LibertyShield VPN Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Does Liberty Shield Offer High-Speeds? Yes, It’s Surprisingly Fast

Liberty Shield provided top speeds on most server locations during my tests. The slowest speeds I encountered were still fast enough for browsing the internet, torrenting, and streaming.

That said, I observed a notable difference in speed between Liberty Shield’s 2 server networks. The newer, Tier 2 servers in the US, UK, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, Spain, and Germany produced excellent speeds. On the other hand, the older, legacy servers in Canada and France were a bit slower.

Speed Test Results

Liberty Shield caused a surprisingly minor speed reduction during my tests. With a 70Mbps home network, I ran tests on servers in London, Roubaix, Toronto, and Hutchinson. The servers in the US and UK — which are part of the VPN’s new network — produced a speed drop of only 3-15%, which is a fantastic result for a smaller-name VPN. The older servers in Canada and France, on the other hand, caused my network speed to fall by about 40%, which was a pleasant surprise for me.

Even with its outdated legacy servers, Liberty Shield managed to give me enough speeds for streaming, torrenting, and playing online games. However, keep in mind that your experience with this VPN may differ from mine, as there are many factors that determine the speed reduction caused by a VPN connection.

Server Network — Small Network in Only 8 Locations

While Liberty Shield’s servers were fast, I found the slim selection of regions pretty limiting. Liberty Shield’s network has 80+ servers in 8 countries.

Liberty Shield has 6 high-performing “Tier 2” servers, as well as an outdated legacy network. The new “Tier 2” servers have sophisticated routing mechanisms that allow automatic reconnection, ensuring a smooth change between servers. The older legacy servers offer lower speeds and require manual reset after you reconnect. However, these are the only locations in France and Canada, so you may still need to use them if you have to access local content from those countries.

Luckily, even the legacy servers were relatively fast during my tests, so you should have no problems streaming, torrenting, or playing games while connected to them. It’s also neat that Liberty Shield shows the location of all its servers so you can pick the relevant one when you need to access region-specific content. It also highlights the legacy servers in Canada and France that require a manual reset on your account. This way, you know in advance that it may take longer to start using these legacy servers.

Liberty Shield also offers a proxy connection, which is great if you prioritize speed over encryption. To use the proxy service, you select it from the dashboard on Liberty Shield’s website and reboot your software — you can’t make the switch in the app. I thought it was unusual to use a website dashboard to switch between the VPN and proxy service, with no option given within the application. Once rebooted, you can choose from the same locations as the VPN servers and start using the proxy.

The proxy service itself works as intended, meaning I was able to download files and stream Netflix with slightly faster server speeds (about 5Mbps faster). However, the proxy connection is unencrypted and open for anyone to monitor.

Security — Military-Grade Encryption but Few Other Features

I found Liberty Shield’s security practices to be robust but imperfect. I was impressed by the use of SSL-secured 256-bit encryption for data protection, but it lacks other standard security essentials that are needed to fully protect your information. Its military-grade encryption ensures that your data is securely transmitted. However, Liberty Shield does not employ perfect forward secrecy―a process that changes the encryption keys after every session. This means that if a browsing session gets hacked, there is a possibility for the hacker to get access to subsequent sessions.

Liberty Shield VPN doesn’t let you switch between tunneling protocols. While it advertises 3 different protocols, I could only use OpenVPN over UDP and TCP during my tests. After contacting customer support, I learned that the other 2 encryptions listed (PPTP and L2TP) were only available to customers who purchased Liberty Shield’s router and VPN service as a package.

All of Liberty Shield’s apps lacked a kill-switch feature, which prevents data from leaking if you were to get disconnected suddenly due to power failures or issues with the VPN. I ran a DNS leak test while connected to the VPN to see if my real IP address was exposed, and I’m happy to report that only the VPN’s IP addresses were visible.

Privacy — No-Logs Policy in a 5-Eyes Country

Although Liberty Shield claims to have a strict no-logs policy, it lacks an independent audit and the VPN’s location combined with its data storing practices makes it worrisome if you’re a privacy-minded user. Being based in Scotland means that Liberty Shield is within the 5-Eyes alliance, an intelligence-sharing alliance between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. If any countries within this alliance requested your data, Liberty Shield would have to comply, and it could be shared between all 5 nations. With no-logs kept, this normally wouldn’t be an issue since there would be no data kept to share.

However, Liberty Shield states that it can store your personal information on a third-party server, which is highly alarming. If your information is stored on a third-party server, there’s no guarantee it remains safe or out of the hands of an interested party within the 5-eyes agreement.

On top of that, Liberty Shield collects and stores more data than your billing information and email address. In its privacy policy, Liberty Shield states it can collect information on your preferred server locations, the times you connect, and even the amount of data transferred daily.

This should mean your data is protected, but there aren’t any audits to verify if the claim is valid — you’ll have to take Liberty Shield’s word for it. For an alternative with a strict, independently verified no-logs policy, I suggest you use ExpressVPN and browse the web without worrying about your data being collected. The VPN’s no-logs policy was verified in the real world, too. When Turkish police seized ExpressVPN’s server in search of evidence in a murder investigation, they weren’t able to find any user logs.

Editors' Note: ExpressVPN and this site are in the same ownership group.

Torrenting — Fast Speeds Without the Security

I was able to attain quick torrenting speeds, but I was disappointed by the lack of dedicated P2P servers — the industry standard for safe torrenting. It also doesn’t have a kill switch, which is an essential mechanism that prevents dangerous data leaks when the VPN connection suddenly drops.

That said, Liberty Shield gave me torrenting speeds that were only 10Mbps less than what I get from my ISP, and I downloaded a 1GB video clip in about 15 minutes.

Does Liberty Shield Work in China? No

While I am not located in China, my teammate based there was unable to get Liberty VPN to bypass the country’s firewall. Even if it did function in China, this VPN would not be on the top of my list of recommendations due to the lack of sufficient privacy and data protection protocol. I recommend using ExpressVPN instead, as it has been proven to work in China.

If you do need a VPN while on a trip to China, make sure that you download and install the app before you arrive. That’s because Chinese authorities employ advanced technology to find and disable VPN connections in the country, and most VPNs are inaccessible there. That said, there have been no reports of Chinese law enforcement harassing tourists or visitors for using a VPN.

I found the support team to be very informative and helpful. However, none of the support options offer immediate assistance if you have a technical query. I’m here to assist you whenever you need it. If you require assistance, you have the option to submit a ticket or send an email to our support team. Our support services are available from 9 am to 9 pm UK time. However, please note that the live chat feature is exclusively dedicated to addressing sales-related inquiries. You’ll also find that Liberty Shield lists an impressive amount of tutorials and resources on its website.

I tested both the ticket and email options to see which one was more helpful. I sent an email to support with a query about the tunneling protocols and received a response in about 45 minutes. At the same time, I submitted a ticket with a question about installing the VPN (registered to my Liberty Shield account), and a customer representative got back to me in just over 2 hours.