TunnelBear- An effective iPad VPN

VPN- What is TunnelBear?

The TunnelBear VPN is a wonderful app that secures provides you a secure internet surfing experience on your iPad or iPhone. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a kind of connection that works in encrypted form so as to keep your sensitive data like passwords, private communications etc secure from getting accessed by any outsider. It is also helpful in disabling softwares that tend to track your online surfing especially your transactions and private movements. Another benefit of using a VPN for securing your internet connection is that it enables you to hide your location, which means you can access the websites and services limited for residents of another country. A VPN does that by making it appear to foreign servers that you are local to their location. This is especially helpful in using services that separate contents on the basis of locations like iTunes and Netflix.

Getting to know TunnelBear VPN

If you want to use TunnelBear VPN as your iPad VPN, you are required to create a free account after which you are guided to set it up on your device and make it start working. This includes installation of a network profile onto the user’s iPad or iPhone. I conducted certain tests using the TunnelBear VPN and found that this VPN is quite slow when the tunneling is done across countries. However the case is different when tunneling is done locally for example within United States the user will get approx 80% to 90% surfing speed but if tunneling is established from United States to South Africa, the speed is reduced considerably by about 50% at one instance. I conducted all the tests using Ookla’s Speedtest app.

When to use a VPN?

If a user is a newbie to the concept of VPN, there is a certain question that is raised frequently regarding when we should use the VPN. In general, it is recommended that VPNs should be used when you are accessing a public Wi-Fi network. That is because public Wi-Fi networks are generally vulnerable and you may not know if someone is stalking around for all your private information over the internet. According to me, the best use of a VPN is to make the servers of different countries appear that you are local to their region.

Specifications for TunnelBear VPN

The Tunnelbear has a USP of an appealing and user friendly interface that makes it the favorite apps among other apps of iPad VPN. This application can run on both iPad and iPhone but it requires the platform of iOS 7 or above to function. The versions below iOS 7 dosen’s support this app. The app provides free data of 500 MB per month which is quite less for doing much of anything and also various ata plans in the form of in app purchases that range from US$2.99 per month, US$7.99 for 3 months to the mega plan of US$29.99 for a year.

It is important to know that if you are using the Mac’s free version and you get to purchase a plan through the TunnelBear app or TunnelBear’s website, you will have to pay US$4.99 for a month and US$49.99 for a year. But the relief feature about this is that it provides you unlimited data usage for your Mac and two more mobile devices which can include Android too. The in app plans of iPad and iPhone are meant for only single devices. But there is a loophole which says that you can get 1 GB of free data by tweeting TunnelBear and asking for that. The method of acquiring the free data is mentioned in the form of instructions on their website and on the app as well.