I have read a lot of conflicting information regarding free VPNs. Can anyone shed some light on if free VPNs are to be trusted or not?
Assume yes.
How are they making money if they are free? Easy, they are selling you.
think logically
in order to make a VPN service, you need to rent servers and that cost money
so do you think they are the ones who pays for it ? from their own kinds of hearts?
no they collect your data and then sell them
If they are not the free tier that is meant as a trial of a proper Paid VPN assume they have no other reasonable way to make money
Just as impossible to prove as if any paid VPNs don’t.
Maybe. Maybe they inject ads. Maybe they do other things to earn money, like recruit your device into their botnet.
If you’re not buying then you’re the one being sold.
Most “free” VPNs are freemium VPNs. They have a free and limited plan which is sponsored by the paying users. Same strategy as many other freemium services like Dropbox, Spotify, etc.
Premium only VPNs spend 1/2 their revenue on ads to get new users. Freemium ones don’t have to do that, since it’s a lot easier to convince someone to use a service without paying. A small percentage of these people choose to upgrade once they hit the limits of a free plan.
Yes, there were cases where privacy of free users was monetized/abused (Hotspotshield or Hola for example). That does not mean all VPNs that offer a free limited plan do the same.
Ha! That reminds me of when facebook rolled out its own VPN that was akin to a malware.
There’s really not much need to trust your VPN service:
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give them as little real data about you as possible.
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use HTTPS through the VPN.
So, what can they sell ? “Some computer on the LAN at IP address N has accessed domains X, Y, and Z”.
[Edit: This is true if you access their service through some standard interface such as OpenVPN. If you’re installing their proprietary client in your machine, all bets are off.]
Yes - if you are not a paying customer, you are the product. There is no such thing as “free”
If it’s free, you are the product.
The free one gets its revenue by selling all the data of its users.
Using a free VPN for privacy is like paying a loan shark 25% interest because you dont want a corporate bank to screw you over with 10% interest.
There is no regulatory agency that inspects the standards and practices of VPN companies. It is a wild west environment. Err in the side of caution and assume the worst.
I always think like that
If the service is free, then you are the product
So yes, it sells all your data
no, they just provide the service out of their generous nature…
Think for a second and on how they generate their revenue. Without selling the personal data there are no host servers and data transmission.
some of them have a freemium model to attract paying customers, those should be (mostly) ok. But fully free services without a revenue model? no, to be avoided.
I’d assume so being it’s free… Nothings free, they gotta get paid some where for something
proton vpn is free but literally is p2w bc u need pro
If a service is free, you are the product
This is generally true for most of things in life