Syria is a war-torn country in West Asia. It’s capitol, Demascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Unlike it’s wealthy neighbors, Syria is actually considered to be one of the poorer counties in the region. Ravaged since 2011 by a civil war, at least half the country is engulfed in the battles. The Syrian infrastructure has definitely been battered, and internet connections are shut off at times. If you are going to use the internet in Syria, you will want to use a VPN.
| Rank | VPN Service | Our Score | Server Locations | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | 9.8 | 160 |  |
| 2 |  | 9.4 | 87 | |
| 3 |  | 9.2 | 95 | |
| 4 |  | 9.0 | 110 | |
| 5 |  | 8.8 | 73 | |
Because of the war, if you can get internet, it would more likely be mobile or satellite. Battle for control of the internet there is a big deal for the groups that are trying to limit information. There is a satellite internet service that is relatively fast, but it has the a quota on it depending which plan you pick. Needless to say, the government is watching you. If you try to go to a political website, you could be arrested. ISIS would love to get their hands on anything that would help them win.
From a piracy point of view, Syria has rampant media piracy. Because of the bad conditions, it should be no surprise that any controls that were once there, are difficult to enforce now. Because the internet is limited, there is a lot of physical piracy going on. That is to say, people will download, burn the movies, and sell them in stalls at the market. There is not much chance of that ending any time soon until things settle down.
Here are the reasons why you would want to use a VPN in Syria. A virtual private network is a secure connection to a server, possibly in another country. Once you connect, your browsing is encrypted. If you were to use a VPN, you could keep your private data safe. As we mentioned earlier, the government may not be monitoring you, but others certainly are.
Since you can connect to a server in another country, you could get around the government’s geo-restrictions. In 2013, the government blocked 634 sites, and banned others. If you visited the others, you would be arrested. It is clear they are trying to stop discourse. If you are blocked from accessing from Syria, all you would have to do is access from another country and you would be fine. The same could be said if you are familiar with the popular streaming service, Netflix. Of course, you would need a subscription as well and if you have a quota, you would have to be careful, but you would be able to stream by using a VPN.
If this is clear, you see good reasons to use a VPN. Which one would you pick though? That depends on what your plans are for use. We have some specific ideas for Syria. Though all of our choices use secure encryption, you would want to use the OpenVPN protocol whenever possible. If you are going to attempt to use a streaming service, OpenVPN (UDP) would be your best choice for streaming. Remember if you have satellite internet though, Netflix will use that quota quickly. To stream or connect to a VPN by using a mobile network, you can check in to other protocols including IKEv2 and L2TP as well for privacy protection.
For protecting your privacy or unblocking content, IPVanish is our choice. They don’t keep logs and have a kill switch feature, adding an extra layer of security to your browsing. If you want to try streaming services like Netflix or others, IPVanish again is the best choice. They have the fastest network in North America and Europe, and offer a mobile client as well, so you would only need to connect, and you would be able to stream from the countries with large content libraries. The US market is of course, the biggest.
If you just want to unblock geo-restricted content, we recommend IPVanish or ExpressVPN. Both of these services offer internet traffic encryption, but ExpressVPN includes SmartDNS with their VPN which will help you unblock channels without the slight speed loss. We really can’t recommend you go un-encrypted. With threats of being arrested for accessing some websites, you would be much better off using encryption. Don’t get arrested just because you wanted a bit of extra speed.
If you want different options, Please feel free to investigate our top 10 VPN services, but you probably won’t need to. We chose these mentioned options because they are the best overall. The reasons behind our selections are based on speed, security, regional locations, and price. In addition, we chose the ones with the biggest networks so you would have plenty of options in server variety. Reliable VPN providers are those that will provide fast networks for streaming high definition content from other locations and insure your security. Of course, our selections do both of those things.