Winston is a hardware device for people who want better privacy online but don't want to deal with complicated hardware and networking. Simply plug Winston in between your modem and router for comprehensive privacy and security on every IoT device in your home. The result is a faster, cleaner, more secure browsing experience. This is real privacy for the real world.
Winston Privacy (winstonprivacy.com) has 185 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5.
Also known as
winstonprivacy.com
Website
winstonprivacy.com
Category
Internet & Software
Location
Chicago, Illinois
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
About these reviews
Replies
The company replied to 8% of reviews.
Latest
Most recent review: June 2021.
Edits
Reviews are shown as their authors wrote them. The company can reply, but cannot edit them.
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Promising start: sadly, now a waste of time & money!
I was a fairly early adopter of Winston, waited patiently for a much delayed UK delivery and got it all working once it had finally arrived.
Sadly it looks as though the company has gone bust and the product won't be supported after July 2021.
This is the final section of an email received from them today:
"Unfortunately, we were unable to generate sufficient demand with consumers to support a hardware business and have no choice but to discontinue the Winston Privacy service. This was a difficult decision to make as many of invested years of our lives in this mission. We did - and still do - feel passionately that everyone should have the ability to make meaningful choices about their family's privacy.
A final firmware update (1.5.14) will be pushed in late June/July which will enable devices to run without requiring a subscription. Please note that devices must be connected to the internet during this time period to receive this update. Units which have been updated should continue to operate normally through the end of the year though support will no longer be offered. Devices may continue to operate beyond the end of 2021, however the security certificate for the domain api.winstonprivacy.com will eventually expire and will need to be manually whitelisted in your browser.
We encourage you to support businesses that put their users' privacy first. A few of the companies we recommend include:
* DuckDuckGo
* ProtonMail
* Signal
* Brave
Thank you for your support throughout the years.
The Winston Privacy Team"
JO
JohnnyM
Worked at first, but then...
Worked at first, then started to freeze internet access. Took awhile to identify not my modem, not my router, or my newish MESH network
Unhooked it for 2-3 weeks, no problem. Reinstall, and within 2-3 days, internet access freezes until WINSTON is rebooted. Can't have this happen in middle of Zoom meetings, etc. Tried support, sent them my diagnostics file twice, did not hear back. Finally went to cancel my subscription so I won't get charged again, and crashing internet is one of the choices for canceling. !? Guess that's $200 down the toilet. Nice concept, didn't work for me. Count me educated..
See below for response from WinstonPrivacy, but it's not fully accurate. I sent diagnostics files twice, and asked for an update based on that information, and when I did not receive a response, I gave up. Too much hassle, not worth it.
Second update, I did contact WinstonPrivacy at the email below, but as of now (4 days later), no response. They've closed all my tickets. FYI
Last update, my email above was found in spam. I was contacted, offered a free year of service, or my $99 subscription fee refunded. I took the refund. Case closed. FYI.
Response from Winston PrivacyNov 18, 2020
Hi John,
We are responding to the updates you provided. Unless you possibly used different email addresses when you sent an additional second diagnostic file before the review was posted, we have gone through all our support tickets and only located one file. On the matter of your tickets being marked as closed, our support team responded to your latest ticket on November 11 and again on November 14 providing you with a link to schedule a call so they could assist you. That ticket remains open at this time but was marked as resolve since there was no response to our latest messages.
Again, we apologize for the issues you have encountered and we really do want to make this right for you. The email you sent to our VIP email address was filtered as spam and marked as possible phishing. It looks like that email did contain an attached diagnostic file. We were able to retrieve that email after we received this update today and knew to search for it. We will reach out to in response to that email and do what we can to make this right for you.
We take all feedback we receive very seriously as it helps us to improve. This is definitely not the experience we want any of our users to have and it is also not typical. We have reviewed your support tickets on file and only received one diagnostic file from you that was submitted three months ago when you reported issues with Amazon Echo. Our support team responded to that ticket and to an additional ticket you submitted two months ago (which you reported to them was resolved) and again three days ago. To assist you directly with your latest ticket, our customer support team scheduled a call with you for today (Saturday, November 14) to accommodate your schedule, which you subsequently cancelled.
Please email us at [email protected] and allow us the opportunity to assist with the issues you are experiencing and to make it right. We hope to hear from you soon so that we can do what we need to do to turn the negative experience you've had into a positive one.
RS
Ryan S.
Really bummed out to be honest
Really bummed out to be honest. They are very tricky with their advertising and make it appear as though you pay $129 for the router and service. But once you get the router it's useless until you pay an additional $120 for a full year of service. This thing is not worth $240 at all. I could get multiple vpn routers and a Tor router wired all together for that price. At least allow people to pay monthly or you're going to hurt your business. I will unfortunately be returning mine. It's not worth the upfront cost.
Response from Winston PrivacyOct 18, 2020
Hi Ryan, We are really sorry that you are unhappy with your Winston purchase and that you didn't realize there was a membership fee. Our membership fees are on the product page you visited when you placed your order, including the option for a 30 day trial membership before paying any subscription costs, which you elected. We also include the membership on landing pages and on FAQ pages as well. There is no deceptive advertising here. Since you are within your 30 day trial, you have not been charged any additional fees beyond the cost of the device at this time. We hope you'll see the benefits of how much data Winston blocks and how it protects you from tracking and unwanted surveillance, but if you do choose to return your device within 30 days of delivery, you will be receive a full refund on the device and no other fees will be charged.
In response to using a Tor router and multiple VPN routers in lieu of Winston, a Tor router provides different capabilities than a Winston. We don't route Tor traffic. Winston also does much more than a VPN. While VPNs are useful for file sharing services and unlocking content, they don't do privacy very well. With just one Winston privacy filter all the devices on your network, including the ones you can't install software on (cameras, smart devices, etc) are protected. In addition to blocking a surreal amount of tracking and advertising, including hidden first and third-party tracking cookies and sophisticated browser fingerprinting techniques that can track you even in incognito mode, Winston also protects against DNS rebinding attacks. The best part is that Winston is a zero-knowledge platform. We don't track, package, or sell users' data, unlike many VPNs who harvest the same data those tools collect, opening up yet another window into your private data,
We would love the opportunity to discuss your order and how we can help in more detail. Please email us at [email protected].
GH
G H.
Winston keeps taking down network
Following their setup, I configured Winston with my router and my internet went down. Only method I could find to contact them was email, they told me to disable IPv6. I followed up multiple times asking if the VPN I use for work had to be disabled permanently for this to work but received nothing except emails stating my case would be closed if I don’t reply.
I finally purchased a router so I could hook my work computer directly to modem and everything else to router going through Winston. Add another $100+ to get this working and now I can get to the internet, when it works. Unfortunately my internet keeps going down completely until I remove Winston and then my internet is fine.
Took me over 30 days by the time I tried working with their support, did my own troubleshooting and bought and configured the additional hardware, only to find it is a useless POS and now I can’t even return it. Sadly, the person who recommended this failed to tell me he returned his after recommending it to me.
Response from Winston PrivacySep 24, 2020
As always, we appreciate our users feedback as it helps us improve so thank you for sharing. This is definitely not the experience we want any of our users to have. It's also not a typical scenario. We have many users who successfully use a VPN with Winston. Even more concerning is that it sounds like you were not getting the responses from our support team. We have heard from some users who use free email clients, like Hotmail and Yahoo, that our emails were being found in their spam folders. Unfortunately, with just your initials provided on this review, we are unable to look into this for you.
We have submitted a request for more information. You can also email us at [email protected] to provide your name or order number so we can investigate this further. We welcome the opportunity to address the issues you experienced and to make it right, particularly if your return period has lapsed. We hope to hear from you soon so that we can do what we need to do to turn the negative experience you've had into a positive one.
MR
MrRaymis
Worst customer service.
Worst customer service.
As soon as you install it, your internet slows down a lot. Some of your smart devices won't even connect anymore, like smart TV. On some of websites page won't refresh.
After cancelled service two weeks in, try to return equipment. No luck. Send like 5 emails and just received response that ticket open , but never got resolved. Simple question was asked about return, but no direct answer. WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE. DO NOT TRY
Response from Winston PrivacySep 8, 2020
Hi Mr. Raymis,
Thank you for your feedback. I wanted you to know that we hear you and are sorry we failed you. This is not the experience we want our users to have. This is also not a typical experience, we have purposely build Winston to work with smart TVs, Ring, Nest, Alexa and other IoT devices. It sounds like there might have been a setup error or there needed to be a module (whitelist) enabled. We would love to look into this further to learn from this.
We tried finding a Mr. Raymis in our system but were unable to. Could you please email us at ([email protected]) so we can look into this further?
AD
Adam
Horrible Support Hours
They say to call their support team but fail to mention that their customer support hours are 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday meaning the only way to get help is to take time off from work. Who does this? Not people who care about their customers.
The only other support is email support which is worthless if you need help to address a problem quickly (like its interfering with being able to access the internet).
If you value support, you may want to look for another product.
Response from Winston PrivacyAug 18, 2020
Hi Adam,
Thank you for your feedback. I wanted you to know that we hear you and are sorry we failed you. This is not the experience we want our users to have. We would love to look into this further to learn from this. Could you please email us at ([email protected]) so we can look into this?
We take feedback like this seriously and will improve.
NI
Nathan I.
Buyer Beware.
Where to even start? Most of what this product claims to do is false. After getting it installed, I go to an IP address discovery site and it told me my exact IP address and location. On top of this, our internet would cut out at least once every hour. Winston Privacy website says "Try it risk-free," most people would take that to mean that a person can try the product without risk of losing anything. Well, it turns out that promise is also false, when I needed to return the product they don't give you a return label, nope the customer has to pay out more money for postage in the hopes that they can get some of their money back. When my return was processed they only gave my money back for the product they subtracted the shipping cost. So in all, I paid about $27.50 to try this product that does almost nothing it claims and made my internet experience far, far worse.
Response from Winston PrivacyAug 6, 2020
Hi Nathan - I am sorry Winston did not work as you had hoped. In regards to your public IP address, did you choose standard setup? With standard setup there is an additional step that could have been taken to further obfuscate your IP address. As for the shipping costs, it is all outlined in our return policy. If you contact us at support.winstonprivacy.com we can refund the full purchase price to you.
MI
MikeB
Love the concept. Hate the support.
Love the concept, hate the support. I've received instructions on how to install it, but my system just hangs when I try to verify that it is working. So now I just have a piece of useless hardware sitting there doing nothing. I also wrote into their support department to let them know, but received no response. Oh well. Thanks for nothing. I don't recommend this product.
Response from Winston PrivacyJul 27, 2020
Hi Mike - Thank you for your feedback. I am sorry you have been disappointed with our service, that is definitely not the experience we want our users to have. Could you please email me ([email protected]) so I can help and further look into this? Thank you again for your feedback - it helps us improve.
