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VPN notes, guides, and news

Working notes on how we turn evidence into a score, plain-language guides to VPN privacy, and news worth citing. Every entry holds to the same rule as our scores: no claim without a source you can check.

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All entries

14 entries · newest first

News

FeiLiu VPN / OpenFlyX 1.0.1: preliminary static security audit

VPNTestor inspected FeiLiu VPN's three public OpenFlyX 1.0.1 downloads. The macOS package is signed and notarized, Android uses APK Signature Scheme v2, and the Windows installer is unsigned. No final score is issued before runtime testing.

Openscore VPN team · verified by VPNTestor · FeiLiu VPN · QuicklyVPN · OpenFlyX · VPN security audit · software signing

News

Proton VPN 2026 client and no-logs security assessment

VPNTestor froze official Proton VPN Android 5.19.61.0 and Windows 5.1.5 releases, verified hashes and signing, reviewed production hardening, open-source clients, the 2026 Securitum no-logs audit and the current transparency report.

Openscore VPN team · verified by VPNTestor · Proton VPN · security audit · no-logs audit · Android · Windows

News

2026 SingLinkVPN Independent No-Logs Policy Verification Report

VPNTestor and Openscore VPN completed a read-only production review of SingLinkVPN. Its design matched the no-activity-logs policy, and James Robert Smith signed the final report manifest.

VPNTestor Platform / Openscore VPN Team · SingLinkVPN · no-logs policy · independent verification · privacy audit · VPN logging · 2026

News

VPN Cat 2.12.5: public-distribution security assessment

VPNTestor verified VPN Cat's current App Store identity, operator, privacy disclosures and public security evidence. The exact IPA is not independently downloadable, so binary and runtime controls remain unverified.

Openscore VPN team · verified by VPNTestor · VPN Cat · VPN security audit · iOS VPN · privacy · App Store

Guide

SingLinkVPN Independent Security Audit Report (2026)

Complete SingLinkVPN v2.0 audit translation covering Windows 2.5.8, macOS 2.5.7, new-protocol evidence, a 100/100 rating, and signed SHA-256 integrity records, with v1.2 preserved.

VPNTestor Platform / Openscore VPN · SingLink VPN · security audit · Windows 2.5.8 · macOS 2.5.7 · signed audit · 2026

Guide

VPN Audit Transparency Index 2026

A source-linked index of the VPN audits currently recorded by VPNTestor Platform. It separates a public report from a provider summary, records scope and tested version, and states what the evidence cannot establish.

VPNTestor Platform · VPN audits · audit transparency · security reports · primary sources · 2026

Guide

SingLink VPN: what an external security audit can, and cannot, verify

We ran the parts of a professional VPN security audit that can be done from the outside on SingLink VPN: transport-layer configuration, the App Store record, and the protocol, transparency, logging and jurisdiction posture read from its own documents. The transport layer is modern. The security-critical core, the protocol and the independent-audit trail, is either unverifiable by design or absent. Here is exactly what checks out, what does not, and what no outsider can confirm.

The Openscore VPN team · security-audit · singlink · tls · protocols · transparency

Guide

Open-source VPN protocols, compared: what still works in China and Russia

A technical tour of the open-source protocols behind modern VPNs (WireGuard, OpenVPN, IPsec/IKEv2, OpenConnect, SoftEther) and the circumvention layer built on top of them (Shadowsocks-2022, VLESS+REALITY, Trojan, Hysteria2, TUIC, NaiveProxy): how they differ, which is genuinely faster or safer, and, with dated and cited sources, how each holds up against China's Great Firewall and Russia's TSPU as of mid-2026.

The Openscore VPN team · protocols · wireguard · openvpn · shadowsocks · reality · censorship · china · russia

Guide

Why a VPN's jurisdiction matters more than its marketing

“Based in a privacy-friendly country” is a line on almost every VPN's homepage. Jurisdiction is real and worth understanding, but the marketing version glosses over the parts that actually decide whether it protects you. A short, honest guide to what a VPN's country of registration does and doesn't buy you.

The Openscore VPN team · jurisdiction · privacy · five-eyes · ownership

Guide

What a “no-logs” claim actually proves, and what it doesn't

Almost every VPN says it keeps no logs. The phrase is doing a lot of work and most of it is unverified. Here is how to read a no-logs claim: what the words commit a provider to, what they leave out, and the three things that turn a marketing line into evidence.

The Openscore VPN team · no-logs · privacy · logging · audits

Method

What “no evidence” means on a score, and why it never lowers a rating

A blank on this site is an admission about us, not a verdict about the provider. A dimension we hold no evidence for is dropped from the average, never scored as zero, because punishing a provider for a gap in our research would reward whichever providers we researched least.

The Openscore VPN team · methodology · coverage · honesty

Method

Catching a server that can't be where it claims

A server list is a claim; the speed of light is not. Because light in fibre covers about 200 km every millisecond, a round-trip time sets a hard ceiling on how far away a machine can be. When the ceiling is smaller than the distance to the city on the label, the label is wrong.

The Openscore VPN team · server-authenticity · measurement · methodology

Method

Publication level beats audit count

“Independently audited” is the industry's favourite adjective and its least informative one. Our transparency score does not count audits; it reads them. A single full report a reader can open outweighs a shelf of summaries nobody outside the provider has seen.

The Openscore VPN team · transparency · audits · methodology

Method

Why we publish a five-way tie instead of a Top 5

Every score on this site is an interval, not a point. Ranking follows from those intervals by dominance, a provider ranks above another only when its guaranteed minimum clears the other's best possible maximum. On today's corpus that relation is empty, so we print one honest tie rather than a manufactured 1-2-3.

The Openscore VPN team · ranking · methodology · dominance