Thanks to the ever-rising number of scammers and spammers, answering a phone call or email from an unknown sender can be pretty daunting. Personally, I treat any unexpected call with a healthy dose of suspicion.

Deepfakes and AI scam calls are making it harder to parse malicious messages from the real thing. And with more than half of Americans affected by fraud in 2025, it’s more important than ever to keep your lines of communication secure.

Enter Surfshark: as our Surfshark review notes, it comes with a suite of tools to help you dodge scams and spam while keeping your identity safe online.

What's more, we've got an exclusive deal that gives you $10, $20, or $30 in Amazon gift cards when you sign up for Surfshark Starter, Surfshark One, or Surfshark One+.

As well as offering the typical functions of a VPN – accessing content in other countries and enhancing browsing privacy – Surfshark comes equipped with a full suite of security tools that cover everything from calls to email to ad-blocking.

Surfshark Starter is currently available for $1.99 per month with a 27-month plan (paid up-front at $53.73, representing 24 months plus 3 extra). That's an 87% saving over the pay-monthly cost, which totals $417.15 across the same time frame.

Surfshark One and Surfshark One+ up the price to $2.49 per month and $4.19 per month, respectively, when purchased as 27-month plans. Surfshark One adds a web content blocker and antivirus, while Surfshark One Plus offers web data removal via Incogni and up to $1 million in identity theft coverage.

All three Surfshark plans allow you to connect to as many devices as you want, a huge win over rivals like ExpressVPN.

As mentioned, all three tiers of Surfshark come with a selection of great security tools. As our Surfshark VPN review notes, Starter is far from a ‘lite’ version of the Surfshark experience, with full VPN, ad blocker, and ID protection features. Keep reading for a full breakdown.

Alternative Identity

Alternative Identity is the umbrella term Surfshark uses for its identity protection tools.

Essentially, Surfshark allows you to present as someone totally different online, so you can anonymously sign up to websites and hide your information from digital onlookers.

You can choose a new name, date of birth, email, postal address, and phone number to use when registering for newsletters, stores, or anything else that might make an enticing target for data thieves. This is perfect if, like me, you've got thousands of marketing emails jamming your inbox.

CleanWeb

CleanWeb is Surfshark’s ad blocker, which comes with the added ability to stop cookie consent pop-ups from appearing and slowing down your browsing.

For those who want an even more private browsing experience, Surfshark One and Surfshark One Plus also offer a web browser that stores no browsing data whatsoever.

What other options are there?

Surfshark is our pick for the best cheap VPN, and its unlimited device coverage is hard to ignore, but it’s not without its competitors, some of which go further in key areas.

Proton VPN’s Stealth protocol, for example, makes it easy to hide the fact you’re even using a VPN, which could be useful in countries with tighter VPN regulations or censorship laws.

For a little more cash, NordVPN is our pick for the best VPN overall, offering particularly excellent streaming performance. And for those on tighter budgets who just need a basic VPN, PrivadoVPN’s limited free service might be enough to get by – though it lacks Surfshark’s range of security features.