If you love your iPhone, why not give it the ultimate protection it can possibly have. With a VPN service running on your smartphone, it will be protected no matter where you go. With the various public Wi-Fi networks you may fall upon to protecting your privacy across the web while you browse or log into your banking application. New security flaws keep surfacing from the thousands of new apps that are regularly released and with all the revelations about intelligence agencies snooping through our activities, VPN services have been on the rise across smartphone and iPhone users.
Today, tablets, iPhones, (and Android smartphones) have surpassed the sales of home computers to the point that some people don’t even own a PC anymore and get by using smaller devices. This has been a shift seen with light users that would usually not get much done out of their PC. But it also meant attackers and cybercriminals now had a new playground. Adding VPN security to your iPhone, not only ensures your identity and information cannot be stolen in public networks abroad, literally making it impossible for a hacker to break it, but it will also protect your online activity and ensuring privacy.
We know how much iPhone users care for their beloved devices, so we took the time to test for various important features from our favorite VPN providers and picked the best ones overall for their iPhone software, OpenVPN compatibility, speed and servers, customer service and cost value, to compile the following best VPN for iPhone picks below.
Top VPN Services for Iphone Users
Surfshark – Full Review
Surfshark has a dedicated app for iOS and it also offers a quick and simple guide to set up the VPN on your iPhone. Surfshark is gaining fans due to the speeds and overall high quality of the service. Using this VPN on your iPhone will allow you to protect your activities and bypass restrictions on the go. Surfshark doesn’t keep logs of your activities and it lets you connect to over 800 servers in more than 50 countries.
ExpressVPN- Full Review
ExpressVPN take third pick for best iPhone VPN. It features really great software for iOS that we really loved. Fast network with plenty of servers but being based out of the US, they are required to keep some logs but still offer a solid log and privacy policy. Although the software is great, we do suggest to switch to OpenVPN but ExpressVPN does not offer any setup guide and that was their biggest downside for iPhone. Prices are fair, ranging from $12,95 to $8.32 per month, they are not the cheapest but they offer straightforward plans with a 30 day money back guarantee. With ExpressVPN, support is great and speeds are reliable and the software is easy to use, making it a great choice for iPhone (and Android) users.
VyprVPN – Full Review
VyprVPN is great for iPhone and provide a quality network. They have our favorite software for iOS, easy to use, looks great and features disconnection protection as well as easy swipe connect. It uses L2TP by default for high 256-bit encryption. So here’s what makes it rank lower on our list. Being US based, it has a bad log policy, no actual setup guide for OpenVPN, and you must pick between Pro and Premium packages or you’re stuck with less than desirable and unsecure PPTP. We are only down with L2TP and OpenVPN encryption so you’re having to pay premium priced packages to get what you need and the prices are only competitive if you take a yearly package. Overall they provide very fast servers and great customer service, so if you’re ready to commit, they still make a fine choice.
PrivateInternetAccess – Full Review
PrivateInternetAccess (PIA) is one of our favorite VPN services and has been for years. They offer great speeds, great customer service and great prices. So why is it not the best iPhone VPN in our books. Well for starters, they do not offer any software for mobile devices, but since we always prefer OpenVPN It’s not a huge deal. Unfortunately, they only offer setup guides for L2TP on iPhone VPN, and lack a proper visual setup guide for OpenVPN. If they ever add that one little guide on their site and add OpenVPN to their officially supported connection modes, they would jump to top a top 3 position. Unfortunately, because they don’t officially support it, and lack any type of iOS software, we had to rank them lower. They can still be considered for their great no-log policy and super low prices being from $6.95 to $3.33 per month. We love them and we’re sure you would too!
Setting iPhone 6 Settings to Maximize Security and Privacy
As mentioned earlier, the iPhone 6 has some default features that crush your privacy and Internet security. The same can be said for Mac computers and Spotlight searches being saved. Most users would prefer to share as little information as possible with corporations, so let’s take a look at some settings you can configure to share as little information as possible with third parties and enhance your phone’s security.
The first thing you are going to want to do is to increase the password to 6 digits instead of four. It may sound like an insignificant configuration, but people can easily tilt your phone in the light to see oil left on the screen by your fingers and then deduce your password. By expanding the password digits to 6, it will make it exponentially harder for them to guess your password. Simply open Settings, Touch ID& Passcode, and then select Options. You can, and should, also configure alphanumeric characters in your password to make it extremely difficult for people to break into your phone.
Disabling Tracking Feature
One thing that frightens a lot of iPhone users is tracking data, which shares information with servers regarding your geographic location by using the GPS system in your phone. To disable this incredibly invasive setting, simply open Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services, and then Frequent Locations. Make sure this setting is set to ‘off’ and that you clear your history.
Apps that Share Your Data
Believe it or not, there are a myriad apps that share personal information with other applications and servers, but this is highly undesirable. Most often you have to agree to this setting when you install a new application, but you can selectively disable this feature on a per-app basis. You can find these settings by opening Settings, Privacy, and then manually configure what type of data each application can access and share.
Physical Location Tracking
Yet another invasive feature of the iPhone 6 is the ability of apps to track your physical location to send you highly targeted local advertising among other features – regardless of whether or not you are running the app. To kill these background processes, you will need to disable this feature on a per-app basis the same as the last setting.
Theft and Recovery
One of the more brilliant features of the iPhone 6 is the ability to send GPS coordinates of its last known location in the event that it is stolen. You should verify you have enabled this feature by browsing to Settings, iCloud, and Find My iPhone. There is an optional setting that you would likely want to enable as well that is labeled ‘Send Last Location.’ Basically, this will send the phones GPS coordinates right before its power runs out, and it can truly be a life saver.
Authenticating Purchases
These days it is common to cache payment information in our phones so we can easily make purchases on ecommerce sites like Amazon. But if a child or stranger gets ahold of your phone, you could be in for a world of hurt. When you make your next purchase, you should see a prompt that is labeled ‘Always Require Authentication,’ and you need to do your due diligence to make sure this feature is enabled.
Boost the Strength of Your Wi-Fi Password
You can use your phone as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, but you need to make sure that you set a wireless password and that the wireless password is strong. Don’t make the mistake of making your password ‘ABCDEFG’ or ‘123456’ because people will be able to steal your Internet and attack your phone.
Ad Tracking Data and Location Services
Many advertisements use incredibly sophisticated features to target you based on your physical location. Ads are incredibly annoying, but using your location to send you advertisements is just going a step too far. It’s no one’s business where you are or what you are doing, much less advertising companies. Make sure you browse to Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services and disable the ad tracking feature.
