Security for everyone - Reviewing F-Secure Freedome VPN

With the increasing numbers and types of threats on the internet, you just can't be too secure. Nowadays mostly everyone knows that using an internet security suite is highly recommended, but while these applications protect against viruses, malware and hackers, there are some other tools that help us keep our privacy and personal information safe. VPN services are made just for that: to let you use the internet while remaining anonymous and protected, even on unsafe WiFi networks. F-Secure is an antivirus provider which also has a VPN service, called Freedome. Today we take a look at its latest version for Windows. Read this review and learn what it has to offer:

What F-Secure Freedome has to offer

Freedome is made by F-Secure, a Finnish cyber security and privacy company based in Helsinki, who have been in the business since 1988, focusing mostly on the corporate market with enterprise-grade offerings. They have a series of security applications for home users as well, and Freedome is one of them. It's good to know that Finland has very strict privacy laws, thus a VPN service offered by a Finnish company will not be subject to so-called "Big Brother laws" applicable in some countries.

Currently, Freedome is available in three different plans, the only difference between them being the number of devices supported. You can buy a Freedome subscription for 3, 5 or 7 devices, which means that you can run the VPN application simultaneously on this many devices. All plans are for 12 months, so you can get protection for three devices for $49.99 per year, or for five devices for $59.99 per year, while the protection of seven devices has a yearly price of $79.99.

Freedome is available on both desktop and mobile devices, the range of supported operating systems includes Windows 7 or later, OS X 10.10 or later, iOS 9 or later and Android 4.0.3 or later. Unfortunately, Freedome is not available on Linux, nor does it have a version that can be installed on your router, as some other competitors have.

The VPN service offered by F-Secure is available worldwide, excluding Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

All subscription types include unlimited traffic; they can be purchased without an account, offer complete privacy (meaning that none of your traffic is logged) and come with tracking and browsing protection and a tracker mapper.

Would you like to try the Freedome service before buying it? F-Secure offers a 5-day trial of the Freedome application, without any restrictions. This should be more than enough to check out the available servers, speeds and other features offered. Moreover, they also offer a 30-day money back guarantee, so even if you have purchased a subscription, you still have a month to make up your mind.

As for global coverage, Freedome doesn't have VPN servers in many countries. You can connect to VPN servers in the following locations: Germany, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, United States, and Australia. As you can see, there are barely any servers in Asia, while Africa is completely missing from the list and so is Russia.

Because we are talking about a privacy-related service, it would be good to have the possibility to pay for a subscription in Bitcoins, which would make the whole process completely anonymous, but, unfortunately, you can only pay with a credit card, PayPal or wire transfer.

Download and installation

Downloading and installing Freedome on Windows is an easy process. First, you need to download the 38.7 MB setup file, called Freedome.exe.

Installing Freedome for Windows is as easy as launching the executable you have just downloaded, pressing the Start free trial button, accepting the license agreement, and waiting for the installation wizard to complete. It is worth mentioning that, to be able to install Freedome, you need administrative privileges.

Also, for it to function properly, Freedome might ask you to allow the installation of a set of virtual network drivers - Freedome TAP driver. If asked, choose Yes to allow the installation; otherwise, Freedome will not be able to work.

Note, that if you have other VPN software installed, the virtual network adapters might conflict, thus making one or both VPN applications unusable. It is recommended to have only a single VPN client installed on your Windows computer at any given time.

Our first impression of F-Secure Freedome is mixed: the company doesn't offer many VPN servers, although the most important countries are covered. The downloading and installation procedure is simple, but if you want to buy a subscription, you cannot pay in Bitcoins. It's also great that you have a 5-day trial and a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can decide whether you want to use the application or not.

Using Freedome VPN on Windows

Upon launching the application, you are greeted by its main window. You will see a straightforward and elegant user interface with a menu on the left and the most important information in the center.

If you want to quickly connect to a VPN server, all you need to do is press the huge Protection OFF button in the middle of the window.

The application will now show that the connection is in progress.

Once the connection has been established the central button will display Protection ON. That's it, you are now connected to a VPN server and protected! If you want to disconnect, you only have to press the button again.

By default, Freedome connects to the VPN server closest to your physical location. This a good choice, if you don't need to be connected to a server from a particular country, but only need protection. The location of this automatically selected server is visible right below the connection button.

If you want to connect to a particular VPN server, you can click the name of the pre-selected server, and the Locations window will open, with all the available servers on the left. Click the one you need, go back to the main window and connect.

Freedome comes with a very simple, elegant and easy to use interface, which helps you a lot in completing the most used task: connecting to a VPN server. The automatic server selection works just fine, and it's also easy to choose a different server if you have to.

Go to the second page of this review to learn about the additional features offered by Freedome and the results it obtained in our performance benchmarks. You will also see our final verdict for this product.

Extra features in F-Secure Freedome VPN

F-Secure Freedome offers three additional features to its users, all of which are accessible through the menu on the left side of the application window. The first one is called Browsing protection, and it does exactly what its name suggests: it protects you against suspicious and harmful websites. It does so by using its database of sites known to be harmful and automatically blocking them in all of your browsers. It's a nice feature, and we suggest keeping it turned on, especially if you have no other security software installed that would offer a similar service.

Tracking protection is another useful feature if you are concerned about your privacy. When turned on, Freedome hides your IP address, blocks tracking cookies and prevent apps from sending information about you. This is useful for avoiding hacker attacks, unwanted advertisements, and data collection companies.

It will not block tracking cookies on encrypted websites that use HTTPS/TLS/SSL, but that is normal. If you want to learn more about tracking, F-Secure has a lot of information about it on a dedicated webpage.

The Tracker Mapper is a unique feature that Freedome offers, and it's closely related to Tracking protection. When enabled, it starts a temporary, 24-hour logging, where it logs every website that tries to track you while you are using the internet. All of this information is drawn live on an interactive map, so you can see which sites and how many times they have tried to track you, and also see how they are connected to each other. You can save this information in a file, or even share it with someone. You can also stop logging any time you wish. On the screenshot below you can see how many tracking attempts we had after only an hour of visiting only reputable, well-known websites.

Freedome offers some additional features that show that F-Secure is concerned about your privacy, as they are aimed at keeping your information safe and you anonymous, while also letting you know which websites are trying to track you and how many times.

Advanced settings and configuration

F-Secure Freedome does not have much to offer regarding advanced settings. On the Settings tab, accessible from the main app window, you can set whether you want Freedome to start automatically with your computer and if you want it to connect to a VPN server when it starts. You can also configure the application to show connection notifications. Other than these you can also choose the application's language, and allow the collection of non-personalized data, to help improve the software.

There is also a Subscription tab that lets you check the date your subscription expires, while on the Help tab you can access the Freedome community forum and send feedback about the application.

F-Secure Freedome is a straightforward and easy to use VPN service, and it offers no advanced settings that could help you fine-tune its features. It only provides a couple of small settings to tinker with.

Performance and speed

When you connect to a VPN server, you will protect your privacy and data, but some speed must be sacrificed, because of the way VPN technology works. Since you are not connecting directly to the internet, but through another server, the connection will not be as fast as it is without VPN. To check how much Freedome affects our internet connection's speed, we ran a couple of tests using the Speedtest.net service.

We were using Freedome on a fast Internet connection, advertised as having a speed of 100 Mbps for both download and upload. The screenshot below shows you the rates measured by Speedtest.net before installing Freedome on our test computer. Although the speeds are not exactly what the ISP advertises, they are rather close to 100 Mbps.

Next, we used Freedome to establish a VPN connection to a server that is located close to us, in Prague, the Czech Republic. This was the closest server suggested by the app. In this case, the download speed has dropped, but the upload speed decreased a lot less.

It's time to go a bit further: we have now used Freedome with a server that is still on the same continent – Germany, Europe. As expected, the download speed dropped a bit more, but the upload speed remained unchanged, the server performed quite well.

Now we wanted to know what speed we get if we connect through a server on a different continent, in the United States. There were no surprises here, both the download and upload speeds dropped, ping time has increased significantly, but everything was still quite usable.

Finally, we went all over to the other side of the world, since Australia is one of the furthest possible points from us. Again, no surprises: ping time increased considerably, download speed dropped to around 14 Mbps, and upload speed was a weak 11 Mbps. That's not much, but it's still usable for web browsing.

It's no surprise that no matter what server we connect to, both our download and upload speeds drop if we are using a VPN service: this is normal since we are no longer connected directly to the internet. Of course, there are large differences in speeds, depending on which server we connect to, so it's better to try more options if you don't need a specific server. If you have a fast broadband internet connection, you will probably have no problems browsing the web on VPN, unless you are using a server on the other side of the world.

Default settings you might consider adjusting

Freedome has barely any settings to change, and most of them are set up in the recommended way by default, but there is one feature you might want to change:

• By default, Freedome starts up with your computer and connects to a VPN server. If you don't always need this, you might want to disable these two features, to make Windows startup faster.

F-Secure Freedome doesn't have many settings to tinker with: we would love some things like having the option to disable VPN on selected networks or an internet kill-switch feature. Those few settings that can be changed are set up correctly.

Pros and cons

Freedome is a VPN application that has some outstanding features:

• Easy to use, simple interface
• Built-in browsing and tracking protection
• Free trial and money-back guarantee
• No traffic logging

There are some downsides to F-Secure Freedom as well:

• Low number of servers
• No advanced settings
• Cannot pay in Bitcoins

Verdict

Freedome is a relatively new VPN service, but the company that makes the product, F-Secure, has been involved in cyber security for almost 30 years. F-Secure Freedome is an excellent choice for beginners, as it offers an easy to use interface that doesn't confuse newcomers. Also, the primary service, connecting to VPN servers, works well and most servers are quite fast. Additionally, the application also has browsing and tracking protection built-in, which is a nice bonus compared to a barebone VPN service. The unique Tracker Mapper is a visual tool that can show you how much the websites you visit track you. Of course, there is room for improvement, and we would have loved the possibility to set rules based on the WiFi networks we are connecting to like you can with other VPN services.

Overall, we enjoyed testing F-Secure Freedome, and we consider it a good choice for anyone interested in a VPN service.