Ghost Threading VPN · Active Privacy

The instrument

This is the app.

Not a mock-up. A real screen, connected and holding the line. One thing moves on it, and it is data.

The top of the Ghost Threading app: the poster banner reading VPN connected, a live speed of 324 megabits per second, and the timing-cover ring reading Holding the line.

Speed · live

Tested at launch, either side of connecting, at disconnect and whenever you ask; the last three kept, the tunnel's cost printed beside it. Never a number we didn't measure.

Holding the line

The ring is the last hour of your line, a minute at a time. A crimson notch is a minute with a hole in it, and Ghost shows you.

Said plainly

VPN · connected, and the city you exit from, in words. No shield icon to guess at, no flag in a list of a hundred flags.

The problem

They don't break the encryption. They watch the clock.

Someone watching your front door can't see inside. But they see exactly when you leave and exactly when you come home.

Your connection works the same way. A VPN hides where you went. The moment you did it still shows. That timing is what has actually unmasked people. Not codebreaking. Coincidence.

What a VPN still shows

When your traffic begins
When it stops
How long you were active
How much data moved
How your traffic changes the instant you act

What an observer looks for

Encryption hides what you say. It doesn't hide when you say it.

Every time you open a page, your connection sends a burst, and the site receives one at the same moment. An observer who can see both doesn't need to read a word. If the bursts line up, again and again, the two belong together.

That's why Ghost never goes quiet. Your line stays busy all the time, so your bursts don't stand out to be matched.

Your connection

The site you visit

An illustration of matching bursts. The two lines rise and fall together, and that alone connects them.

The wire · what an observer on your line sees

a page opens on a VPNGhost, never quiet

A VPNsilent until a page opens

Ghostnever quiet

An illustration. A page opens every few seconds. On a VPN, each one is a burst on a silent line, easy to timestamp. On Ghost, the line is never quiet and the page load disappears into it. The measured version, from Windows' own packet capture, is right below.

Measured on the wire

A watcher's nightmare. Nothing you can feel.

The drawing above is an illustration. This is the real thing: Windows' own packet capture of Nord's tunnel and Ghost's, over the same three idle minutes on the same machine, with a page opened at 120 seconds, at the red line.

On the wire, three idle minutes

4.1×

Ghost 91,438 packets · Nord 22,508 · same machine, same minutes, each tunnel counted from the capture

What the beat costs

2%

252 Mbps with the beat off, 247 Mbps with it on · the same probe on the same tunnel

From Connect to protected

1.5s

service start to exit address confirmed · no account call

NordVPN · Frankfurt22,508 packets in three minutes

0 s30 s60 s90 s120 s150 s180 s

Ghost · Nuremberg · line held91,438 packets in the same three minutes

0 s30 s60 s90 s120 s150 s180 s

What this shows. The beat is real, it runs inside the tunnel, and it never stops: every timing case on record needed a line that went quiet between a connect and an act, and this one does not. The extra 68,930 packets are plausible page fetches in a steady rhythm, with the user's own page load somewhere inside them.

Said carefully. Both lines were captured on a working machine with other software talking in the background, so Nord's line is busier here than a truly idle line would be; the comparison is like for like, not a photograph of silence.

How it works

It never goes quiet.

A light, steady beat of traffic runs whether you're there or not. No "started at 8 pm, stopped at 11." No beginning, no end, nothing to line up against anything else.

The cover is real. Others fill the silence with dummy packets. Ghost's beat is real pages from real sites.

The idea · three things, in order

Why a VPN with threading beats a VPN, and beats Tor, on the threats that have actually closed cases.

The line is never quiet. Cover runs on an irregular schedule whether you're there or not. There is no login to match to a logout, no burst to line up against an email arriving somewhere. Every timing case on record, the 2013 Harvard hoax among them, needed a quiet line.
Two hops, two operators. The entry relay knows who you are and not where you're going. The exit knows where and not who. They belong to unrelated companies in different jurisdictions, so no single legal process reaches both halves of a session.
Identified sessions never enter the route. Your bank knows who you are; hiding your address from it protects nothing and breaks the login. Ghost routes those direct, by policy, as a recorded decision, and keeps the route for the traffic where it counts.

The route

Your bank already knows who you are.

Hiding from it protects nothing and breaks the login. So Ghost sends it straight through, on purpose, and keeps the route for everything else.

Two hops shown, on two companies. Ghost also offers one relay, by your choice, and while that route is on it says "knows who and where" on every screen, like any VPN would have to. Node Zero, your machine, is never on any map.

Generalveiled

Everyday browsing, carried in company.

Socialveiled

Its own circuit, its own city if you pin one.

Streamingveiled

Pinned where the catalogue lives. It stays there.

Bankingdirect by policy

You, then the site, directly. Circuit actions refused: identified.

Rules the route keeps

Fail closed. If the protected path is unavailable, traffic stops. It never quietly goes direct.
Direct only by policy. A bank routed direct because it is identified is a different, recorded outcome from a bank exposed by a broken tunnel.
Sticky entry. The entry relay doesn't move unless it dies. Rotating it raises the odds of picking a hostile one.
Budgeted change. Four circuit changes per thread per hour, none on a circuit younger than two minutes.
No signature. A reaction to being watched is held and applied to a group, never as one prompt, isolated rebuild.

The network

Choose a city. It stays chosen.

Pinned per activity, not per machine: your legal work stays in New York while everything else keeps moving. If that city goes away, the thread stops rather than slip somewhere else. Every node has a reason to be here.

Node Zero, your machine, is not on this map.

The guard

One guard. Your call.

Relay blocking · on

Scam sites, refused at the relay.

More than 127,000 known phishing, ransomware and scam domains are turned away before they ever reach your machine. Other VPNs sell this as an extra. With Ghost it's in the price.

It has to be your choice, so it's a plain switch on the main screen: on, or off. No warning voice when you turn it off.

wrongly blocked, top 1,000,000 domains: 0
cost to your speed: none measurable
where it happens: at the relay, before anything reaches you
price: included
who decides: you

How it compares

Equal on privacy. Alone on timing.

Against the two biggest VPNs and the most private one. Mullvad is a privacy-focused provider with a strong reputation for protecting its customers, and we respect its approach. Here's what each of them offers, what Ghost offers, and where the technologies differ, including where they're ahead.

What you actually want	NordVPN	Surfshark	Mullvad	Ghost Threading
Hides your address from the sites you visit	YesFrankfurt exit, measured	YesMilan exit, measured	Yesnot measured here	YesNuremberg relay · ipleak.net agrees
Keeps your DNS lookups inside the tunnel	Yesits own resolver, measured	Yesits own resolver, measured	Yesits own resolver	Yesthe relay itself answers · dnsleaktest.com: one server, six rounds
Leaks nothing over IPv6 or WebRTC	Yesmeasured	Yesmeasured	Yesnot measured here	Yestest-ipv6.com and browserleaks.com agree
Blocks phishing, scam and malware sites	Yesin its plans	Yesin its plans	YesDNS content blocking	Yesrefused at the relay · yours to switch off
Speed on the tunnel	255 Mbpsmeasured	272 Mbpsmeasured	not measured	252 Mbpsparity, measured
Time from Connect to protected	4.3 sto Frankfurt	1.7 sto Germany	not measured	1.5 sto Nuremberg · no account call
Knows who you are	Yesemail and payment identity	Yesemail and payment identity	Noa random account number	Noa random credential, no email, no name
What a court order can get from them	Your recordemail, payments, plan, tickets	Your recordemail, payments, plan, tickets	A number and a date	A record that names nobodyand holds no traffic
Keeps traffic logs	Nopolicy audited by Deloitte	Nopolicy audited by Deloitte	Noindependently audited	Nonever written, by construction
Hides when you act, not only where	None documented	None documented	PartlyDAITA, opt-in: dummy packets and padding	Yesa beat of real page fetches, 2 % of speed
Apps for Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, Linux	Yes	Yes	Yes	Windows, Android and Linux
Countries to choose from	Far more	Far more	not compared	51 citiesin 42 countries
Price	Less on a two-year planrenews higher, per its own pricing page	varies by plan length	€5 a month, flatcash and Monero accepted	First month freethen $9.95, month to month

Every app measured by us with the same tests, on the same machine and connection, in September and October 2026, pressing each app's own Connect button. Leak verdicts come from public test sites, not from us. "None documented" means we found no such feature in their published documentation; it does not mean we proved it absent. Competitor prices and audits from their own sites, October 2026.

What you actually want	VPN alone	Tor	Ghost Threading
Hides your address from the site you visit	Yes	Yes	Yes. In the city you chose, over one, two or three hops
Hides when you were online	No. The tunnel goes up and down with you	No	Yes. The line is never quiet
Defeats an observer counting request timing and size	No	Partly	Yes, at the level that has closed real cases: presence and rhythm
Requires trusting a single company	Yes. One provider sees who and where	Partly. Volunteer entry and exit	No. Two unrelated operators; each knows half
Survives one operator being breached or compelled	No	Partly	Yes. One order reaches one half, and there are no logs on either
Breaks logins, banking, streaming	Frequently	Usually	No. Identified sessions route direct by policy
Lets you choose a city and keep it	Yes, for the whole machine	No	Yes, per thread, pinned, never moves
Effect on speed	Slower	Much slower	One to three hops, your choice. Measured on the scorecard, never claimed
Records of your traffic	None at the audited ones	None	Never written. Billing only, and the policy names it
Protects you on a network you do not control	Yes	Yes	Yes

Why both, in one product. A VPN alone hides where you are and leaves when you were there in plain view. Threading alone hides the pattern and leaves your address on every packet. Ghost runs both under one controller with the same rules for each: fail closed, direct only by policy, budgeted change, no signature.

Independent verdicts · not our probe, not our words

ipleak.netcleanaddress, DNS, WebRTC, IPv6
test-ipv6.comcleanno IPv6 address detected
browserleaks.comcleanWebRTC: the home network never shows
dnsleaktest.comcleanextended, six rounds, one server: the relay
fast.com200 Mbpsthrough the tunnel, while the line was held

Ghost connected through Nuremberg.

Where the others are ahead

Choose one of them instead if…

A company confident enough to tell you when a competitor might suit you better is a company worth trusting.

You need Mac or iPhone. Ghost runs on Windows, Android and Linux. Nord, Surfshark, Mullvad and Proton have apps on all of them.
You want the lowest monthly price. Mullvad is €5 a month, flat, however long you pay for.
You want to pay in cash. Mullvad takes cash in an envelope, and Monero. Ghost takes cards through a payment processor; nothing that names you crosses to us.
You want a free plan. Proton VPN has one. Ghost's first month is free, then $9.95 a month.
You want a no-logs policy with a published outside audit. Nord and Surfshark have had theirs checked by Deloitte; Mullvad and Proton publish theirs.
You want open-source apps. Mullvad and Proton publish their code. Ghost's is sealed.
You need a country Ghost doesn't serve. Ghost runs in 51 cities across 42 countries. Nord and Surfshark reach far more.

If what you need is to hide when you were online, and not only where, there's one product built for it.

No name

We don't ask who you are.

A Ghost account is a paid entitlement, not a person. No name, no address, no email, no identity profile. A random credential is the account.

Other VPNs offer to watch your Social Security number. Ghost never learns your name.

Your Ghost credentialsample

GHOST-4QZ7-•••••-•••••-••••7-K2

100 bits from your computer's own random source · kept encrypted by your operating system · your backup is sealed under a passphrase we never see

On your card statement

PAI* GHOST 7K4P2M

Those six characters cancel that subscription, at the cancel page, with no name and no email. That is the only thing they can do.

what Ghost holds: the credential's one-way key, and whether it is paid up, until when
plan: monthly only, no annual plan, on purpose
if you lose it: we cannot recover it. Create another. You can still stop paying.

Never written

We keep no record of you.

Ghost does not log what you do. Not which sites, not which pages, not when, not from where, not your DNS. Not on the entry relay, not on the exit relay, not on your machine, not on ours. These records are not deleted after your session. They are never written.

What does exist, and why

Your subscription. A random credential is your account. Ghost holds its one-way key and whether it is paid up. Nothing else is needed to let you in.
Your payment. A card names a person. The payment processor holds that, under its own policy, and we hold the reference it gives us.
Live session state. While a tunnel is up, the entry holds your address and the exit holds the destinations, in memory, because forwarding is impossible without them. Each half evaporates with the session.
The landlords' accounting. We rent relays from hosting companies. They meter traffic on their own network for their own billing. We say so here rather than let you find out later.

When the law comes

A subpoena for your traffic receives nothing, because nothing was written. We can be served like any company. We cannot produce what does not exist, and we will say exactly that, in writing, every time.
A preservation order can require us to keep records already in our possession. It cannot conjure records that were never made.
A forward-looking order on one account is the honest edge. What limits it is the structure: on the two-hop route, an order on the entry yields times of connection and never a destination. The exit sits with a different company in a different country.
We will tell you what we were asked. A public page counts requests received and requests that left with nothing, and a warrant canary says whether that page is still ours to publish.

Measured

Parity on the tunnel. First to protected.

The same tests, the same clock, for everyone. Ghost against the two biggest VPNs in the world.

From Connect to protected · press to confirmed exit

NordVPN

4.3s

to Frankfurt · its own "Secure my connection"

4.354.204.264.374.50

Surfshark

1.7s

to Germany · its own "Quick-connect"

1.351.271.651.882.80

Ghost fastest

1.5s

to Nuremberg · the service start command

1.331.571.491.780.78

Why Ghost is quick. Pressing Connect starts the tunnel on your machine, does one handshake with the relay, and runs one request through the tunnel to confirm the exit. No login, no server list to ask for, no keys to fetch, because the account is a random credential that never speaks on connect. The number is the design made visible.

Said carefully. Surfshark is in the same breath; Nord is not. We measured what their apps do from the outside and nothing more. What happens inside their connect sequence is their business; what we claim is ours: no account step exists to slow Ghost down, and the clock agrees.

Measured	Bare line	Surfshark · Milan	Nord · Frankfurt	Ghost · Nuremberg
Throughput, median	224 Mbps	272 Mbps	255 Mbps	252 Mbps
With the timing cover running	—	—	—	247 Mbps
Latency to Cloudflare, by name	135 ms	188 ms	253 ms	191 ms
Who answers your DNS	your router's choice	their own resolver	their own resolver	the relay itself
IPv6 leak	none	none	none	none
Traffic on the wire while you're idle	nothing	nothing	nothing	a continuous beat

Method: each app's own Connect button, timed from the press until the exit address changed, the median of repeated presses; Ghost timed from its service start. Throughput: the same probe for every app, the median of repeated pulls. Every app measured by us on the same machine and connection, September and October 2026. The timing cover cost two percent of throughput, inside the line's own noise. Site blocks follow the exit address as much as the product.

Also on Android

Ghost, in your pocket.

Your Ghost credential is your account. Enter it once and the phone keeps it sealed in its own keystore: no name, no email, no phone number. Then the same line, the same cities and the same route as on your computer.

Ghost on Android: VPN connected, holding the line, protected over two hops with the exit in New York — **Ghost**two hops · exit New York

The Network screen: every city with its photograph, by region — **Network**every city, by region

The VPN route screen: Node Zero, this phone, then the entry in Milan, the exit in New York, and the world — **VPN route**moving, as on the phone

Price

First month free. Then one price, month to month.

No contracts. No lock-in. It runs month to month until you cancel, and you cancel with the code on your card statement. You pay us to protect you, and that's the whole business.

What you won't find here

"Save 69%"
"+3 extra months"
A renewal at three times the price
A two-year lock-in
Antivirus, upsold
A countdown timer
An email to sign up
A Black Friday banner in October

Ghosteverything included

First month free

$9.95/ month after

month to month · until you cancel · no contracts

The VPN: WireGuard, your city, one to three hops
Ghost Threading timing cover
Scam and phishing blocking at the relay
The live speed meter, tunnel cost printed
Up to five devices
An account with no name, email or phone
Cancel with the code on your statement

Windows + Android + Linux · Coming soon

We won't ask for your email, not even for a waiting list. Check back.

What it does not do said in the same voice

The claims above are measured. These are their edges.

It does not defeat an adversary who watches every link on earth at once and matches packets one by one. That is a theorem, it binds Tor too, and only constant-rate padding addresses it, at a bandwidth cost nobody ships.
It does not stop you typing your real name into a form.
It does not help if the destination is the adversary, and it does not hide you among other users on a chosen exit. A pinned city makes you a crowd of one there.
It does not control the companies we rent relays from. They keep their own network accounting, and we say so.