In-Depth Review & Tests (IP Address Leaks)

In this new and updated VPN Unlimited review, I put the service through extensive testing to identify any problems with speeds, data leaks, features, and connection stability.

While VPN Unlimited has improved since the last review, I still found various issues with both the Mac OS and Windows VPN clients that expose the user’s real IP address. Speeds were also somewhat disappointing with servers in the United States.

Also concerning is VPN Unlimited’s data collection policies, which we’ll cover in detail below. Overall, VPN Unlimited has made some improvements, although it can’t yet be included in the list of best VPN services.

KeepSolid VPN company and jurisdiction

The company behind VPN Unlimited is KeepSolid Inc. KeepSolid Inc. offers a variety of digital products and is based in the United States. As we’ve discussed before, the United States is generally considered to be a bad jurisdiction for VPN services. This is mainly due to unfavorable surveillance laws and practices (see Five Eyes). While there are various options if you need a good VPN for USA, I would generally not recommend a VPN that is based in the US.

KeepSolid markets a variety of different products in addition to the VPN service, which you can see below:

There is not too much information about the company or people behind these products. When chatting with support, I was told that KeepSolid is technically a USA company, but with staff also working out of Ukraine.

Privacy policy and data collection practices

One red flag with VPN Unlimited is the privacy policy and data collection policies. As we discussed with free VPN services, free products are often used to collect data and monetize the user. VPN Unlimited is now offering a service called “KeepSolid VPN Lite”, which is has both free and paid tiers.

KeepSolid updated its privacy policy in June 2019 to include more explanation of what exactly is being recorded when you use VPN Unlimited. Here is from the updated privacy policy:

KeepSolid does NOT monitor, store, or log your internet activities (including the internet sites that you visit) while using any of our VPN Services, except the total amount of internet traffic for each session and session dates (this data is collected only if you use personal servers or personal IP address). KeepSolid also stores the number of connected devices for each account – this data is monitored to enforce the maximum device limits. This data can be assessed in the User Office, where you may remove devices from your account.

Certain personal data collected by us automatically (i.e. IP address, connection type, browser type and operating system) is stored only for the duration of your session in the VPN Services. This means that KeepSolid never stores or logs these categories of personal data after the end of your session in our VPN Services – we delete such personal data after your session ends. This also means that your personal data, including your email address, first and last name, username, and IP address, is never connected to any of your internet activities during your VPN Services sessions.

Interestingly, KeepSolid also admits that they also collect your personal data from third parties, including social networks and other “publicly-accessible sources.”

We may also collect personal data, such as names and contact information, from third parties, such as marketing, research, sales lead generator companies, social networks, as well as from any publicly-accessible sources. We also collect your payment history regarding our Services (but not your payment information) from third-party payment processors, such as Google, Apple, PayPal, Amazon, Stripe, and Paymentwall.

When you create a VPN account with KeepSolid, they ask you to link it to your social media accounts. This is for data collection, as they explained in the privacy policy:

The privacy policy further discusses the different ways that your data is:

• shared with third parties
• stored with third parties
• not guaranteed to be secure

Also concerning is that your personal data does not appear to be secured or confined to one location, but rather: “We use third-party service providers globally to store and transfer personal data.”

If you find these data collection policies concerning, you may want to opt for a no logs VPN provider.

VPN Unlimited Price and “lifetime subscription”

Like many VPN services, VPN Unlimited is a cheap VPN service with reasonable prices:

You can see that they are offering a “lifetime” subscription plan for about $200. As we discussed regarding various VPN scams, the “lifetime” subscription is not the lifetime of the user, but instead the lifetime of the VPN provider – however long it manages to stay in business. There have been numerous cases of “lifetime” VPNs closing shop and running with the money, or converting all “lifetime” accounts to recurring subscriptions after a few years.

While good VPN services can be rather pricey, there are a few VPNs that offer various discounts and coupons. For example, you can see the active NordVPN discounts There is also the ExpressVPN coupon for three months free, although it’s still more expensive than VPN Unlimited.

Payment options: VPN Unlimited offers a nice variety of payment options, including all major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon, Bitcoin, and also gift cards.

VPN Unlimited refund policy

VPN Unlimited advertises a “7-Day Money back Guarantee.” This is further clarified under the End User Agreement where they state:

If you are not completely satisfied with the applicable Service during the free trial, we will refund the applicable Fee to you if you cancel no later than the last day of the free trial.

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited apps

VPN Unlimited supports the following devices and operating systems:

For this VPN Unlimited review, I tested out the Windows and Mac OS applications.

VPN Unlimited Windows client

Here’s a screenshot of the VPN Unlimited Windows client (standalone version) that I tested for this review:

Overall the Windows client was easy to use, but it had some flaws, which we’ll cover more below.

VPN Unlimited Mac OS client

I also tested the updated Mac OS client for this review. It felt a bit clunky compared to the Windows client, and it also had issues with IPv6 leaks and kill switch errors (as we’ll cover further below).

Just like with the Windows app, the VPN Unlimited Mac OS app had issues with the kill switch. It is not the best VPN for Mac as there are better options to consider at this time.

Encryption and VPN protocols

For the OpenVPN protocol, VPN Unlimited utilizes 256-bit AES encryption with an RSA-2048 handshake and SHA1 for authentication. (I ran all speed tests for this review using the OpenVPN protocol.)

Both the Windows and Mac OS apps support a number of different VPN protocols:

• OpenVPN
• IKEv2/IPSec
• KeepSolid Wise UDP and TCP

The “KeepSolid Wise” protocol is just an obfuscation feature, which is sometimes used if VPNs are being actively blocked. This may be the case if you need a reliable VPN for China or with work or school networks that don’t allow VPNs.

VPN Unlimited setup problems

VPN Unlimited has a convoluted setup process that did not work too well for me. First, you need to select your subscription plan and create an account with your email address. As noted above, they attempt to link your VPN account with social media accounts, which is not good in terms of privacy.

After purchasing a subscription, I then downloaded the VPN Unlimited Windows client for my Windows 10 test computer. Later in the day, I attempted to connect to a VPN server through the VPN Unlimited Windows client, but I was blocked out with the following message:

I then went back to my email and attempted to go through the confirmation process, but the link was broken and I could not be authenticated.

This essentially locked me out of using the VPN I had just signed up for. There was no option to resend the confirmation email and the existing link was broken.

Eventually I was able to reach someone from support who had to manually approve the account before I could use the VPN.

VPN Unlimited speed tests

For this VPN Unlimited review, I ran different speed tests using servers in Europe, the United States, and Canada. While some nearby servers in Europe offered OK speeds, servers further away in the US and Canada did not perform very well (even considering the longer distances). All tests were conducted using a 100 Mbps ethernet connection from my physical location in Europe.

Nearby servers in Europe offered decent speeds, although nowhere close to my baseline speed. Here I’m testing a nearby server in Paris, France, but my speed was reduced down to only 45 Mbps.

The speed test from a VPN Unlimited server in the UK was a bit better, giving me a download speed of about 59 Mbps:

For nearby servers, these speeds are far from ideal.

VPN Unlimited tests with US servers

I also ran some tests with servers in the US and Canada.

Here is a test with a server in New York, with the download speed coming in around 9 Mbps, which is quite slow, even considering the longer distance:

I also tested the VPN Unlimited US Netflix server, which is in California. The speeds were also quite poor at around 4 Mbps:

While performance has improved over the previous VPN Unlimited review, there is still al long way to go.

If you want a faster VPN, ExpressVPN and NordVPN both did well in testing.

Now we’ll take a look at some of the leak tests.

Does VPN Unlimited leak user data?

In previous reviews, I found VPN Unlimited apps to have various security and privacy flaws with leaking data. Since then, the VPN Unlimited support staff informed me that they updated the applications to improve leak protection settings. Now let’s see the results.

VPN Unlimited Windows client

First, I ran the VPN Unlimited Windows client through a few basic VPN tests to check for active leaks when connected to different servers. Fortunately, I did not find any active leaks with the Windows client, as you can see below:

However, it’s important to note in the example above, I was testing for leaks with an active and stable connection. Unfortunately, most VPNs leak when reconnecting and/or switching servers, and this is also what I found with VPN Unlimited. The big issue with the Windows client was the kill switch, which we’ll explain further below.

VPN Unlimited Mac OS client

I found the VPN Unlimited Mac OS client to be somewhat buggy and leaky. Sometimes the Mac client would leak IPv6 addresses, even when there was an active and stable connection. In the screenshot below, you can see my real IPv6 address was getting exposed, while the Mac client was alerting me to some kind of kill switch error:

Reconnecting to the server did not fix the error, and the IPv6 leaks persisted, with the kill switch error message. When I wasn’t getting the kill switch error messages, I did not identify any leaks. If you are a Mac OS user, I would not recommend VPN Unlimited due to these issues.

Reply on Mac OS client – VPN Unlimited provided me with the following response concerning the Mac OS client:

Recently KeepSolid released a new standalone version of their Mac OS client. It features a new design and they claim it to work much smoother and without leaks. The new version doesn’t have a kill switch so far, however they promise to add it shortly.

Therefore results with the new Mac client may be different than what’s above.

Flawed kill switch leaks user data

One key feature to keeping your data safe is a kill switch that effectively blocks traffic. VPN Unlimited informed me they had released new VPN clients that incorporated a kill switch to block non-VPN traffic and stop any leaks.

You can see this feature, which I activated below before testing to see how it worked:

When switching servers, I found the kill switch would simply not work for a few seconds, thereby letting unencrypted traffic out of the VPN and exposing my real IP address.

Here you can see my real IPv4 address being exposed when I was in the process of connecting to a different VPN server.

I also found that when switching VPN protocols, the kill switch was not effective in blocking traffic, thereby exposing my real IP address.

To summarize, the VPN Unlimited kill switch feature exposes your real IP address when you:

• switch VPN servers
• switch VPN protocols

I found the same issues with the Mac OS client, in addition to the errors noted above that would expose my real IPv6 address, even when connected to a VPN server.

Now that we’ve covered the test results, we’ll take a closer look at the VPN service.

VPN Unlimited torrenting

At the time of this review, torrenting and file-sharing are only allowed on designated P2P servers.