My Secure VPN Review

My Secure VPN is lackluster in almost every way a virtual private network can be. It doesn’t offer a dedicated client, but instead makes users install open-source, third-party software to use its service. It only has a small handful of servers, and all but one are in Europe.

Plus, we found DNS leaks during our testing, making My Secure VPN untrustworthy when it comes to security. It has limited payment options and doesn’t even accept credit cards. 

Though there are bright spots, which you can read about in our My Secure VPN review below, the issues with the service make it impossible to recommend. 

Strengths & Weaknesses

Features

My Secure VPN doesn’t offer a client. Instead, it provides users with a configuration file that must be set up in a third-party client. In the knowledgebase, there are instructions on how to use the configuration file with the publicly available OpenVPN client and SoftEther VPN, as well as in the settings of iOS and Android devices.

Because of that, it can be said that My Secure VPN has no features. Configuring your VPN in the settings of your phone or tablet means it won’t have things like a kill switch, which is an essential part of VPN security. 

As for the clients, OpenVPN is a respected protocol, but the client offered is lackluster. It allows you to run the application on start-up, but it doesn’t have a kill switch, making it relatively insecure compared to most competitors.

We’ll continue diving into the issues that causes in the “ease of use” section, but needless to say, it makes My Secure VPN largely unusable. 

If you’re looking for a feature-rich VPN, check out our ExpressVPN review. ExpressVPN’s client covers the most important features for a basic VPN, as well as tons of quality of life features, such as split tunneling.

My Secure VPN Features Overview

Pricing

My Secure VPN offers two types of plans and each can be purchased in three time frames. There’s a dynamic IP VPN and a dedicated IP VPN. Dynamic IP is how most VPNs operate. It gives you a randomly assigned IP address each time you connect. 

Dedicated IP, on the other hand, means you’ll have a dedicated server that you connect to each time you turn on your VPN. That has quite a few disadvantages, such as the fact the IP can be blacklisted, and not much of an advantage over the dynamic IP option. Plus, it’s twice the price.

Dedicated Unlimited GB Bandwidth 5 Included Devices Bitcoin	1-month plan $ 12.69/ month 3-months plan $ 12.06/ month $36.18 billed every 3 month Save 5 % 6-months plan $ 11.42/ month $68.52 billed every 6 month Save 10 %
Dynamic IP Unlimited GB Bandwidth 5 Included Devices Bitcoin	1-month plan $ 6.35/ month 3-months plan $ 6.03/ month $18.09 billed every 3 month Save 5 % 6-months plan $ 5.71/ month $34.26 billed every 6 month Save 10 %

All the prices on My Secure VPN’s website are listed in pounds, so we’ve converted them to dollars to compare with other VPN providers’ pricing. Because of that, the price may fluctuate depending on the conversion rate.   

When it comes to the dedicated IP option, the pricing is in line with high-end providers and is unappealing given how little My Secure VPN has to offer. 

The dynamic IP option has solid monthly pricing, but it only offers about 50 cents per month of savings for signing up for longer periods. Plus, the longer time periods are only three and six months.

My Secure VPN’s long-term pricing can’t compete with the savings offered by the budget provider Windscribe’s annual and biennial options. You can read more about the savings Windscribe offers in our full Windscribe review.

My Secure VPN offers a free 24-hour trial, but for those looking to try a VPN for free, we suggest looking at our free VPN services list instead. There’s also a refund policy, but My Secure VPN’s homepage says the refund period is three days while the terms and conditions say it’s seven days. 

That kind of conflicting or incomplete information can be found all over the My Secure VPN website. 

For methods of payment, My Secure VPN takes PayPal and Coinbase, meaning you can pay with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Ridiculously, credit card payment isn’t offered.

Ease of Use

As mentioned, My Secure VPN doesn’t have its own client. Instead, it makes users download third-party clients and offers configuration files that show those clients the servers it can connect to. 

Though that’s not necessarily a difficult process, it’s more of a hassle than if My Secure VPN offered a client. For our testing, we used the OpenVPN client, and though the OpenVPN protocol is top of the line, the client isn’t great.

The user interface is all but non-existent. You select your server by right-clicking the icon in the system tray. Once you select your desired location, you’re prompted to enter your password, which My Secure VPN generates for you and sends to you in an email. That has its own set of problems, as you can read in our email security guide.

Every time you use a new server, you need to enter the randomly-assigned password again. After that, the client will remember your password for that server if you click the “remember password” box. Otherwise, you’ll be opening your email to copy and paste your password every time you connect to the VPN, unless you’re using one of our best password managers.

We also had an issue with changing servers using the OpenVPN client. When we tried to connect to a new server while connected to the VPN, the client froze. The solution, if you could call it that, was to disconnect and close the client each time we wanted to change servers.

Because it doesn’t offer a dedicated client, My Secure VPN is well behind the curve in terms of ease of use. If you’re interested in seeing what a user-friendly VPN looks like, read our NordVPN review.

Speed

Speed is My Secure VPN’s strong suit. During our testing, we found its performance to be impressive, with ping times low enough to make it onto our best VPN for gaming roundup. That is if it wasn’t for all the issues with the service.

We only lost a few megabits per second of sustained download speed in our testing. This performance was consistent across all the servers we tested, too. The performance when browsing was what you’d expect with those numbers, as well.

Pages loaded quickly on all the servers and videos loaded at high resolution without noticeable lag. Though My Secure VPN’s performance is respectable, there are reasons for it that we’ll look at more in the next section. 

Because of all the issues the VPN has, we can’t recommend it. We urge those looking for a fast VPN to check out our fastest VPN article instead.

Security

When it comes to how secure a VPN is, there are two factors to consider: protocol and encryption. For protocols, OpenVPN and L2TP are available. We suggest using OpenVPN because it offers good security and solid performance. 

As for encryption, My Secure VPN uses an SSL tunnel, which isn’t good and hasn’t been considered secure for years. That encryption is likely responsible for the low ping times we saw because it requires less processing than ciphers like AES 256-bit.

In our testing, we found that My Secure VPN has DNS leaks and was using a Belgian Google DNS server as well as our local internet service provider DNS. 

This means despite using the VPN’s supposedly secure tunneling connection, there’s still a record of your online activity held by Google and your ISP. That defeats the purpose of using a VPN and leaves a paper trail of what you’ve been up to online.

Privacy

My Secure VPN doesn’t have a dedicated privacy policy on its website and only includes a few lines in its terms and conditions regarding the information it gathers and how it uses it. 

The first line of the terms says information gathered will only be used to fulfill your order and won’t be shared with anyone for any reason. To fulfill your order, My Secure VPN collects your name and email address, but if you want true anonymity, there’s nothing stopping you from paying with Coinbase and providing a fake name and throw away email address.

Finally, the terms and conditions say your IP address is collected when you visit the website to prevent fraudulent purchases. While somewhat comforting, we’d prefer a full privacy policy.

Streaming Performance

Streaming with My Secure VPN was a mixed bag. Surprisingly, BBC iPlayer worked, despite the DNS leaks, as did Netflix. That said, Hulu detected the VPN and told us we had to turn it off to watch anything. Amazon Prime Video told us that content wasn’t available in our location. 

For the websites that worked, as we saw in the “speed” section, things loaded quickly and felt fast. In all cases, the videos loaded at 1080p and we never had buffering or stuttering issues. 

That said, because of the inconsistent performance from one streaming website to the next, we suggest taking a look at our guide on how to beat the Netflix VPN ban to find a provider that can reliably break through streaming providers’ VPN detection systems.

Server Locations

My Secure VPN only offers five server locations around the world. They are the U.S., UK, Poland, Germany and France. There are no servers in Asia, South America or Africa. 

The spread of server locations is clustered in Europe, with the sole exception of the server in the U.S. The server list is lacking and leaves many locations without a fast server nearby. It even misses some key geoblocked regions. 

If you’re interested in reading about a VPN provider that offers a huge number of servers and locations, take a look at our HideMyAss review. It offers over 1,000 servers in over 280 locations in 190 countries throughout the world.

Customer Service

Despite My Secure VPN’s shortcomings, we have to give it credit for the customer support. Though the on-site knowledgebase isn’t fleshed out, email responses are quick and helpful.

When we sent in a support ticket, we got a response in minutes, with detailed and specific information that answered our question. The reps were helpful and friendly, making customer service one of the stronger parts of My Secure VPN’s service.

While the email support staff are helpful and responsive, there’s no live chat or phone number to use as an alternative, meaning getting a support ticket is the only way to get help when you need it. 

The Verdict

Though we ended on a positive note, My Secure VPN performed poorly overall. The DNS leaks are a disastrous vulnerability in security and the lack of a client leaves My Secure VPN barren in regards to features. 

There is no kill switch, which is another major lapse in security, and other features, such as split tunneling, are also left out.

If you have experience with My Secure VPN, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below. As always, thanks for reading.