VPNs know more about you than they should. So we made one that doesn’t.
Even “no-log” VPNs can track you, since they see both who you are and
what you do. Cipher Shield is built such that we can’t see your
traffic in the first place.
Traditional VPNs see your identity and your browsing history
Traditional VPN
Jacob Williams
96.96.216.135
Visited tumblr.com just now
jacobwilliams@gmail.com
7961 Kulas Estate, Danville USA
•••• •••• •••• 3241
Jacob Williams
96.96.216.135
Visited pinterest.com just now
jacobwilliams@gmail.com
7961 Kulas Estate, Danville USA
•••• •••• •••• 3241
Jacob Williams
96.96.216.135
Visited apple.com just now
jacobwilliams@gmail.com
7961 Kulas Estate, Danville USA
•••• •••• •••• 3241
Jacob Williams
96.96.216.135
Visited microsoft.com just now
jacobwilliams@gmail.com
7961 Kulas Estate, Danville USA
•••• •••• •••• 3241
Jacob Williams
96.96.216.135
Visited ebay.com just now
jacobwilliams@gmail.com
7961 Kulas Estate, Danville USA
•••• •••• •••• 3241
Cipher Shield only sees your IP address and never your browsing history
Cipher Shield
Account OBS-20848919
96.96.216.135
Encrypted web traffic
Exit Node
Anonymous
Cipher Shield’s IP
Visited tumblr.com just now
Anonymous
Cipher Shield's
Visited pinterest.com just now
Anonymous
Cipher Shield's
Visited apple.com just now
Anonymous
Cipher Shield's
Visited microsoft.com just now
Anonymous
Cipher Shield’s IP
Visited ebay.com just now
It’s simple:
We can’t leak what we don’t have.
Logs? Not possible.
Cipher Shield VPN doesn’t log your IP address
and
can’t see your internet traffic, ever. It’s impossible
by design.
Emails? Not necessary.
Log in with just a randomized account number. No names,
no emails, no phone numbers necessary.
Credit card info? Not required.
Easily pay using Bitcoin’s Lightning Network for better privacy,
instant payments, and lower transaction fees.
More than Privacy
Outsmart Internet Restrictions
By blending in with regular internet traffic, Cipher Shield avoids being
detected by network filters – keeping your internet access unrestricted.
More details.
How it Works
Private by Design: Our Two-Party VPN Protocol
By using a fully-independent exit hop, Cipher Shield keeps who you are and
what you do separate. More technical details here.
Cipher Shield never sees your traffic
Cipher Shield's servers relay your connection to exit servers but can never decrypt your traffic.
Your traffic is always end-to-end encrypted via WireGuard® to the exit server.
Exit hops never see who you are
Exit servers (run by Mullvad) connect you to the internet but never see your personal info.
Cipher Shield masks your real IP address when relaying to the exit server.
FAQs
Questions? We’re here to help.
Here are the most common questions we’re asked, but if we haven’t
covered yours, don’t hesitate to reach out via one of our handles.
What makes Cipher Shield different from existing VPNs?
Unlike VPNs with a “no-logs” policy, Cipher Shield is provably private by design.
Even “no-logs” VPNs see both your identity and your internet activity, meaning you have to blindly trust their pinky-promise for privacy. This is exactly why some privacy-conscious folks will tell you not to use a VPN at all.
Cipher Shield is different – we never see your decrypted internet packets. It’s simply impossible for us to log your internet activity, even if we were compelled to, or if our servers were compromised. You can even verify this yourself.
Cipher Shield’s stealth protocol is much harder to block.
Our unique stealth protocol is designed to blend in with regular internet traffic. It does so by leveraging QUIC – the same technology that powers HTTP/3 – making it far harder for censors or network filters to detect or block.
Cipher Shield only sees your connecting IP address and necessary payment info – never your actual internet traffic.
We physically can’t decrypt your internet traffic (see how) and never log your connecting IP address.
For even more privacy, we actively support privacy-friendly payment methods like Bitcoin over Lightning. Learn more about accepted payment methods here.
How do I know Cipher Shield does what it claims?
I like the way you think! 😎
Don’t trust — verify. Our app’s entire source code is on GitHub for you to verify that we do what we say.
We also plan to provide reproducible builds of our app, meaning anyone can confirm that the app you download matches the code we publish.
Additionally, our app displays your current exit hop’s WireGuard public key on its “Location” page. You can check this key against what Mullvad publishes here to ensure that you’re connected via a genuine Mullvad exit hop!
How much does Cipher Shield cost, what payment methods are accepted?
CipherShield is just $8/month.
You can top-up your account using:
Credit Card (via Stripe)
Bitcoin over Lightning (for more privacy)
For convenient renewals, you can also subscribe with your Credit Card (via Stripe). Note that Stripe may need your email for subscriptions, but Cipher Shield never stores it.
How many devices can I use Cipher Shield on?
Each Cipher Shield account has 3 simultaneous connection slots. This is different from “3 devices”.
If you’re connecting with our Cipher Shield app…
You can log in on as many devices as you’d like.
A device only uses 1 slot while it is actively connected (see the “Connection” tab in the app).
If you’re connecting with our WireGuard configs…
Each config reserves 1 slot as long as it exists on your account, even when the device is not connected.
To free a slot, delete the config from your account here.
Examples
Only using our Cipher Shield app: Unlimited sign-ins; up to 3 devices connected at the same time.
Only using WireGuard configs: You can keep up to 3 configs total (i.e., 3 devices).
A Mix: If you have 1 WireGuard config on your account, it uses 1 of 3 slots, leaving 2 slots open for the Cipher Shield app to connect from any signed-in devices.
How does Cipher Shield differ from my VPN’s multihop option?
With a typical multihop VPN, the same provider controls every hop—so they can still link your identity to your traffic.
Cipher Shield solves this by using a fully-independent exit hop (currently Mullvad). Ensuring that our servers never see your actual traffic, and the exit hop never sees your identity.
How does Cipher Shield compare to Tor?
We have immense respect for the Tor project (and encourage you to support it), but its volunteer-run network can be slow and susceptible to DDoS issues, making it infeasible for everyday use.
Cipher Shield uses two dedicated, high-performance hops for maximum speed and reliability – meaning you get many of Tor’s privacy benefits without sacrificing everyday usability.
What server locations are available?
We’re always working to add more exit locations. We currently have the follow:
North America
Toronto, Canada
Vancouver, Canada
Ashburn, VA
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Los Angeles, CA
Miami, FL
New York, NY
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA
Latin America
São Paulo, Brazil
Santiago, Chile
Bogotá, Colombia
Querétaro, Mexico
Europe
Paris, France
Frankfurt, Germany
Milan, Italy
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Warsaw, Poland
Madrid, Spain
Stockholm, Sweden
Zurich, Switzerland
Kyiv, Ukraine
London, United Kingdom
Asia
Tokyo, Japan
Singapore
Istanbul, Turkey
Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa
Oceania
Sydney, Australia
How does the Windows app work? Does it have kernel-level access?
Our Windows app installs a Network Extension, which is a fully
sandboxed process with no kernel-level access to your system.
You can verify this by looking at our source code.
Give me the technical details!
Cipher Shield's servers relay the WireGuard tunnel between your device and Mullvad’s servers. Essentially, WireGuard-over-QUIC.
This looks something like:
<user> --> Cipher Shield Server --> Mullvad Server --> <internet>
This ensures that no single party has the information to leak or correlate your traffic and your identity, since:
Cipher Shield’s servers are unable to decrypt the WireGuard packets it relays, since they are encrypted to a Mullvad server’s WireGuard pubkey.
Mullvad’s servers never see your connecting IP since Cipher Shield’s servers are effectively doing NAT.
Your device connects to Cipher Shield’s servers over QUIC, meaning:
Cipher Shield connections are harder to detect or block since they look like regular internet traffic (HTTP/3 uses QUIC for transport).
Generate a WireGuard configuration for your account here
Add the generated WireGuard configuration to your WireGuard app (or scan the QR code)
Connect 🎉
Note that since this uses the original WireGuard protocol, you won’t benefit from Cipher Shield QUIC-based obfuscation for outsmarting internet censorship. However, your connection still benefits from improved privacy with our Two-Party Relay architecture.
I’m Carl, head-janitor of Cipher Shield 👋
Thanks for reaching the bottom — not everyone makes it.
I’m incredibly lucky to have the help of a crack(ed) team of privacy optimists to build Cipher Shield.
Among us, we’ve served on the Nix RFC Steering Committee, implemented the 64bit random number generator for the Go standard library, fixed critical vulnerabilities for hardware security tokens, won bounties for Monero bugs, and contributed to Bitcoin for reproducible builds.
But while privacy and digital sovereignty in some worlds has made leaps and bounds, VPNs have been left behind; peddling privacy based on promises instead of privacy baked into the architecture.
So we’re taking our skills to build Cipher Shield: a VPN you can depend on to get the most out of our glorious digital commons – the internet. It’s the VPN we’ve always wanted to use, and it’s the kind of privacy we believe everyone should have access to.
Thanks for reading – ping me at carl@ciphershieldvpn.com for any questions, and I’ll see you on the free and open internet. 🏄
Cheers, Carl Dong I fight for the users.
Our team learning laser-cutting at the NYC Resistor hackerspace
Internet freedom starts here.
Start using Cipher Shield for Windows today, or join our waitlist for
other platforms.