Here you find the most frequent matters of concern of our customers. Questions our support gets asked multiple times are published on this page. If you have a question which is not listed already, please contact our support.
No. On none of our servers are any logs which would allow the de-anonymization of our users.
Our server status page provides up to date information regarding bandwidth utilization and possible maintenance work.
As Perfect Privacy customer you can use our services on any number of your devices. It is not permitted to pass your login credentials to any third party, they are for your personal use only.
No, there is no traffic limit or throttling. However, please note that the Perfect Privacy servers and its bandwidth are shared among all users. We ask that you respect other users and do not overutilize any server: If you plan to make traffic that would put a significant load on a server for a longer period of time, please split it among several Perfect Privacy servers so other users are not affected and can enjoy our service as much as you do.
In principle your ISP (and third parties having access via your ISP) can only see an established connection from your IP address (the one assigned to you by your ISP) to one of Perfect Privacy’s servers. When using a VPN all data within this connection is encrypted, including the address of a website you visit. In short: Your provider can only see that you are using Perfect Privacy, but not what for.
In principle the speed of your Internet connection should not be affected, at least when using one of our servers with 100Mbps or 1000Mbps connection. This is a lot more bandwidth than ISPs usually provide to their customers.
However, the Internet connection will not be faster, as all (encrypted) traffic still has to pass through the connection provided by your ISP.The latency of your Internet connection – the time it takes to transport data packets back and forth – may change, since the packets may be routed differently. To verify this effect on Windows you can use the command tracert [hostname], on Mac and Linux use traceroute [hostname].
No. For complete anonymity you have to take a a few more of things into account.
Your primary concern is the protection of your identity, as of course it can still be disclosed (intentionally or unintentionally) while using a VPN. If you for example place an order on eBay or Amazon where you have to enter your name and address anyway, there obviously no anonymity despite the VPN connection.
Another potential leak can be exploited with browser tracking: By analyzing information provided by your internet browser it may be possible to uniquely identify users to some extent. Remedy can be gained by using the Incognito-mode of your browser, as Firefox and Chrome offer. Also, the HTTP proxy services on the Perfect Privacy servers filter header information that may be used for identification, and thus can help to improve anonymity.
Perfect Privacy’s servers are distributed worldwide. You can see all locations on our server status page.
No, the server’s IP addresses are used by all customers, in order to increase our customers' anonymity.
Yes, on the majority of our servers there are no restrictions whatsoever. The only exception are our servers in the United States and France.
Unfortunately the hosting companies there are under strong pressure from media agencies to not allow against any sort of file sharing and BitTorrent. This implies in case of alleged DMCA violations the hosting company often terminates the contract with their customer (Perfect Privacy). For this reason we prevent access to BitTorrent trackers at these locations to avoid unnecessary trouble for the hosting companies and ourselves.
That depends on the kind of site or service you are accessing and the type of restriction. Generally speaking you can use a Perfect Privacy server in a specific location to browse specific content for that country. Note however, that some services like video streaming sites often restrict the access from anonymized IP addresses, especially so if it is copyrighted material.
But if the service is not explicitly forbidding VPN services you will be able to get access to country specific content by using a server location within that country.Yes, we support IPv6. On almost all of our servers you will receive an IPv6 address in addition to an IPv4 address.
You can use Perfect Privacy on almost all common, modern router models. We provide documentation for DD-WRT, AsusWRT-Merlin, AsusWRT, FreshTomato, Tomato by Shibby and pfSense.
Additionally you can purchase a router preconfigured for using Perfect Privacy VPN. You can get these routers from our partners FlashRouters and Vilfo. Find all details on our router page.
Yes, you can find it here.
The prices depend on the duration of the chosen plan. Please have a look at our order page for the current rates.
No. All services offered by Perfect Privacy are covered by the regular membership fee.
We accept the most commonly used Payment methods like
Note that the available payment methods depend on your location. If a specific payment method is not displayed, it is not available at your location
Paysafecard does not accept VPN providers and requested from the payment processor Paymentwall to stop processing payments for Perfect Privacy. As such we have decided to discontinue this payment option. For more information and alternate payment methods please read this page.
Depending on anonymity or speed being more desirable, there are different payment options to choose from. The actual protection of your anonymity on the Internet – regardless of the payment method chosen – is provided by the fact that Perfect Privacy, without having any log files, is unable to assign any data packets or traffic to a user retroactively. In this respect we think using a completely anonymous payment method is not a necessity. As a good compromise between speed and anonymity we recommend the pseudonymous payment with Bitcoin.
You get the login credentials directly during creation of your account, also you may choose to have your login credentials sent to your email address. Your account is activated as soon as we receive your payment.
Please use the password reset option.
Memberships run until the end of the period chosen, and can be extended at any time. In case of an automatic renewal, the renewal may be canceled in your PayPal account at any time. The membership then ends upon the end of the currently running period. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Please send us a detailed description of the issue. In almost all cases we are able to solve any issues that our users had with the service that led to an unsatisfactory experience. We will always try to work out any problems our customers may experience, please do not hesitate to contact us.
It is true that Perfect Privacy ranges in the upper price region when comparing prices with other VPN providers. But then the features and services offered should also be compared. Perfect Privacy understands itself as premium VPN provider and in particular provides the following core features:
When taking these points into consideration, it will get hard to find a comparably extensive VPN offer for a lower price. Perfect Privacy also offers the functionality that other VPN providers have – if you miss anything, please don’t hesitate to tell us about your wishes.
At Perfect Privacy we value data economy in general - therefore data which is not needed is not collected by us in the first place. Additionally we consistently part with data we do not require any longer. Hence expired accounts and data stored in connection with them gets automatically deleted 60 days after account expiration.
We offer multiple port forwarding options, one with precalculated ports and one with customizable ports.
With the first one you get three port forwardings, the ports you get derive from your internal VPN IP address, and therefore change with every connection you establish. The scheme is quite easy (see the next FAQ entry), but we also offer a JavaScript form to easily calculate your current ports.
The second option, customizable port forwarding, allows for up to five additional customized port forwardings on the chosen server group. For security reasons each port is only valid for a limited time period of seven days. You may pick your destination port, or stick to the default, which is the same as the randomly chosen source port. The latter is what you usually want for use with file sharing software etc, but if you want to have some port being redirected for example to your sshd on port 22, you can do so.Note: If you want to test whether the port forwardings are working correctly while using the VPN Manager you need to test this from an external network. Internal tests (like the ones built into many torrent clients) will fail because such requests are blocked by the leak protection to prevent demasking of a user via the Port Fail vulnerability. To test the port forwardings you can use an external tool like this.
The ports for the default forwarding are always 1XXXX for the first forwarding, 2XXXX for the second and 3XXXX for the third. The XXXX is determined by the last 12 bits of the internal IP address.
Example: Your internal IP is 10.0.203.88. Converting to binary this is 00001010 00000000 11001011 01011000. Converting the last 12 bit 101101011000 to decimal results in 2904. So the forwarded ports will be 12904, 22904 and 32904.
The following bash script for Linux calculates the ports. It expects the internal IPv4 address as the first argument.
#!/bin/bash
[[ "$#" -eq 1 ]] || exit 1
IPv4_ADDR=${1}
IFS='.' read -ra ADDR <<< "$IPv4_ADDR"
function d2b() {
printf "%08d" $(echo "obase=2;$1"|bc)
}
port_bin="$(d2b ${ADDR[2]})$(d2b ${ADDR[3]})"
port_dec=$(printf "%04d" $(echo "ibase=2;${port_bin:4}"|bc))
for i in 1 2 3; do
echo "$i$port_dec"
doneIn principle OpenVPN and our software should work without trouble on older computers also. Orienting on the system requirements of OpenVPN we have the following minimal system requirements:
No.
Generally we do not recommend using any third party firewall software. Since Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows has a built in firewall that is seamlessly integrated into the operating system. Third party firewalls either deactivate or overrule the Windows Firewall which can lead to a myriad of problems. For instance, the firewall and DNS-leak protection in the Perfect Privacy VPN software is using the Windows Firewall to make sure that no DNS-leak occurs and all your traffic is being sent only through the encrypted tunnel. When using a third party personal firewall this functionality will not be working. Find more detailed information about this in our blog post regarding this subject.
The Perfect Privacy VPN App for Windows and macOS comes with integrated firewall protection which prevents any IP, DNS and other leaks like using the WebRTC protocol.
Since Perfect Privacy fully support IPv6, you are also protected from IPv6 leaks, no matter what operating system you are using.
No.
As modern VPN encryption per se is – up to best knowledge – safe enough from attacks even from secret service agencies, there are other attack vectors arising when such an agency in principle has the possibility to eavesdrop on all Internet communication worldwide. A fundamental problem exists for example when traffic is being eavesdropped between your local router and your ISP, and gets correlated with the traffic of the VPN (exit) node.
How promising such a traffic correlation is, depends on many factors – the amount of traffic that passes through the VPN node and not least how much expenditure is put into such an analysis. Also this of course requires the eavesdropper having identified the target already, as otherwise he would not know whose traffic to eavesdrop at the ISP. The Tor Project offers superior protection against such attacks, since a traffic correlation within the Tor network is a lot more difficult. But even the most sophisticated routing of traffic does not offer protection, when data is extracted directly from your computer or via other methods such as social engineering.
Proxy-Servers such as HTTP and SOCKS proxies do not offer encryption. To secure your connection you should connect through an encrypted tunnel. For this purpose we offer the Perfect Privacy SSH Manager. You can find detailed information how to securely connect to a proxy in the SSH Manager manual.
While a VPN connection offers a fully encrypted tunnel, a proxy itself does not offer any encryption, but just forwards traffic (in some cases modified). So the encryption has to be ensured in addition by using the proxy service combined with an encrypted connection, e.g. an SSH2 tunnel.
Content providers such as Google and others do not only rely on the IP address to determine the location of a user, but use additional data as well. Thus it may happen the country shown does not match the country of the server’s location. In such cases it often helps to use a server outside Europe or the U.S. (e.g. Montreal or Hong Kong).
The IP and ports you need to connect to depend on t he connection method you are using. You can always find the correct settings in the mauals.
If you can not reach a VPN server or a service seems unavailable it can have different reasons, e.g. routing or hardware failure. Our admins constantly monitor our servers and the services running on them and swiftly address occuring issues. Our server status page provides up to date information regarding bandwidth utilization and possible maintenance work.
On the IP configuration page in the customer area you can choose whether or not the VPN services should use a random exit IP address. This setting only affects the VPN services.
If you are using our VPN services you get assigned two other randomly chosen Perfect Privacy servers as DNS servers. These might be located in another country than the server you have established your VPN connection to. The DNS servers are chosen in a way they are quickly reachable from the VPN server in use to ensure DNS queries have a low latency.
The HTTP proxy is for use with web browsers and should always be your first choice for this use case. SOCKS5 proxies are for use with other client software, which support using a SOCKS5 proxy.
When using a proxy in connection with a VPN there might be something important to note, to ensure the traffic to the proxy is being routed through the encrypted VPN connection. If the proxy server used and the VPN server used are the same, e.g. moscow.perfect-privacy.com, if you want to use a proxy you have to use the internal IP address of the proxy server as proxy host! Would moscow.perfect-privacy.com be entered again, the connection to the proxy server would bypass the VPN connection unencrypted! The reason is the routing, which, in order to have a working VPN tunnel, routes the data to the VPN server directly via the default route to the Internet, while all other (non local) traffic is routed through the VPN tunnel. The connection to the proxy server thus would also be routed directly and not through the VPN tunnel! The internal IP address of the proxy server on the other hand will be accessed via the encrypted VPN tunnel.
There are several methods of preventing tracking by websites. Apart from browser plugins like Adblock, uBlock, etc., it is also possible to block known advertisement and tracking domains via DNS. Perfect Privacy offers the TrackStop feature which allows you to block all advertising domains including Google Analytics on our name servers. Note that with Perfect Privacy TrackStop it is possible to block much more than just advertising domains: Optionally you can filter known Phishing sites, social media and more. You can activate TrackStop in the configuration.
Yes, the Perfect Privacy VPN App ships with integrated firewall protection that acts as a kill switch: It will make sure that no traffic leaves your computer over the unencrypted network. Additionally you can configure in detail, how this kill-switch behaves. For details please check "Firewall & DNS "the settings of the VPN Manager.
In some networks/countrys usage of VPN connections is blocked. If this does not bring any legal issues with it (e.g. at your work place), such a blockade can often be circumvented. To achieve this we offer usage of Stealth VPN for many apps/operating systems, sometimes even multiple different variations. With Stealth VPN the data packets of the VPN connection get masked in a way so that they look for example like normal HTTPS traffic. Because HTTPS is the protocol for secure communication with websites, e.g. for transmitting passwords, it is essential and usually never blocked by firewalls in public networks. Which of the protocols works best depends on the firewall that is used. If need be you have to try out which protocol works best for you.
In the VPN-Manager for Windows you can activate Stealth-VPN in the settings under 'Cascading and Stealth'. You can choose between different protocols and ports. Beginners should leave the port on 'Auto'. For all other operating systems we have easy-to-follow stealth instructions.
Another option is using a cascaded VPN connection over an accessible VPN server located nearby (regional data traffic is usually not blocked) to a VPN server located outside of the blockade. If a regional VPN server can be reached, but using a cascaded VPN connection is not an option, using our NeuroRouting option may create remedy.
Yes, in most cases Perfect Privacy works in these networks. We have different stealth protocols for this application. Which of the protocols works best depends on the firewall that is used.
You have to try out which protocol works best for you.
In the Vpn-Manager for Windows you can activate Stealth-VPN in the settings under 'Cascading and Stealth'. You can choose between different protocols and ports. Beginners should leave the port on 'Auto'.
For all other operating systems we have easy-to-follow stealth instructions.
Yes, in most cases Perfect Privacy works in schools or universities. We have different stealth protocols for this application. Which of the protocols works best depends on the firewall that is used.
You have to try out which protocol works best for you.
In the Vpn-Manager for Windows you can activate Stealth-VPN in the settings under 'Cascading and Stealth'. You can choose between different protocols and ports. Beginners should leave the port on 'Auto'.
For all other operating systems we have easy-to-follow stealth instructions.
Is an error message containing "Configuration system failed to initialize" visible? Go to C:/Users/YOURWINDOWSUSERNAME/AppData/Local (as shown in the error message) and there delete the folder Perfect_Privacy. It should work again then.
Both of the port forwarding options we offer also work in combination with a cascaded connection using multiple VPN servers. It will work only on the last hop of the cascade though, on all previous hops usage of port forwardings will fail because of the routing (answer-packages would originate from a wrong IP address and therefore get discarded). The ports of the automatic port forwarding can be calculated like usually, using the internal VPN ip address of the last hop of the cascade. If individual port forwardings have been configured for the location of the last hop of a cascade, those port forwardings are available for usage as well.
Of course for this to work our VPN servers have to be used as DNS servers. While the VPN connection exists, in the commandline ("cmd") or console enter
nslookup -type=txt trackstop.perfect-privacy.com. If applicable the answer includes the activated TrackStop filters and for example looks like this:
Non-authoritative answer:
trackstop.perfect-privacy.com text =
"fraud"
trackstop.perfect-privacy.com text =
"ads"
With SSH port forwardings can be set up too. This way encrypted connections to usually unencrypted services can be established. Such services are for example HTTP and SOCKS proxies, which can be used to encrypt the traffic of individual applications, such as browsers or games, while - unlike VPN - all other applications remain untouched. Also our TOR proxy is securely accessible using an encrypted SSH tunnel, as well as other services may be accessed using these port forwardings. We have a guide in which the different use cases are explained.