Who this guide is for
You travel and sign in to email, banking and work accounts on hotel, airport and conference Wi-Fi.
Who it’s not for
DarkMatter is for protecting lawful activity, not for getting around the law of the country you’re in. Some countries regulate or restrict VPN use, so check before you go.
In short
- Hotel, airport and café Wi-Fi is run by people you don’t know. A VPN encrypts your traffic so the network can carry it without reading it.
- Connecting through a server at home keeps your apparent location steadier, though each service decides how to treat a VPN connection.
- Some countries regulate or restrict VPN use, and some networks block VPNs. Check the local rules before you go.
- Set up your devices, split tunnelling (not on iPhone, iPad or Mac) and favourite servers while you’re still on a connection you trust.
On this page
You land, join the hotel Wi-Fi, and within a minute you are signed into your email, your bank and your work chat on a network run by someone you have never met. Tomorrow it is an airport lounge, then a café, then a conference hall. Each one is a different network with different equipment, different logging and different people sitting on it. Travel moves your accounts onto unfamiliar infrastructure several times a day, and it changes where you appear to be connecting from, which is exactly the sort of thing security systems notice. DarkMatter gives you the same encrypted connection in each of those places.
Why people use a VPN for travel
- Networks you do not control. Hotel, airport, café and conference Wi-Fi is shared, often open, and occasionally not run by who you assume. Encryption means the network carries your traffic without being able to read it. Our public Wi-Fi page goes into the specific risks in more detail.
- Work and personal accounts on the same device. A trip usually means a single laptop or phone holding company email, client documents, your bank and your family photos. One insecure network session puts all of them on the same wire.
- A steadier apparent location. Connecting through a server in your home country keeps the IP address you present consistent, instead of changing every time you cross a border. That can mean fewer of the location-change prompts and re-verification loops that pile up on a long trip, though each service decides for itself how to treat you.
- A say in where you appear to be. Plenty of services behave differently when you appear to be somewhere new. Connecting through a server you choose makes your apparent location a decision rather than an accident of where you happen to be sleeping. What a given service then does about it is its own call — see the note on access below.
- One plan for the bag you packed. A DarkMatter plan covers up to 5 devices at once, so what you travel with sits on a single subscription rather than several. Check the apps page for the platforms we currently support.
How it helps
When you connect, the DarkMatter app opens an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server on our network. Everything your device sends goes into that tunnel first. The hotel router, the airport access point and anyone else on the network see a single encrypted stream to one endpoint, rather than the list of sites, apps and services you are actually using. Traffic is protected with AES-256 encryption, and you can choose between WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2 and IPSec, which helps when a particular network handles one protocol badly and another fine.
Two smaller details matter more abroad than at home. The first is DNS. Without a VPN, the network you joined usually resolves every domain you visit, which gives the operator a readable list of where you have been. Our DNS leak protection is designed to send those lookups through the tunnel instead, and IPv6 leak protection is designed to close the same gap on networks that hand out IPv6 addresses.
The second is dropouts. Travel Wi-Fi is unreliable in a way home broadband is not, and a tunnel that fails quietly leaves you carrying on in the belief that you are protected. In our Windows app, the kill switch is designed to block traffic if the connection drops, so a train tunnel or a congested lounge access point does not quietly send a session over the open network mid-sentence.
Split tunnelling (not on iPhone, iPad or Mac) is worth setting up before you leave. It lets you route the things that matter through the VPN while leaving local traffic outside it, such as a hotel’s own network services or an app that insists on seeing your real connection. You can pick where you connect from on the server locations page: our network covers 6,000+ servers across 65+ countries and 80+ locations, with 20 Gbps per server, so there is usually something near you as well as something near home. Set all of this up while you are still on a connection you trust.
| On hotel or airport Wi-Fi | Without a VPN | With DarkMatter |
|---|---|---|
| Signing into accounts | Network can see where you connect | Encrypted tunnel to one endpoint |
| DNS lookups | Handled and logged by the network | Designed to resolve through the tunnel |
| Connection drops mid-session | Device falls back silently | Kill switch (Windows app) designed to block traffic |
| Your apparent location | Changes with every country | The server you chose |
| Others on the same network | Can observe traffic patterns | Traffic is encrypted in transit |
Every feature on every plan
Encrypt your connection on up to 5 devices at once
- Apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Fire TV
- Kill switch (Windows app)
- Split tunnelling (not on iPhone, iPad or Mac)
- DNS and IPv6 leak protection
- 30-day money-back guarantee on your first purchase (14 days on monthly plans)
The honest bit
An honest note on travel, access and local law
VPN use is regulated, restricted or licensed in some countries, and the rules change. Before you travel, check what applies where you are going, and follow it. DarkMatter is for protecting lawful activity on networks you do not control, not for getting around the law of the country you are standing in.
Some networks block VPN traffic outright. Corporate guest Wi-Fi, some hotel networks and certain national networks all do this, so we cannot promise a connection will establish wherever you are. Equally, we cannot promise that any particular third-party service, bank, retailer or platform will work while you are connected. Many of them detect VPN addresses and respond in their own way, and some treat a VPN connection itself as unusual. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing on your behalf.
A VPN also protects the connection, not the account. Strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication still do the heavy lifting if credentials leak somewhere else entirely. What we can promise is an encrypted tunnel across our network, a choice of protocols and locations, and a money-back guarantee on your first purchase (30 days, or 14 days on monthly plans) if DarkMatter is not right for you.