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Why we’re better.
So, most every company has a version of this, right? Why we’re awesome and everyone else….isn’t. This is a bit different though because the VPN business has become shady on a level you just don’t see very often. We hate to be a “narc” but we view this as a public service at this point and an effort to save an industry we love and helped create.
Take away? You don’t have to buy from us, but be very careful before you send your data through some of these characters.
We don’t try to trick you with unscrupulous pricing tactics.
Most VPN companies make the time-share business look downright principled by comparison. You can practically smell the Imposter cologne oozing from their websites.
- “Special” deals that are really just standard pricing everyone gets.
- Fake Sales (mark it up 200%, then “discount it” 80%)
- Cheesy “Don’t leave..buy now!” pop-ups
- Teaser Rates with MUCH HIGHER automated renewal rates that they hope you don’t notice.
We’re not free.
Actually we do have a free tier of our email encryption service, SecureMyEmail. We’re able to do it because the incremental costs are low and our free users help us grow when they use it.
But, free VPNs are different. The costs to run a VPN service are much higher. So, if a VPN is free, and they don’t explain their revenue source, you can usually bet something is amiss. It’s quite possible your data is being harvested and sold. Or, it could even be worse than that!
We’ve never helped a government hack people’s phones to engage in surveillance of other governments, journalists, and human rights activists.
It’s like we’re making this stuff up. Nope. The CIO, of possibly the largest VPN provider on Earth, is an ex-spy who got caught hacking for the UAE. In fairness, he may actually be a great guy. Probably has a rescue dog or something. We don’t know. We’re just saying you may want to consider this before installing his company’s VPN apps on your phone or computer.😉
Our non-outsourced support team is human, super smart, and available 24x7x365.
No AI chatbots with cringy names. No third party overseas call centers. With WiTopia, you’ll receive truly expert support from actual WiTopia employees. Many of whom have been with us for many years. They are a tremendous wealth of knowledge and will get any issue resolved fast!
We didn’t change our company name because we made millions distributing malware that hijacks your browser and sucks up your personal data.
This maybe wouldn’t be as big a big deal if this company hadn’t gobbled up several huge VPN companies AND several VPN “review” sites to become the largest VPN company in the world! Yay. We’re sure those reviews are toooooootally unbiased too. ;-)
Hey, at least the company’s current CEO admitted they changed their name to escape the “strong association to the past activities of the company.” No doubt!
And, in the truth is stranger than fiction department, this VPN mega-company is currently owned, by a semi-scary multi-billionaire who has quite an interesting past. Although we’re sure this somewhat fascinating dude is way fun to party with in his volcanic island lair, you may want to reconsider sending your data through his companies. Just don’t tell him we said that.
Our loyalty is to you. Not investors, advertisers, or side schemes.
In full disclosure, we do, in fact, like money. But, we also like to be able to sleep at night. As a fully independent, 98% employee-owned company, we keep it simple. Our money comes from you for protecting your data and privacy. So, that is what we care about.
You deserve a safe, private, and secure internet.
Your only regret will be that you didn’t do it sooner.
We’re OG nerds and are in this industry because we love it.
Not only were we one of the pioneers of this industry, we got our start at a company called UUNET, who actually invented the VPN, web hosting (“The Cloud”), and ran pretty much half of the internet once upon a time. Basically, we know what we’re doing.
We make encryption simple enough for everyone, yet provide power under the hood for experts.
- Network — Our super optimized servers are built on FreeBSD, a much celebrated open-source server OS for “nerds in the know.” This makes our network and services more secure, scalable, and speedy than others. Who else uses FreeBSD? Companies like Netflix, Sony PlayStation, Cisco, Juniper, and Apple.
- VPN — We provide more VPN protocols than any other company to provide you maximum speed, security, and power to defeat censorship and blocking. These include WireGuard, IPsec IKEv1, IPsec IKEv2, a highly-customizable OpenVPN deployment, PPTP, L2TP, and TWO separate Stealth Modes based on TOR. It’s your own privacy and security arsenal.
- Email Encryption — Not only can you add encryption to ANY email address with our SecureMyEmail service, but you can send and receive encrypted email to any email address on Earth with NO password required from the recipient. This is a big deal.
We’re as good or better than anyone. Best of all, we guarantee it.
We could be unoriginal and just tell you we’re “the best!” And, although we believe we are, no VPN or encrypted email provider is perfect for every situation. It’s always possible a specific feature or aspect of someone else’s service may make it a better fit for you. But, barring any special cases, we believe you’ll find our reliability, performance, and security to be unmatched. We back this up with an **unconditional** 30-day money-back guarantee on our VPN service and a zero obligation 30-day free trial of our email encryption services.
We don’t ally ourselves with fake reviewers, shills, and other charlatans.
While there are certainly legitimate VPN review sites, there are also a LOT with “questionable journalistic integrity.” Many are actually even owned by the VPN companies themselves! The situation is so bad that it’s very difficult to not fall victim to these deceptive marketing practices. Because we don’t play ball with these folks, we, and probably other solid VPNs, tend to receive some quite inaccurate reviews.
We are who (and where) we say we are.
This very well-researched article shows us there are seemingly 105 VPNs that are run by just 24 companies. Not a crime in itself, but many appear to deliberately pose as separate companies to hide who they really are, where they really are, and to give you the illusion of choice. They also tend to claim a mix of legal jurisdictions where convenient based on flimsy corporate filings. Quite a few are actually in China. Some are in Pakistan. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.🙂 Point is, many appear to be deliberately misrepresenting things and, in our opinion, those aren’t the kind of people you want to trust with your data and web searches.
We’re work-obsessed, tend to overshare, and exercise poor portion control. Yup, we’re American!
Okay. We’re not saying this makes us better. ;-) Actually, many of the cool people who make WiTopia happen are not American, but we are US-based. Ultimately, all our SecureMyEmail systems are in Switzerland, and our VPN servers are spread around the world, so we’re as global as anyone.
We’re bringing this up because, at some point, it became popular to say a US-based provider was somehow more of an easy target for the US intelligence community. This isn't true for a myriad of reasons. Worse, many of those claims were made by companies located in human rights bastions like China and Pakistan.🙂 It’s a marketing tactic. But, since they brought it up, here are some things we think are good about being US-based:
- Distrust of "government" is as American as apple pie. So, not only do we not totally trust our government, we don’t trust yours, either. :)
- Unlike many countries, the US has NO data preservation requirement. it’s perfectly legal for us to not keep user logs. So, we don't.
- The FTC doesn’t allow us to misrepresent ourselves as seems to be the norm with many other companies.
- The Patriot Act, which is largely the source of the criticism, expired. Although it is true that data privacy is not what it should be in the US, or anywhere, it is vigorously debated in the US and progress is being made.
- Constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, freedom of the press, no unlawful search and seizure, etc., etc.
- A longstanding history against censorship or regulation of the internet.
- Very powerful pro-privacy encryption allies, including Signal, DuckDuckGo, EFF, ACLU, Apple, Google, Microsoft, the press, and many many more.
The reality is that no government loves the idea of people having encryption but we believe the environment in the US is quite good.
Trust us. If a piece of paper saying we’re on some Caribbean island ever has any real benefit, we’ll get one. There is no shortage of lawyers here. :)
Join the fashionably encrypted today.
Your only regret will be that you didn’t do it sooner.
Frequently asked questions
Duh.🙂 Of course we’re jealous. You would be too. lol. But, it doesn’t make us wrong.
No. What we’re saying is that some (many?) of the people running major VPN providers have done exactly that in their careers and they’re not being transparent about that. It doesn’t take much of a conspiracist to think these folks holding positions in an industry where they can collect massive amounts of user data, especially data under the guise of privacy and security, could turn out badly.
Not necessarily. Small companies can be sketchy too.🙂 Our advice is to at least do the same amount of research when choosing a VPN, or an encrypted service provider, that you would do before seriously dating someone. Hopefully, more. You’re trusting them with a LOT.
WiTopia is over 98% owned by its founders and employees so, yes, we answer to no one but our customers. Not sure we can claim sainthood, but since we’ve been in business since 2005, with no known security or moral failures, we believe we have demonstrated a very solid rep that you can depend on!