I decided to go with surf shark after a lot of research. I first heard about VPNs many years ago but didn’t really pay attention to them until I started watching true crime YouTubers. I like Surfshark because it allowed me to connect unlimited devices and had a nice amount of countries to choose from and I got a good deal. I paid for a 2 year service. My mom likes it because she can watch her shows in other countries now. So I really don’t like having issues with it but I do. One issue seems to be that I get alot of errors losing webpages or security errors and also chrome makes me do dozens of captchas which is annoying. That issue seems to have gotten a little better. But the main issue is that my kids and I have iPhones and it causes alot of data issues. If we have to update or restore our phones then we have to delete the Surfshark app and download it again or else no other app will work at all. Sometimes that happens for no reason. Like I went to bed last night with no issue. I get up this morning and no apps or webpages will download. I tried through two work networks and my data. Then I tried to turn the VPN off but it won’t let me. So I deleted it and then immediately my chrome page opened right up so I know it’s the VPN. I had to backup and restore my oldest daughters phone and the VPN caused all kinds of issues and I needed up in two apple tech chats and then an escalated phone call before I remembered the VPN issue. I deleted the app and no more issues. I had to do the same thing to all five of our iPhones when I switched carriers. It’s very annoying and I am the type of person who does almost all of their work on my mobile devices. So this is an issue that needs to be resolved. I have paid for two years of service and if I have to delete and reinstall the app every week it’s going to be a very frustrating two years.

****Update: Surfshark has requested I contact customer support. The first I’ve heard from them is after this review. I have sent several Bug Reports and submitted identifiable feed back several times, as well, with no response. The problem is, when the issues occur, I am then unable to access the web, due to the issue.****Surfshark works when I’m at home or on a friends network. It works on cellular for the most part. I often have to click on fastest connection as mine slows. But, when in an airport, a restaurant, work, or public wifi with an anchor page, Surfshark is almost useless. The difficulties connecting to public wifi with anchor pages is beyond infuriating. Sometimes it will connect with little issue or immediately. Most times it takes 3-5 minutes. Those are usually the times when I have only 5-10 minutes to be on the web and I waste half of it trying to get Surfshark to connect. Then there are the occasional times like today. It took an hour and 15 minutes of waiting while it tried to connect. Waiting while it tried to connect after a VPN configuration reset. Rinse and repeat. Waiting more after configuration reset and iPad restart. Waiting after app uninstall and install. Then, waiting after uninstall, restart, and install. Finally, after one more uninstall, restart and install, it connects. Please fix this! Please! Pretty please!

Overall good VPN service. There are a couple of issues I had like using surfshark with a couple of routers that support VPN. XBOX & PlayStation as well as Roku devices I wish I could have connected those as well but has proven to be very difficult if not impossible. Minor bugs like being able to login from some of my other devices. When trying to login using the passwords given from surfshark the app will allow you to type in the password on certain browsers and sometimes the passwords don’t work at all. Also when using surfshark you have to be careful to remember to turn it off on cellular because I notice my iPhone and iPad Pro will go through data like crazy when I’m not even on my devices very much like overnight when I wake up my devices used up more data while I was asleep than when I was actually using them. So that’s something to look out for. On the plus side Speeds are fast compared to other providers and connection time is super fast. Whenever I checked my ip and dns, connection was 100% secure everytime. So surfshark is very secure once your able to setup all of your devices which can be a task. I’ve used 3 different name brand VPN providers and surfshark I put at the top of that list.

UPDATE: Sept 2021 this app slows my IPhone so much I must shut off the VPN. Not sure why… talking to a tech is nearly impossible:-(EARLIER: Four days without data/internetAnd four days of incompetence from ATT phone techs who twice lost me when doing tests and never called back, a tech who said she couldn’t help me because others had tried and a supervisor who called me Monday night at 10:30pm to assure me she would solve the problem and call me back... it’s now Thursday night and she never called back. On Wednesday an online ATT tech sent me to an ATT store and I git a new SIMS card that didn’t help but the guy went they all my settings and found nothing wrong... I went home, called again and ATT tech sent me to the Geek Squad at Best Buy’s a waste of time (100 mile round trip) who told me to go to an APPLE store but online it said ALL APPLE STORES CLOSED UNTIL JUNE 1 (today May 27). I called Apple support who gave an appointment to the ONE Apple store open in Michigan for repair only the next day. Another 100 mile round trip but they fixed it. The solution was very simple that every ATT knucklehead should have asked or realized... my VPN had crashed causing me to lose all data/internet connection. SO BEWARE your VPN might crash and cause you problems! JUST shut it off, update and reboot to save all the headaches I had.