What is a VPN, and who needs one?

A tunnel from your phone to a server we run, useful for some people on some networks and pointless for others

Who a VPN suits, and the one test to apply

What is a VPN? An encrypted pipe between your device and one of the service's servers. It suits you if your traffic crosses a network you do not control and do not trust: a café, a mall, a hotel, a shared flat. It suits you less if you only want a different country on your Netflix screen or a faster connection, because it is not built for either.

The test: name the network and ask who owns it. If you cannot, a tunnel adds something. If it is your own router at home and you trust your provider, it adds little.

Five criteria for choosing any VPN, ours included

  • Who runs the servers, and what do they say about logs? Ours says it keeps none; read that as a statement, not an audit.
  • How many devices does one subscription cover? Here it is up to five at once on one link.
  • How do you connect? Here the link opens only in the free Happ app. Other link readers such as v2rayNG and Hiddify show a single "App not supported" entry.
  • Where are the exit servers? Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney and Frankfurt, and none in Indonesia.
  • How do you pay, and does it renew? In the bot, with cryptocurrency only, and nothing renews itself.

The costs and limits

Cryptocurrency only is a real cost. If you have never bought any, the first purchase takes longer than the trial lasts, and cards are not accepted. The five-device limit is firm, so a household of seven phones needs a second plan. With no server in Indonesia you cannot get an Indonesian address, so apps that only serve people inside the country will not treat you as local from abroad.

In return there is no account at all. In roughly a minute the bot in Telegram hands over a subscription link of your own, with no email or password requested.

A conflict of interest, said plainly

We sell this service, which means every criterion above was chosen by someone who gains if you pick us. Run the five questions against any other service too, and use the trial to see how ours behaves on your own network before paying. If the answers to criteria 2, 3 and 5 do not suit you, skip us.

What is covered on the pages below

This section holds one page per question that comes next. A comparison of tunnels and proxies, of a browser extension and a phone-wide tunnel, of options for a computer, a Mac, a router or a Chromebook, and of what "cheap" and "best" mean as criteria. A page on safety says what a tunnel does not protect, a page on how it works explains the encryption step by step, and the trial page covers the free days. What a tunnel may be used for varies by country and over time, so keeping to local law and to each service's terms is the reader's job.

Questions

Would an antivirus app make a tunnel unnecessary?

No. An antivirus looks at files and apps on the device, a tunnel only wraps the network traffic. A tunnel will not stop a malicious app you installed, and an antivirus will not hide a network from its owner.

Can I use one subscription on my laptop and my phone together?

Yes, up to five devices at once on one link, as long as each uses Happ, which is free on Android, iPhone, Windows and macOS. A sixth device needs another subscription.

Why does my existing app say "App not supported"?

The subscription asks each app to send a device ID so the five-device limit can work. v2rayNG and Hiddify do not send it, so they show one entry with that text instead of servers. Open the link in Happ.

What happens to my details if I never register?

No sign-up form exists. The bot issues the link in a chat, and the site has no account, password or email field. Payment, if you choose it later, happens in the bot.

Does a tunnel make me anonymous?

No. It moves where the network sees you from, to our server, and hides the list of sites from the local network. Any account you sign in to goes on recognising you.

Take the link and try it on your own phone

The trial needs no sign-up. Should the link not work well on your connection, you have lost nothing.