Windscribe for Chrome

Windscribe for Chrome is a browser extension designed to create a virtual private network (VPN), mask your online identity and keep you safe from hackers. It has a built-in ad blocker and also gives you the possibility to view web content that's locked due to geographical restrictions.

The addon can be easily integrated with Google Chrome. As far as privacy is concerned, it asks for permission to read and change all your data on the websites you visit, display notifications as well as manage your apps, extensions and themes. Other than that, your activity is not tracked by the tool, as assured by the developer.

To be able to use this app, it's necessary to sign up for a free account. To simply test the tool, it's required to set an email address. However, you can confirm it if you wish to extend the monthly bandwidth for free, as well as explore different pricing plans for more features.

The interface is quite intuitive, making it possible even for inexperienced users to quickly create a VPN. Windscribe has a so-called "Cruise Control" mode, which means that it autodetects when you're trying to access blocked websites and switches to another country automatically, thus attempting to make the content available to you.

The VPN connection can be established with one click and just as easily turned off if you wish to return to your normal Internet connection. You can tell that it's off by the control window which turns from blue to grey.

When you connect to another country, you receive a notification message from the lower-right corner of the screen. To exclude websites from the VPN while connected to a foreign country, you can add them to a whitelist, which instructs Windscribe to not apply the proxy configuration to those pages.

The Chrome extension has a special feature that copies URLs in a secure manner ("Secure.Links"), scans that page for ad beacons and third-party trackers, and gives you a privacy score. Optionally, it can be password-protected when sharing it with your friends. You can also request your friends to install Windscribe to be able to view the URLs.

As far as privacy options go, you can enable "Anti-Social" mode to remove social media buttons from visited pages, disable the blocker for ad beacons and tracks on "Secure.Links", disable the built-in ad-blocker, and enable "Split Personality" to randomly rotate your user agent. Moreover, you can manage your whitelist and view recent secure links.

The extension worked smoothly with the latest Chrome edition in our tests. It established the proxy connection quickly without causing page rendering issues.

All aspects considered, Windscribe for Chrome comes packed with many useful options to help you protect your privacy online. You can also check out Windscribe for Firefox and the Windscribe desktop client.