VPN comes from the English acronym Virtual Private Network which translated means virtual private network. It is a computer network technology that will allow us a secure extension of the local area network over a public network, such as the Internet. Among the advantages that having a VPN offers us, we have the possibility of being able to locate ourselves in different countries, hide our identity on the Internet, avoid geoblocking of content, it gives us greater security and we can download P2P content more safely. In this tutorial we are going to talk about TunnelBear, explaining how to configure it and what this VPN service offers us.
Before we start, it should be noted that these are not all advantages when using a VPN. It also has its drawbacks, such as that the Internet speed may be lower than the contracted speed and, furthermore, that not all devices are compatible with a factory VPN. The VPN service that we are going to talk about this time is TunnelBear and we are going to start by knowing what it can offer us.
What can using a VPN like TunnelBear bring us?
What TunnelBear will do is encrypt our Internet connection, so that online activity can be kept private on any network. Thanks to having this VPN service activated we will be able to achieve:
- Protect our privacy from Internet providers, preventing them from seeing everything we do online.
- Avoid the theft of data and passwords especially when we are using an insecure public Wi-Fi.
- Allows access to content that is only available in certain regions.
- Bypass IP-based tracking to track your behavior across all sites and then deliver targeted advertising to you.
- It can be used to avoid local censorship exercised by some governments by blocking popular applications and websites.
As for our connection, it will secure it with a symmetric 256-bit AES encryption that is extremely strong.
Regarding TunnelBear, it offers a free version and a paid version. These are the three annual rates that it currently offers:
The free one that is the one that we are going to test, and it offers us 500 MB to navigate per month. We also have an unlimited one for $ 4.99 per month if we hire 12 months that offers us unlimited traffic and we can connect up to 5 devices simultaneously. If you want to check the current prices you can do it here.
How to install TunnelBear on Windows
Before starting the installation, it should be noted that the program is also available for Android, IOS and MacOS .
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TunnelBear VPN
Developer: TunnelBear, LLC
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TunnelBear: Secure VPN & Wifi
Developer: TunnelBear, LLC
The version that we are going to install of TunnelBear is the Windows version, and we can download it from here .
The first thing we are going to do is download the installer on our hard drive for which we will click on Download for Windows . Next, we double-click on the installer file and we will get a welcome screen like this:
Here you are asking us in which directory we want to install the program. The normal thing, unless you do not have space or you like another location, is to leave the one that comes by default. In our case, we have chosen to leave it as it was and we clicked on Install . Then a screen like this will appear, in which we see how the program is being installed.
When the TunnelBear installation is complete, a screen like this will appear.
The first red box is to create a free account in the event that we do not have one. In the hypothetical case that we already had one, we would click on Log in and enter our username and password. As we do not have any account, we are going to proceed to create one, correctly filling in the sections of the box above.
Here what we have to do is follow these three steps:
- Put an email for us and that will be our username.
- Set a password. Ideally, if we want it to be robust, it is to contain 12 characters that include uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols.
- We accept the terms of service by selecting the corresponding box and clicking on the Create button .
Next, we get a screen like this one, in which it explains how the program works and we press Next until it finishes.
Then a screen like this will appear:
What they are asking us is that we go to our email account and verify it. Therefore, we will enter our e-mail and we will look for the message that you have sent us that will be like this:
In this case, all we have to do is click on the Verify my account button . Once done, you go back to using TunnelBear and click on the Ok button , verified with which the installation ends.
Use and configuration options of this VPN
The first time we enter TunnelBear, a screen like this will appear:
At the top in the first red box we have the On / Off button that will start or remove the VPN. In this case it is Off, that is, off, but if it were On it would be activated. On the left, in the box that says ” Fastest ” we can leave it like this if we want the fastest connection to be established. In addition, if we deploy it, we can choose a specific country to establish our location there.
Below we have a map where by double clicking on the name of a country we can activate the VPN in that location. The MB that we have left to navigate in our free account is also observed. On the left, the globe icon is used to return to the main screen with the map. Just below we also have an icon with a gear where the program’s configuration options are. If we click on it, the following screen will appear.
Here we have to talk about four sections:
- General : it is related to the notifications and the behavior of the program. Here we can choose if we want it to notify us or not, when there is a disconnection or problem. Also if we want the program to run in the background. Our recommendation is to leave all of them activated.
- Security : here we have an option to block the connection while the program connects and reconnects.
- Trusted Networks : allows us to select which trusted Wi-Fi networks do not need to use TunnelBear.
- Account : in this section we can manage our account options and move to a higher payment plan.
Now we are going to start using TunnelBear. In the box on the right we choose the location that interests us the most. In that sense, if we deploy it we will see more countries that are not on the map, but also being further away our connection will slow down. Then we press the power button of the VPN, so that, from that moment, anyone who analyzes the connection thinks that we are in France.
IP check and performance test
One way we have to check our current public IP is by using the website what-es-mi-ip.net and by clicking on the previous link we can check it. In the case of doing it with this connection, you would get this result:
As you can see, comment that I am in Spain which is Spain in English. However, if we clicked on Geolocate IP, it would give us more information such as the province and the town. On the other hand, if we activate the VPN and choose France, we would obtain these results:
Now, as you can see in the red box, it has located our location in France so we can say that it fulfills its mission. Obviously a VPN is going to have a lower speed than our Internet connection has. To do the tests we are going to use a 600 Mb symmetric fiber connection.
The best way to measure speed is on the speed test website . These are the results I have obtained with the VPN disabled:
If we do the test with the TunnelBear VPN we obtain this result:
Here we can observe two things:
- That the speed of both upload and download has been reduced by more than half, something completely normal.
- The ping has increased from 3 ms to 47 ms, to navigate it could be done well, but in some other task that requires immediacy we might notice a small delay.
In conclusion, with TunnelBear in our neighboring countries we could have enough speed and latency to do most things without problems. For example, if we chose Spain the results could be better and it would also help to maintain privacy, since we would hide our public IP address when browsing. As you have seen, this VPN service works really well and is highly recommended, plus it is quite cheap.
