BolehVPN for Android

BolehVPN is an affordable VPN service for Android that offers a range of servers tuned to your privacy concerns.

Pros

Privacy and logging: The company says its servers do not log user identifiable information, and That One Privacy Site gives the service solid scores for its logging and privacy practices. Be aware that using a VPN does not guarantee your Internet activities will be private. It's easy to find stories on the Internet about shady VPN providers. Make sure you pick a trustworthy VPN to keep your communications secure over a public network, skirt around geoblocking, and avoid Internet filtering and censorship.

Range of subscription choices: You can sign up for a week for $3.70, a month for $9.99, two months for $16.99, half a year for $44.99, and a whole year for $79.99. The service allows for three concurrent connections.

Servers: The company runs about a dozen servers, including in Malaysia, Europe, and North America. The servers are tuned to fully route through the VPN or for streaming or proxy.

Protocols and encryption: BolehVPN uses industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption and OpenVPN to provide the VPN service.

Clients: You can use either Boleh's own Android app (which is available just on its own site but not from Google's Play Store) or the open source OpenVPN for Android app (which is available in the Play Store.) The Boleh app includes tools for getting around a country's firewalls.

SEE: The 9 Best Paid and Free Android VPNs You Can Trust

Cons

Challenging to sign up: After registering, the service sends an email with a link you click to activate your account. In the email, however, none of the text or boxes that were intended to activate the account were clickable. When we set up a second account to retest, the activation email never arrived, neither in the inbox nor the spam folder. And the website offers no obvious way to resend the activation email. And when we reached out to the support desk, we at first received automated responses that didn't resolve our issue before a support person manually activated our account.

Requires some fiddling to setup: After you subscribe to the service, you need to set up a VPN app, either Boleh's of the open source OpenVPN app. It's not that challenging, but it takes a bit of time.

Bottom Line

Although registration was frustrating, once you get set up, BolehVPN offers a solid method of staying private and secure on the Internet.