Trust.Zone Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Trust.Zone Has Inconsistent Speeds

Trust.Zone’s speeds were inconsistent throughout my tests. While they were usually fast when I connected to servers close to my location in the US, servers in faraway countries were much slower. Surprisingly, some locations were slow even though they weren’t that far — I had faster speeds in Germany than in the UK, even though I live closer to the latter.

Speed Test Results

On average, I got download speeds of about 37Mbps — fast enough speeds for 4K UHD streaming. I compared my baseline speed of 98Mbps with servers in the US, the UK, Japan, and Germany. I made sure to test servers that were near and far away from my home location so that I could get a full picture of Trust.Zone’s speeds.

My results were consistently solid in the US but were disappointing in the UK. In the US, speeds were 25% lower than my baseline, but my baseline speed dropped by 89% when I connected to a server in the UK. Despite my expectations for better speeds in the US, I was very disappointed by the significant drop in speed in the UK, particularly in light of my long distance speed results.

Although I am further away from Germany than the UK, my speeds decreased by only 60%. But, as expected, on the server farthest from me in Japan, I couldn’t even break 2Mbps — a 98% decrease. It wasn’t even fast enough for my usual online activities like gaming, Zoom calls, or streaming TV.

During my speed tests, I noticed I had pretty high ping, even on servers near me. High ping means it’s taking a long time for your device to communicate with the VPN server, making your connection less responsive. This explains why I had some lag at the beginning of Netflix streams even when my chosen server had high download speeds.

Are Trust.Zone’s Speeds Fast Enough for Gaming? Yes, I Played Multiplayer Games With Minimal Lag

During my experience playing Call of Duty: Battle Royale on Trust.Zone’s local servers, I observed that the games generally ran quite smoothly, with an average ping of 136ms. Nevertheless, there were moments when I encountered some lag. Although this lag did not entirely spoil my game, it did have a noticeable effect on my overall experience.

The long-distance servers were not usable as they gave far higher pings than what I got on the local servers. For smooth online gaming, I recommend that you test ExpressVPN and its lightning-fast network of servers.

Server Network — Small but Dependable Network

Trust.Zone’s server network is small, which is to be expected for a lesser-known VPN. It currently operates 178 servers in 90+ geographic zones. Each server is divided into geo-zones to provide you with improved speed, stability, and connection. If you prefer, you can connect to servers closer to your location or the ones with the best network.

Trust.Zone’s server network is fairly well distributed across the globe. A substantial portion of its servers are located in North America and Europe. The presence of the network is less apparent in South America and Asia, but it exists nevertheless. The VPN also has servers available in countries where coverage is limited, such as South Africa, Hong Kong, India, and China. Trust.Zone says that they own a lot of its servers but also rents servers in less utilized locations.

Despite the network’s small size, I still got dependable connections that never cut off or drastically slowed down. The server menu was easy to navigate, with drop-down sections separated into favorites, Double VPN servers, and by continent.

If your current server becomes unavailable, you’ll automatically switch to another server in the same country rather than losing your connection entirely. This is a feature I haven’t encountered on many other VPNs. You can also select different VPN ports in the settings menu — this is handy if your internet provider or government blocks communication over certain ports.

Security — Trust.Zone Makes Your IP Anonymous and Has an Automatic Kill Switch

Trust.Zone VPN provides strong protection for your sensitive information against prying eyes and potential cyber threats. It achieves this by offering robust privacy protection features, including military-grade encryption and dedicated (static) IP addresses. These advanced security measures not only ensure a high level of anonymity but also guarantee that your online activity is kept secure and private.

The security features offered by Trust.Zone includes:

• Bank-Grade Encryption – Trust.Zone utilizes industry-standard encryption, including AES-256-CBC cipher, SHA256 authentication, and an RSA-2048 handshake.
• Multi-protocols – Trust.Zone offers both its proprietary point-to-point connection protocol and well-known protocols such as OpenVPN, IKEv2, L2TP/IPSec, and WireGuard. The Windows app uses OpenVPN for port 1194 and a proprietary protocol for other ports. Though Trust.Zone’s proprietary protocol lacks independent auditing, its servers use military-grade encryption, which implies high security.
• Kill switch – ensures your data won’t be exposed if you lose your VPN connection. I tested the kill switch myself, and it worked as intended — my internet shut off as soon as I disconnected from Trust.Zone, and my real IP was never revealed. Note that Trust.Zone’s Android, iOS, and Mac apps lack a kill switch. However, the customer support team suggested using the open-source Wireguard, which has its own kill switch.
• Double VPN – routes your internet traffic through two or more VPN servers, adding an extra layer of encryption and anonymity. This makes it harder for anyone to trace your online activity back to you.
• Port forwarding – allows incoming traffic to reach a specific device or service on your network. Some VPNs provide port forwarding support, allowing you to access devices or services on your home network while connected to the VPN. This can be useful for tasks such as online gaming or accessing a home server from a remote location.
• DNS leak protection – prevents your DNS requests from being leaked outside of the VPN tunnel. This is important because DNS requests can reveal your online activities to your ISP, websites, and other third parties.

To check for data leaks, I performed an IP and DNS test while connected to Trust.Zone’s Italian server, which only revealed the VPN server and kept my real location and data hidden. However, Trust.Zone’s IP and DNS addresses are usually located in different countries, which may trigger suspicion from systems with enhanced protection. While there is an option to turn off DNS protection, my tests showed no leaks even with the option disabled.

Beyond my IP/DNS leak test, I also conducted a WebRTC leak test. To do this, WebRTC allows browsers to directly exchange information (including local and public IP addresses) with each other. This makes users vulnerable to leaked data and many VPNs have trouble blocking this kind of leak. Luckily, my tests showed that there were no WebRTC leaks.

Privacy — Double VPNs and Warrant Canary for Peace of Mind

Trust.Zone complements its encryption with a strict zero-logs policy so that none of your data is ever recorded. To verify this claim, I read their privacy policy and found it to be entirely true. It does not retain any technical details about your session, such as the amount or type of data transferred, nor does it retain any personal information apart from the email address you used to register.

I was impressed that Trust.Zone takes protecting your privacy a step further with its warrant canary warning system. This is an automated, verifiable daily report that tells the user that no data was requested by authorities. As this is a daily report, if users notice that the warrant canary was not published on any given day then it means that the Trust.Zone has been required to hand over data.

The warrant canary is signed with a PGP key, a digital way of certifying that it’s genuine. As further confirmation that it’s legitimate, it also lists a few of the current day’s articles in global news outlets like BBC. Trust.Zone is one of the few VPNs that have a warrant canary — it gives me extra peace of mind that no authorities are trying to pry on my online activities.

I was also relieved that Trust.Zone is based in Seychelles — a country that isn’t part of the Five Eyes Alliance. This is a security agreement between certain countries to surveil you and share your data with other alliance members. This is absolutely essential when choosing a VPN. I’ve tested several VPNs that claim they don’t log user activity, but several have made the news for turning over user logs to law enforcement for the purposes of prosecuting and convicting users.

To make it even harder to identify you, Trust.Zone has a Double VPN option that routes your data through 2 Trust.Zone servers instead of 1. Usually, only the most powerful VPNs offer it, so I was impressed that it has 7 Double VPN options with various country combinations. When I tested their speeds, I always got between 48-100Mbps, so you won’t have to sacrifice performance for extra privacy.

Trust.Zone allows you to pay with Bitcoin, Cloakcoin, and Emercoin. This is a very important feature since it protects your identity when you make a payment. The ability to pay safely is one of the major talking points of many Trust.Zone VPN customers.

Torrenting — Trust.Zone Allows P2P Downloads on All Servers

Trust.Zone is a decent torrenting VPN with unrestricted P2P traffic across all of its servers, but Windows users may find it more convenient since it is the only operating system with an integrated VPN kill switch. While you can torrent on all the other platforms, I would not recommend doing so without a kill switch due to the possibility that your VPN may drop, exposing your online activities to your ISP.

I got fast torrenting speeds. A 1.1GB video file from the public domain was downloaded in only 10 minutes using uTorrent. Although my IP and other data stayed anonymous, I had to use a premium malware blocker for extra security. Torrent sites are known for hosting sketchy ads, and torrents themselves can also contain malware. Since Trust.Zone doesn’t have a malware blocker, you could easily get a virus or tracker if you don’t buy a separate anti-malware program. As an alternative, CyberGhost includes ad and malware protection to keep you safe from harmful links. It also offers P2P-optimized servers for an optimal torrenting experience.

Please consider your local laws before downloading copyrighted files without permission. Trust.Zone also discourages illegal downloading, but, even if authorities requested your file-sharing data, there wouldn’t be any to provide thanks to its zero-logs policy.

Does Trust.Zone Work in China? Yes!

While I wasn’t able to test it there myself, Trust.Zone support assured me that it is one of the few VPNs that work in China. The agent recommended turning on DNS leak protection first and selecting either port 443, 33, or 22.

Although Trust.Zone does not come with any tools to mask VPN traffic, which is one way VPN services can bypass aggressive blocks. But with the above options enabled, you can bypass internet firewalls in countries that restrict the open web like China and Saudi Arabia without being tracked by third parties. This also grants you access to Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Instagram, which you would not be able to do without a VPN.

Your support options are limited with Trust.Zone. You can send an email to a support agent using an online form found on the support page, browse the online FAQ, or review some of their short setup guides. The FAQ doesn’t go very in-depth, but the guides are helpful, and there’s one on how to configure the open-source OpenVPN client if you prefer it to Trust.Zone’s native app.

I emailed support to ask what the purposes of the different VPN ports are, and it took less than 24 hours for me to hear back. The Trust.Zone website mentions that support is only available between 9 am and 7 pm (GMT+3) on weekdays and that you must be registered to contact customer support. The response provided was polite and straightforward, explaining that ports can be useful when your internet service provider restricts specific ports, causing the VPN to be non-functional. The agent also mentioned that specific ports use different VPN protocols.

I was glad to see an answer to my question within just a day, but I still prefer a VPN that has 24/7 live chat. Getting answers fast makes all the difference when you have an issue keeping you from getting online.