oVPN.to Review (2020)

oVPN.to Highlights

Country: Austria
Logging: No (Traffic), No (Connection), No (IP address)
Bypass VPN Block (DPI): SSH tunnel, stunnel SSL, TOR
Pricing: €10 (per month)
Allows P2P/ Torrent: Yes
Simultaneous connections: no limit
Live Chat Support: No
Custom clients/apps: No
Alternative website: ovpn.asia
Trustpilot rating: N/A

My First Impression

oVPN.to is not that popular service provider, that you may have never heard of them. The oven has a very minimalist website, that includes most of the information you need to know.

There is no much information about open on their web page and on the web. I guess that, it is a VPN service operated by one or several IT developers, and the main developer is “MrNice” (according to their GitHub profile). Also, the country that oVPN.to is based in, is not disclosed. Supposedly, the developers are from a German speaking country, as their chat support is offers support in German and English.

Does oVPN keep logs?

oVPN provides information about its privacy on ToS page.

“We don’t create or store any logfiles or any client identifying data. We didn’t and we wouldn’t and we won’t share any details with anybody. We are unable to identify yourself and we have nothing to handout about you. We encrypt your Login eMail. Your Password is hashed with SALTED CRYPT_SHA512 and 50k to 500k rounds.”

On the FAQ, states that they do not and will not monitor or record user traffic. only monitors and stops service in case of abuse.

To sum up, oVPN does not keep:

Traffic logs (i.e user activity)
IP address
Connection logs (i.e. bandwidth, timestamps)

Another question is about oVPN’s jurisdiction. The country, in which oVPN is based is not disclosed, however oVPN states that every server is bound to jurisdiction of its location.

Does oVPN bypass Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) or similar VPN blocking firewalls?

Countries like China, Turkey, Russia etc. implement firewalls that block access to VPN services. As an example China uses the Great Wall of China (GFW) system to block most VPNs and proxies. Some VPN services use extra protocols so that users in those countries can bypass VPN block.

oVPN has two protocols that can be considered as anti-DPI: SSH Tunnel and stunnel SSL, in addition to SOCKS5 proxy, which lacks encryption. The anti-DPI protocols do not work on all protocols, SSH tunnel and stunnel SSL are compatible with Windows, Linux, macOS and Android, whereas you can use the protocols only on a jailbroken iOS device.

Moreover, Mullvad offers tunneling OpenVPN traffic through Shadowsocks (not Shadowsocks itself, only tunneling), SSH and SOCKS5 proxy. As far as I know, these methods are effective when bypassing deep packet inspection.

Explanation of how SSH Tunnel works from ssh.com:

The SSH connection is used by the application to connect to the application server. With tunneling enabled, the application contacts to a port on the local host that the SSH client listens on. The SSH client then forwards the application over its encrypted tunnel to the server. The server then connects to the actual application server – usually on the same machine or in the same data center as the SSH server. The application communication is thus secured, without having to modify the application or end user workflows.

Stunnel is a program that can wrap unencrypted traffic in SSL/TLS encryption and forward it to a specified service or port. Stunnel can be configured to accept packets on an incoming port, encrypt that traffic with SSL or TLS encryption, and then forward the encrypted packets to another specified destination IP address and port. Stunnel uses OpenSSL to encrypt network traffic.

The above description is from danscourses.com.

oVPN does not offer a free trial, but you can easily get 7 day usage for €3.

Testing oVPN

As usual, I test oVPN on a Windows 7 PC, and an Android phone running Android 6.0.1. I am testing on an ADSL internet provided by the local telecom company, and cellular internet provided by our local mobile operator.

First of all, I would like to note that the most important challenge of oVPN is that it is hard to configure if you are a noob like me. You could easily configure if you only need an OpenVPN, but that is not the case. In addition to that, the tutorials are very poorly written, and not noob friendly at all.

I did my best to follow instructions, however, after many attempts to connect via MyEnTunnel I was unable to bypass the DPI.

I have not run the test on Android, but plan to.

To sum up, in the tests I was not able to have a VPN connection that evades DPI, mainly due to unclear instructions. Theoretically, both anti-DPI protocols should work fine, but I did not manage to accomplish that.

Is oVPN affordable? (oVPN’s pricing)

The main selling point of oVPN, at least for me, is that there is no restriction in number of devices connected. On the FAQ, it is stated that oVPN does not want accounts to be shared, but they cannot determine that. As a result, per device price is very affordable depending on between how many people it is shared.

oVPN accepts prepaid cards (not credit cards), Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, BitcoinSV, Litecoin, Adv Cash, Perfect Money, Webmoney, and cash4web / paylife.at.

oVPN does not offer free trials, but you can test them 7 days only for €3. There is no mention of money back on their web page.

What features are offered by oVPN?

– Supported Platforms

oVPN supports Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. oVPN does not offer standalone softwares/apps for the available platforms. In addition, oVPN offers anonymous email service.

– Supported Protocols

oVPN offers OpenVPN, SSH Tunnel, Stunnel SSL protocols, SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies.

– Number of Servers

oVPN has 25 servers in 10 different countries.

Conclusion

What I liked:

What I didn’t like: