Free may be the best price in the world, but that doesn’t mean you should never pay for things that have their free counterparts. Simply put, some things come with a cost — thus you better pay for them “directly.” Otherwise, you may find out that the free price tag can be very expensive.
This is especially true when we’re talking about your privacy and personal information. You’ll want to know that a reputable company is handling your data and is providing you with the service you can trust. And the one that works every single time.
Which brings us to VPNs – you DON’T want to get a free VPN for more than one reason. We have actually listed 5 reasons why you should avoid free VPNs:
1. Free VPNs aren’t that safe
Simply put, security costs money and if something is free, chances are the company providing the free VPN service couldn’t afford the top-notch experts. And the same goes for the best hardware and software that is required to run a solid VPN — if the service is free, how in the world are they going to invest in hardware, software and people?
As a result of all this, free VPNs tend to be more buggy (than premium, paid offerings) with some even having serious security flaws.
And the same goes for privacy — there are VPNs that admit they will store your personal information along with all other details they could get their hands on in exchange for providing you with the free service. Is this something you really want? I don’t think so.
2. Free VPNs could bring along viruses
A CSIRO study (The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) from a few years ago has found that while 37% of the analyzed Android VPN apps have more than 500K installs and 25% of them receive at least a 4-star rating — over 38% of them contain some malware presence.
That’s a staggering figure and we gotta wonder — is it worth experimenting with free VPN apps?
You can download the full CSIRO report, entitled “An Analysis of the Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps,” as a PDF file from here.
In addition, it is worth adding that mobile ransomware attacks have been skyrocketing in recent years, and with VPN apps having all the permission a hacker would want — they could be used as a tool against the users themselves.
3. Free VPNs could get their money from advertising
You’ve heard the saying — if the product is free, you are the product.
While most of us accept such arrangements with news sites and services like YouTube, there is no good reason to do the same with VPNs. After all, they sit between you and the web site or web service you’re visiting and could serve all the ads they want. As a result, with a free VPN — you can get a very different internet experience with sneaky ad-serving trackers following you across the world wide web.
The “best case” scenario is just to see some ads in the VPN app itself, but your data could also be offered for sale to third-party marketers.
In contrast, some premium VPNs — because you pay for them — even let you remove ads as you browse the web.
4. Free VPNs seldom deliver buffer-free streaming
One of the most common uses cases for VPNs is the ability to access popular video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and so on — from all across the world. The goal of the user is to watch some movies and TV shows that would otherwise (without a VPN) be outside of their reach.
In order to ensure a solid experience, a VPN should have a solid (and expensive) infrastructure which — as we’ve noted above — costs real money.
As a result of not having finances to build and maintain this infrastructure, free VPNs seldom (if ever) deliver the buffer-free experience.
In addition, because of the way content rights are bought and sold on the international market, streaming services are routinely blocking large numbers of IP addresses that have been identified as belonging to turnstile-jumping freeloaders.
Free VPNs can’t afford to buy new IP addresses because, again, they don’t have the money. The situation is very different with paid VPNs — they know you’re using their service as long as it works, so they have to buy new IP addresses all the time.
5. Free VPNs are NOT worth the hassle
When the saying “you get what you pay for” was invented, there were no free software let alone free VPNs. Today, we know that even if something is free, it could end up costing us real money, and worse yet – our privacy.
With a free VPN you are getting a service that can’t be relied on. It may or may not work, and your data — as far as we (don’t) know — could be up for grabs. You may use it to watch a Netflix movie one day only to realize it doesn’t work the next one. The network congestion is something a free VPN could do little about — except turn to a premium model and actually start selling the service. This, BTW, is what we evangelize. It’s not like we want to pay for everything — we just realize that some things cannot be free.
Before I let you go, I need to add that a free trial option is different. It is there to entice users to try some service out and later on actually pay for its usage. As such, the free trial is part of the company’s marketing strategy and we have nothing against it — quite the contrary. And the same goes for money-back guarantees, which tend to work just as well.
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So where do you start? It’s actually simple – visit our page with Best of the Best VPNs and take it from there. All services on that list have been field-tested to work, but for the best experience – get the one at the top and forget about it. Let it do its magic in the background as you safely browse the web, download files and watch movies. It’s that easy!