VPN providers
CyberGhost VPN privacy rating
Commercial VPN service from CyberGhost S.R.L. in Romania, a subsidiary of Kape Technologies. Apps support WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2.
Summary
CyberGhost VPN scores 50 out of 100 (grade D) on the VPN providers criteria. It meets 5 of 12 criteria: no ads or data sales, independent audit, transparency report, audited no-logs policy and modern protocols. It partly meets TLS configuration and anonymous payment. It does not meet open source, no trackers or telemetry, tells users about requests, security headers and open-source apps. It is based in Romania: Not in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes; EU member (GDPR). Automated tests: SSL Labs grade B and Mozilla HTTP Observatory grade C-.
Score 50 out of 100. How scoring works
Criteria
- No
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No
No trackers or telemetry Weight 3 of 3
Are the website and apps free of third-party trackers, with any analytics anonymous and any telemetry off by default?
The privacy policy lists AppsFlyer, Mouseflow, Google Analytics and VWO, and the Android app includes AppsFlyer, Firebase Analytics and Sentry.
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Yes
No ads or data sales Weight 2 of 3
Is the product funded without advertising, ad targeting or selling user data?
Funded by paid subscriptions. The policy states personal data is not sold, rented or traded.
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Yes
Independent audit Weight 2 of 3
Has an independent security or privacy audit been published within the last three years?
Full Deloitte ISAE 3000 assurance report on the VPN infrastructure is downloadable.
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Yes
Transparency report Weight 2 of 3
Does the provider regularly publish how many government and legal requests it receives and how it responds?
Quarterly counts of legal requests for user data are published.
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No
Tells users about requests Weight 1 of 3
Does the provider promise to tell users about requests for their data, unless a court forbids it?
No published policy on notifying users about data requests.
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Yes
Audited no-logs policy Weight 3 of 3
Has an independent audit confirmed that activity and connection logs are not kept?
Deloitte Audit Romania examined the server configuration and safeguards against activity logging. The full report is public.
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Partial
Anonymous payment Weight 2 of 3
Can an account be created and paid for without an email address, name or card?
Bitcoin is accepted, but an email address is needed for the account.
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No
Open-source apps Weight 2 of 3
Are the apps for every platform open source?
The apps are closed source.
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Yes
Modern protocols Weight 1 of 3
Is WireGuard (or another modern audited protocol) supported?
WireGuard is supported alongside OpenVPN and IKEv2.
Automated tests
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Partial
TLS configuration Weight 2 of 3
Does the website pass the Qualys SSL Labs test with a grade of A or better?
Grade B
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No
Security headers Weight 1 of 3
Does the website pass the Mozilla HTTP Observatory test with a grade of A or better?
Grade C- (45/100+)
-
Not tested yet
Modern web standards Weight 1 of 3
Does the website score 90% or higher on the Internet.nl website test?
Not tested yet.