktop and mobile platforms

Cons

• Non-stricts privacy policy
• Limit of 500 Mb per day
• Windows’s app has only one location
• Locations on macOS do not work
• The US location does not work on mobile devices
• Does not work in highly restricted countries
• No live support

Avira VPN Features

This VPN has developed its products for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. To use the current free software, you will face some bandwidth limitations. The company decided to apply different design solutions to two desktop platforms. Each application has very limited security functionality, which makes the provider less attractive among competitors. All the details and peculiarities of this vendor will be laid out in the following sections.

Privacy and Logging

Privacy information in today’s world is a valuable asset in many meanings of these words. Every civilian has a scope of sensitive data that he tends to use or share when it appears for an appropriate purpose. Nobody wants to share this information with the outside world for no reason, because it may cause unpleasant consequences. being

The VPN software helps consumers protect their private data while online. However, besides threads on the web, the VPN provider can itself collect, share, or store users’ valuable intelligence. All the behaviour of the company regarding users’ information can be found on the privacy policy page, which, in most cases, is located on the vendor’s official website. Here we assemble the provisions from the Avira privacy policy that are essential to know. 

There are not many reasons why VPN companies process consumer information: legal requests, legal obligations, legitimate interests, and analysing statistical data for service enhancement. The listed prerequisites can imply a serious scope of personal information; it is not a rule but, at the same time, a very common situation.

Nothing is clear from the screenshot above because the provider has not listed the exact data assets that he stores. If it is dry statistical, non-identifiable data, then there is nothing dangerous. But the fuzzy explanation from Avira does imply that it can be both technical and sensitive information.

The provider ensures they delete your information after three years from the moment you stopped using their services. 

Despite the reasons that the provider mentions to justify their practice of sharing data with third parties, we cannot assess it in any way as a strict approach to consumers’ confidential information.

The list of participants who can receive consumer intelligence is really impressive. The first point says that internal and external employees have access to users’ data. It is a very high risk to share sensitive data assets with such a wide audience. All other bullet points after the first are related to external parties. Imagine how many people have access to your information.

The third point contains address, credit or debit card information, insurance information, and other personal details. It appears that you are trying to achieve better privacy, but you need to disclose highly sensitive personal data to the company that should provide you with professional confidentiality.

The provider paid attention or cautioned users that, in the event of utilising Avira’s services, a set of directly identifiable information would be automatically recorded. The device’s ID address is like a human ID card. Due to this information, tech-savvy deceivers can at least detect your location. If you dig deeper, there are possibilities for identifying a person’s name, surname, age, and additional information with only the device’s ID.

Also, the company directly monitors the precise location of the device and the traffic that has been going through it. Having monitored the users’ visited websites, this VPN crosses the idea of private web surfing.

The provider has given a very general description of the measure for protecting user data. In the second sentence of the second paragraph in the screenshot above, we can see that there is talk about data encryption, anonymization, logical and physical access restrictions, and other measures.

It would be better to see the exact type of encryption and all other measures in detail. For example, an HTTP protocol with an SSL certificate is considered to be an encrypted connection. But this technology is a general web remedy everywhere, so we expect something bigger from the VPN company. We think you caught the analogy.

We have just observed the major privacy statements of the current provider, and the next section will tell us about the speed capabilities.

Speed Tests – How Fast is Avira VPN

The speed capacity of the internet service provider (ISP) creates comfortability and seamlessness in the workflow. The VPN software always impacts the genuine velocity of the ISP and does it differently from vendor to vendor.

One VPN can deteriorate the speed to such a significant extent that it will not be applicable for exploitation when another VPN software has a better internal architecture and can only slightly reduce the speed or even enhance the rates.

There are plenty of nuances that play a role in this aspect, but I will not touch them in order not to get immersed in the hard technical settlement. We will show you just the speed results of the ongoing VPN.

In this section, we consider several points to pay attention to:

• Download speed indicates how fast your device can absorb the traffic.
• Upload speed shows the potential speed of transmitting traffic from the local device to the web.
• Ping time response shows the latency of the server’s response, meaning that the server receives a signal from you and should give back the signal too. This index is especially important for live-time events like online meetings, video or audio calls, and online gaming.

Usually, we use two locations for each platform when the provider permits us to use multiple locations for the free version. When we do not have such a possibility, we use those locations that are available for us.

PC Test

The application on macOS works with serious lags, and it does not let you launch any location. We tried to initialise the connection for the US server and a few European servers without any success. The speed test of Avira for the MacBook failed.

Windows

The programme designed for Microsoft’s OS lets users select only one autolocation, and there is no notification in the app about the connected country.

The indexes are:

• Download speed is 86.98 mbps;
• Upload speed is 85.37 mbps;
• Ping time is 2 ms.

The indexes are:

• Download speed is 68.49 mbps;
• Upload speed is 63.65 mbps;
• Ping time is 17 ms.

The download speed loss is approximately 21%, and the upload speed downgrade is about 25%. The ping-time response increased from 2 ms to 17 ms.

The speed deterioration of the autoservers (Polish) is not very critical; in most cases, it should work fine with an ordinary Wi-Fi network from your ISP and with cellular networks too. In cases of powerful speed sags, you can feel some lag. The ping time response is suitable for live-time events.

Browsers’ Extensions Test

This section is empty seeing that the provider has not developed the browser’s extension yet.

Mobile Test

Android

The indexes are:

• Download speed is 68 mbps;
• Upload speed is 54.6 mbps;
• Ping time is 2 ms.

The indexes are:

• Download speed is 23.2 mbps;
• Upload speed is 63.3 mbps;
• Ping time is 52 ms.

The download speed downfall is nearly 66%, and the upload speed growth is about 16%. The ping-time response increased from 2 ms to 52 ms.

The download speed is too slow to use it on a low-speed network like mobile or social Wi-Fi hotspots. The upload speed does not need additional words, the result says for itself. The ping time response fits the real-time events.

About Safety – How Secure is Avira VPN?

The provider does not give an option to select the protocol manually, or at least to see the protocol used on either application. The exception is an Android application where there is an option to try one protocol. Generally, we will assess the security strength relying on the secondary safeguard equipment in the particular case.

MacOS

There is nothing to discuss about the empty place instead of the security options. We expected to see at least something interesting from the security prospect but did not see anything.

Windows

From the whole list of settings, only the “Block malicious sites and content” switcher is a security option. Avira has a base of internet entities that are recognised to be suspicious. Provider will take you off visiting these sources.

Android

The ‘Enable’ WireGuard switcher should turn on the WireGuard protocol. They wrote that it was a new protocol, but that is not true. The WireGuard protocol is a cutting-edge, strong protocol that is not new. This protocol is recognised for its superior performance and negligible overhead costs. It encompasses modern and the most enhanced cryptographic algorithms and protocols: Noise protocol framework, Curve25519 for key exchange, and ChaCha20Poly1305 for encryption and authentication. It is prepared for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It ensures sustainable connectivity while switching between WiFi and mobile networks.

IOS

On iOS devices Avira did not leave security optionality available for the free edition.

Desktop Apps

The application designed for Windows has a very minimalist design. In the right-upper corner, there are tyre icons. The gear icon encompasses the general menu, which we can see in the screenshot above. Besides the sole security option that we have already discussed, you can also see some general features that allow you to obtain more convenience during the workflow.

The main screen contains two interactive elements: the turn-on/off button and the hamburger menu icon in the left-upper corner.

The options selection is lean: you are offered to select the location, to turn on the auto-connect feature, and to open the settings. The setting tab does not contain anything except the ‘Send’ diagnostic data’ toggler.

Mobile Apps

The main screen contains again two interactive elements: the connection button and the hamburger menu icon in the left-upper corner.

The set of options is not rich either. You can change the location, set up the auto-connection, and open settings. You can send the diagnostic data and choose the WireGuard protocol inside this tab.

Browser Extensions

This section is empty, seeing that the provider has not developed the browser’s extension yet.

Performance

The speed capabilities of Windows’s application are not bad and can be usable in the majority of situations. The macOS’s application does not work at all: while trying to select the location, the loading animation spins for some time and then comes back to the start value with any changes in the location.

The Android’s speed test showed results under the average line. The tangible issue with Avira software is that you have a daily limit of 500 MB, which is very little for any purpose.

Work in Highly Restricted Countries

No information about this query inside the apps and official website too.

Server’s locations

MacOS’s and mobile Avira free software contains 40+ servers within 30+ countries; Windows’s application offers only one autoselected location. Unfortunately, the available locations are too bad to initialise the connection.

What Bonuses Does the Paid Version Offer, and How Much Does It Cost?

If you desired to purchase the application, the biggest one-time cost would be 59.95 EUR for a yearly subscription, which is a bit less than 5 EUR per month. If you want to try a monthly subscription, then your fee will be $7.95 per month. The mobile application supports just monthly plans, and its price is 2.95 EUR.

About Support

If you are not a premium subscriber, you do not have a connection with live support. On their website, you can find a dedicated support page with predefined common topics and a chatbot that does not answer directly to your question.

Avira VPN Review: Final verdict

Avira VPN free edition has plenty of points to make better. They do not adhere to the strict privacy approach, and their locations do not work for macOS and mobile applications. Windows’s app proposes only one free location and does not even show what it is.

The safeguard capabilities are also the weak spot of the current provider; only Android’s application offers one protocol to try. Other distributions do not possess protocols or decent additional security features either. Considering all the facts, we cannot suggest this VPN as liable software for private data protection.