Updated: November 2024
by Stephan Kubrik
digitalwelt Lead Columnist for IT Security
The success story of NordVPN is remarkable. The company was founded in 2012 and has established itself as the market leader within a very short time. The reason for this immense success is not necessarily just good advertising.
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NordVPN Benefits in a Nutshell
- No Logs Policy
- P2P Allowed
- Onion Over VPN
- Fast Speeds
- 3,000 Servers Worldwide
- Great For Torrenting & Netflix
- Cancel Anytime
- Kill Switch
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Double VPN
- Ad Blocking Feature
- 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
How Could NordVPN Become So Popular in No Time?
The software has made a name for itself in the Internet community as the most reliable, simplest and most secure VPN software. Therefore, NordVPN’s success can be attributed to such a high quality product.
Furthermore, NordVPN has focused on just one business, namely anonymous surfing. Unlike other manufacturers, VPN is not just another product out of many of the company, but their main business. That has led to NordVPN providing such a high quality product. So, the question remains, what can NordVPN software really do? We reviewed and analyzed the VPN software in-depth below.
NordVPN Software Overview
- Available for Windows, Mac OS and Android
- Over 1,000 servers worldwide, more than 50 countries—more servers than most competitors
- Dedicated Server (that is, NordVPN has its own server)
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Very high encryption
- Double VPN Feature
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NordVPN Installation and Operation
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NordVPN offers a very simple installation interface for all operating systems. It is intended for users who have little technical knowledge, so there are no issues or question marks during installation. Experts can also choose the so-called expert mode and thus better control the installation process. Here it becomes clear that NordVPN knows its target group and fully understands the demands of its users.
NordVPN Speed Test
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Overall, NordVPN has a decent speed. Some servers are extremely fast, while others may be slower due to load times. However, NordVPN has an above-average number of servers: More than 5,800 servers are available to choose from and with just a few clicks you can connect to a faster server. Just for comparison: One of the better-known VPN providers such as “Private Internet Security” has just 20 servers to choose from (2024). It becomes clear why so many people choose NordVPN. After a while, you will find your favorite server and/or can log in automatically when you start the VPN software.
NordVPN servers are in 59 different countries around the world. Unlike other VPN providers, NordVPN has servers in Asia, South America, Europe, India, the Middle East, and recently, China. It’s important to note that their servers are dedicated, which means they are physically located in these countries and not virtual. NordVPN has an impressive amount of servers, which help to “spoof” your location. As the saying goes, the more servers their are, the less people their are on a specific server which improves overall bandwidth/speed.
NordVPN Download
Speed Test
NordVPN Upload
Speed Test
We connected to NordVPN through a selection of their anonymous servers and tested their speed:
- USA (Los Angeles): 33.8 Mbps Download | 9.53 Mbps Upload
- Germany (Hamburg): 29.3 Mbps Download | 1.97 Mbps Upload
- Australia (Sydney): 17.1 Mbps Download | 6.34 Mbps Upload
- Brazil (Florianopolis): 21.3 Mbps Download | 6.59 Mbps Upload
- China (Hong Kong): 26.7 Mbps Download | 6.94 Mbps Upload
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How Safe & Secure is NordVPN?
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NordVPN encrypts any connection with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). AES has a total of 3 encryption strengths, namely 128, 192 and 256 bits, from which NordVPN leaves the selection to the user. With the lowest level, 128 bits, it is almost impossible for someone else to hijack or trace the connection. So far, there is no proven way to crack the encryption method called AES, and even the US government declared such encryption as impossible to crack. Such encryption methods have long been classified as war material in the US and have become part of various arms export laws. Long story short: Whoever builds a connection with NordVPN is not only anonymous but also the connection contents are not readable. If that is not enough, you can go one step further and increase the encryption to 448-bit per configuration.
NordVPN Double VPN Feature
If you want to add another layer of anonymity and security to your internet connection, you can use Double VPN provided by NordVPN.
Double VPN is one of the features that lets NordVPN stand out from its competitors. With this new feature NordVPN connects you through two different anonymous servers through different countries:
You can see on our image above that NordVPN has connected us to an anonymous server in Canada and provided an anonymous IP. And then we were connected to another anonymous server in the United States and were provided another anonymous IP.
How Does Double VPN work?
Let’s say someone were to track back your IP to reveal your identity, this person would see the first server you are connected through, which would be the anonymous U.S. server displayed above. Usually the tracking efforts would come to an end at this point since the U.S. server is not logging any data, thus it’s impossible to know who is behind the connection. In the very rare und unrealistic occasion that someone would raid the U.S. server having a court issued search warrant ready at that very moment you are browsing, and tracked the connection, with the DoubleVPN this tracking person would now see the anonymous server in Canada — which he also have get a court order issued and raid while you are browsing in real time. Fortunately courts are not that fast in issuing search warrants within minutes, and besides: once you disconnect your VPN, there is no way of knowing anymore who you were since all NordVPN anonymous servers do not log any connection information.
As you can see, NordVPN has chosen the two countries with the highest judicial regulations, in case authorities would need to compromise them by issuing court orders within a couple minutes while you are connected — a highly unrealistic and fantasy scenario. However, if you really have that need for doubled security, NordVPN provides it.
NordVPN with Double VPN:
Without VPN:
NordVPN Screenshot 1: Double VPN
NordVPN Screenshot 2: Double VPN
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NordVPN Value for Your Money Review
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NordVPN Technical Support Review
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NordVPN is not afraid of user requests at all. This may be because the company is 100% specialized in VPN. Any inquiries are welcome by the company. There is an extra section on the NordVPN website called the Help Desk where you can find all possible answers to questions, divided into categories such as “Getting Started”, “Getting Started and Settings”, “General Knowledge About VPN”, “NordVPN Preferences and Features”, “troubleshooting” and more. Even without being a customer, you can connect directly with technical support via chat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—or just leave an email.
NordVPN Video Streaming: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and more
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Some time ago, streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix or Amazon Prime with NordVPN was difficult to achieve. But the times are over now. Netflix has determined that a very large of users are choosing choosing VPN tools precisely for this reason and has therefore declared war on all the streaming providers.
It is correct that Hulu and Netflix have NordVPN’s servers on their constant watch list and are trying to stop VPN streaming. But NordVPN has a whole team of server specialists who have built up their infrastructure over the past few years so that most VPN servers have no problems streaming Hulu, Netflix or Amazon Prime.
NordVPN announced that they are now building their entire anonymous server infrastructure based on a technology that works similar to Hadoop and Docker in a virtual cloud. This enables the provider to redesign all of its servers and IPs with just a few clicks so the ban on NordVPN through streaming servers can be lifted within seconds. This innovation is way ahead of the competition. Hulu and Netflix have not yet been able to take countermeasures to prevent NordVPN users from streaming. Other VPN providers are likely to initiate something similar soon.
The Story Behind: Streaming providers such as Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and many more are being pressured by the film industry to only offer their services to specific locations due to their licensing policies. The user has to suffer the consequences as they are mostly located abroad and want to stream Netflix USA or Japan, anyways. As a result, streaming service providers are constantly blocking VPN servers. However, NordVPN’s new server model has managed to cleverly outwit the streaming service providers with their cloud technology server environment.
Learn more about this in our recent article:
How Good Is NordVPN? – Conclusion
While NordVPN is a new competitor in the VPN space, it’s taken the industry by storm. It’s one of the cheapest VPN’s out there while offering the best value for money. It’s well-known for being great with streaming Netflix and Torrenting while having a powerful Kill Switch (Network Lock) option, incredibly fast speeds, and plenty of servers worldwide.
For the price, NordVPN packs features that are unmatched among other VPN providers.
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NordVPN FAQ
General Questions about NordVPN
NordVPN subscription can be cancelled on the NordVPN website. NordVPN offers customers a login.
You can cancel the contract directly in the dashboard under “Change Plan” under “Cancel automatic payments” as shown in the image below:
If you can’t find the button, simply contact live support and type “Live Person” and then select “General Inquiry” and NordVPN will connect you to a live person from where you can cancel your subscription. We tried both ways — this is how NordVPN will cancel your subscription through chat; we tested it for you!
NordVPN offers a 30-day money back guarantee on all of their subscription plans. However, there is no separate free version available. You have to pay first, but you can cancel within 30 days. If you do, you would have used NordVPN free for 30 days.
NordVPN offers payment in U.S. Dollars. Payment can be made by credit card and will be converted at the current exchange rate.
Payment options are available via Visa, Master, American Express, and Discover. German Debit Cards are also accepted known as Giro. NordVPN also accepts “ACH”. You can also use Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Union Pay and even Cryptocurrency.
Users can reach technical support through email at support@nordvpn.com. NordVPN’s support usually responds within 48 hours.
NordVPN provides servers around the world that do not store any data — these servers are known as anonymous servers. These servers do not use any log any connection data and there is no user data on these servers.
NordVPN establishes an encrypted connection between the user’s computer and one of the anonymous servers. This connection is known as a “VPN tunnel”. This way, NordVPN now enables the user to continue the Internet connection via one of these anonymous servers. In this way, not only the IP of the user is disguised to a different one, but also the location. Once the user starts browsing on the the internet, only the IP address of the anonymous server are then visible to anybody who traces back the user’s connection.
Nord VPN has a strict no-log policy. This means that no connection data are stored on their anonymous servers.
Ultimately, authorities can only trace the connection back to the anonymous server and only know that a connection was established from there. If in the unlikely event, an authority compromises the anonymous server, it would still not know which user was behind the connection, since no log and connection data are stored.
And in the extremely unlikely event that an authority would gain access to the anonymous server, they would not be able to see the data flow because all connections are encrypted with the AES 256bit algorithm.
To date (as of November 2024) no case us known that an authority was able to trace back a user’s connection.
NordVPN is located in Panama and is operated by Tefincom co S.A. They are officially located in Panama which helps them avoid any government regulated laws that would force them to reveas user data. Panama is known holistically as a safe jurisdiction zone to protect internet freedom.
Questions about NordVPN Features and Software Overall
The installation of NordVPN on Windows 10 and macOS or any other deice can be done without any effort within a few seconds.
For Android, the installation takes place via Google Play and for iPhones via AppStore. We have provided further information on installation via various devices in this detailed NordVPN review above providing screenshots.
With just one license, 6 devices can be used at the same time. If you want to share your license with family members, you can do so without any problems. Of course, you can also share NordVPN with friends this way. NordVPN is therefore very generous by allowing a total of 6 devices.
With NordVPN you can share all kinds of files through torrent networks. The BitTorrent network and all BitTorrent clients are 100% supported by NordVPN. These include BitComet, BitTorrent (Client), Transmission (Mac OS X), Vuze (formerly Azureus), µTorrent, and many others.
Basically, NordVPN doesn’t throttle the speed. The speed depends on the anonymous server to which you have established a connection.
We have provided our current speed to NordVPN with different servers in our current NordVPN rating 2024 above.
To browse faster it helps to reconnect to other servers. With NordVPN, users can choose which server they want to be connected to.
NordVPN has servers in the following countries that allow hundreds of thousands of users to surf anonymously at the same time with incredible speeds. This list was updated on November 2024:
Nord-Amerika (2299 servers)
- United States of America (1802 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Static IP, Double VPN, Streaming - Canada (429 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Static IP, Streaming - Brazil (21 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Argentina (18 servers)
- Mexico (14 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Chile (10 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Costa Rica (1 server)
Europa (2110 servers)
- Germany (251 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Static IP, Streaming - United Kingdom (440 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Static IP, Double VPN, Streaming - France (242 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Double VPN, Static IP, Streaming - Netherlands (224 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Static IP, Double VPN, Streaming - Sweden (135 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Double VPN, Streaming - Switzerland (107 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Onion Over VPN, Double VPN, Streaming - Denmark (70 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Italy (67 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Streaming - Spain (63 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Norway (57 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Belgium (50 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Poland (42 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Ireland (36 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Czechia (30 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Austria (29 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Portugal (26 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Finland (25 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Ukraine (23 servers)
- Serbia (20 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Luxembourg (19 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Bulgaria (17 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Greece (17 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Hungary (17 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Romania (17 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Latvia (16 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Estonia (13 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Island (10 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Slovakia (10 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Cyprus (8 servers)
- Albania (6 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Croatia (1 server)
Options: File Sharing - Slovenia (1 server)
Options: File Sharing - Georgia (4 servers)
- Moldavia (4 servers)
- Bosnia and Herzegowina (3 servers)
Options: File Sharing - North Macedonia (2 servers)
Options: File Sharing
Afrika, Middle East und India (128 servers)
- South Africa (49 servers)
Options: File Sharing - India (33 servers)
Options: File Sharing - United Arab Emirates (20 servers)
Streaming - Israel (19 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Turkey (7 servers)
Streaming, Options: File Sharing
Asia-Pacific (694 servers)
- Australia (187 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Taiwan (121 servers)
Double VPN - Singapore (117 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Streaming - Japan (95 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Streaming - Hong Kong (89 servers)
Options: File Sharing, Streaming - New Zealand (26 servers)
Options: File Sharing - Malaysia (15 servers)
- Vietnam (15 servers)
- Indonesia (13 servers)
- South Korea (10 servers)
- Thailand (6 servers)
NordVPN is committed to enabling users from all over the world to stream Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, and even Disney Plus, HBO max and other streaming services.
Although these streaming service providers try to block anonymous servers, the high number of servers and our daily updates show that NordVPN is up to the task. NordVPN thus supports all streaming providers including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, USA and Japan.
For example, if you want to watch Netflix USA in Germany, you can do so with NordVPN. Read all about it above in this review.
Questions about NordVPN Security and Anonymity
Maintaining the anonymity of the users is basically the main service and unique proposition of NordVPN. The anonymity and integrity is the reason for the immense success of any VPN tool.
Any connection with NordVPN is made through a so-called VPN tunnel. Basically, you’re browsing from a different location with a different IP, thereby obscuring your identity. How this works is explained in more detail n this NordVPN review above.
In order to carry out the payment process, the user is only asked for the necessary payment credentials to be able to pay for the subscription license.
Unless of course the user decides to pay via cryptocurrency: In this case, NordVPN does not even save the payment credentials of the user, thus the user is not even known to NordVPN.
Of course, browsing by using NordVPN is completely anonymous. No data is stored on any of the NordVPN servers — after all, this is the sole purpose of a VPN tool.
There are no legal regulations that prohibit anonymously browsing the internet in more than 185 countries such as the United States, Europe overall, Canada, Japan, and many more. Only a handful of countries actually have banned the use of VPNs such as Iran, Iraq, Uganda, Oman, Pakistan, Syria, and some others.
In democratic countries such as United States, or in Europa, anonymous browsing is protected by different constitutional laws, such as the freedom of speech, right of self-determination, right to anonymity, public interest laws, and many other laws.
Authorities cannot trace the connection and there has not been a single known case on NordVPN.
However, in the event of particularly serious criminal acts, authorities use methods other than tracing the connection of a VPN. The internet connection and the technical means are not the only options that authorities can work with. Government institutions can question witnesses, trace letters and parcels, monitor bank accounts, and have many other investigative methods.
As far as torrenting copyrighted data is concerned, such as sharing copyrighted software, movies, books, and music … these kind of cases are being investigated through civilian institutions. The options of the civil investigators and firms are very limited when it comes to tracing back an anonymous IP as there is no way of knowing who is behind a VPN connection.
Data Privacy laws are mostly common in the EU, known as the GDPR. Germany is known as a strong advacote of the GDPR.
In Califonia, similar laws have been implemented such as CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
As NordVPN is neither located in the EU nor in the U.S., thus they don’t have to obey any of those laws mentioned above.
Therefore, none of those laws can force NordVPN to store any personal data.
NordVPN also does not establish a connection between the user and the connection of the servers — this is why these servers are referred to as anonymous. No logs are saved either.
In addition, every connection is encrypted so that no one is able to eavesdrop on the connection.
If for inexplicable reasons NordVPN no longer works on the computer, the entire Internet connection will also be interrupted.
This function is the so-called “Kill Switch” feature. It ensures that the user never falls back to the original and insecure connection. The kill switch feature can also be switched off if desired.
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BONUS SECTION:
How Did We Test NordVPN?
Testing NordVPN Support
We’d like to take this occasion to demonstrate the conduct of our thorough testing of NordVPN. The digitalwelt team tests NordVPN constantly on our dedicated computers with Windows 10, macOS, Android, iPhone, Linux as well as on Network Routers, and on other platforms.
One of our editors at digitalwelt subscribes with an email to NordVPN and usually buys a monthly subscription. After we have thoroughly tested the VPN, we reach out to NordVPN to test the competence and scope of their technical support. Usually one of our specialized authors asks questions about certain problems we know the answer to; only to see if NordVPN’s tech support is also able to provide a good response:
We also take the opportunity to check if the support is capable of responding in a timely and friendly manner, and are capable of making feasible statements and support instructions.
Testing the Money-Back-Guarantee
After more than 3 weeks of testing, we then ask NordVPN to give us our money back — not because we didn’t like it of course, but to see if and how NordVPN holds up to their 30-day-money-back promise. Since we could be easily exposed as being digitalwelt, we do not use our organization’s email, but tend to register through inconspicuous emails such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, and similar. If for some reason NordVPN or any other VPN tool we are testing would not make their money-back guarantee easy, we will sure report it on our review report.
Unnecessary to say that NordVPN has passed this test impeccably, however we also had some bad experiences with other suspicious tools, which you won’t be seeing on this list of recommended VPNs for obvious reasons.
How Did We Check the Security of NordVPN?
Thoroughly testing the software includes connecting to several VPN servers, and testing their speed one by one. Those speed results we usually display during our test. We use several data transfer monitoring software to determine the median speed of the servers, and the maximum speed of NordVPNs fastest servers. This also gives us a quite good impression and idea about the server speeds of NordVPN in general.
One important aspect is the encryption method. Since some VPN providers tend to claim to use an encryption and then actually don’t, we use different methods and tools to see of in fact the data stream is encrypted and what kind of encryption is being used. We use the software Wireshark in Windows and macOS to identify the encryption method of the VPN data stream. Wireshark is one of the most secured methods and is a tool that monitors and displays live network data which includes the connection between your computer, the VPN tool, and your internet data stream.
Below you can see the screenshot of the Wireshark security check we had performed just recently on NordVPN on Windows 10:
The IP shown 66.115.146.30 for example is one of NordVPNs anonymous IPs our editor had connected to in Vancouver, Canada, provided to NordVPN by Total Server Solutions, LLC — a company based in Atlanta, GA specialized in providing encrypted and anonymous VPN servers to companies such as NordVPN. As you can see, NordVPN uses the encryption protocol OpenVPN.
And the unreadable content you see on the right is the actual data that is being transferred — and it’s gibberish thanks to NordVPN which means: it’s encrypted. If the VPN tool would not been encrypting your data streams, that content would have been readable.
Additionally, we check for DNS Leaks to determine that the IPs of NordVPN is not leaking. Since we have been doing this for a while, our security tests are processed, and no VPN can pass our tests that doesn’t fulfill our strict security requirements. If a tool doesn’t pass our test and tends to get a bad review, we often decide not to list it.
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by Stephan Kubrik
digitalwelt Lead Columnist for IT Security
Stephan Kubrik is a Computer Scientist and expert on VPNs and computer viruses. Stephan has been researching for the Fraunhofer Society and has been developing software for the autonomous discovery of computer viruses and trojans using artificial intelligence.
He was previously a Research Associate at the Technical University of Cologne, studied Computer Engineering, and regularly publishes in IT magazines and journals, including the PC Magazine and digitalwelt.
Top VPN Tools | Updated: November 2024
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