If you’re a regular Internet user and you care about online safety, then you’ve probably heard about free VPNs.
A lot of people opt for free VPNs because who wouldn’t want free protection? But, as you’ll see throughout the course of this article, free is not the way to go if you want high-quality protection. In fact, most of the free VPNs are known for being unsafe and cybersecurity experts don’t recommend them.
So, is free VPN safe? If you want to understand why we think you should stay away from free VPNs, read on to understand more about the subject.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and it’s a connection method that allows the user to protect and secure information that’s transmitted through private and public networks. Corporations use high-quality VPNs to keep important and sensitive data under lock and key. But individuals are starting to use VPNs as well nowadays, because most of our daily lives are conducted online.
A VPN improves the level of safety and privacy with which you browse the web. It does this by replacing your actual IP address with a dupe from the VPN provider. Once you subscribe to a VPN, you’ll have access to a lot of IP addresses from different countries around the world, based on your provider’s server locations. This means you could surf the web in China while your IP address shows that you’re in New York.
Main Uses of a VPN
A wide majority of users subscribe to VPNs in order to stream content from prohibited software like Kodi. A VPN fully encrypts your IP address so that anyone who tries to track your traffic ends up getting lost in a maze. Thus, you can use a VPN to hide your traffic when using any streaming APKs you like.
Of course, VPNs are highly popular among torrent users. All you have to do is run a VPN on your torrent device to hide your location and make it seem as if you’re using the Internet from another country or city.
Also, a VPN gives you access to content restricted in your country. This is great news for anyone who can’t watch YouTube or access Facebook because it’s blocked in their country. And you’ll be able to connect to any “geo-restricted” website that you want to access.
As you can see, using a VPN comes with a ton of benefits. But, you have to subscribe to a good quality VPN in order to reap the benefits without compromising on safety. You simply cannot rely on a free VPN to achieve this.
What Happens When You Use a Free VPN?
Finally, to answer the question: is Free VPN safe? Simple answer is no. VPN providers have access to all of your private details, from browsing history to all your Internet activity. So, even if your Internet usage is hidden, it’s fully visible to the VPN service provider.
That’s why you must only choose a reliable VPN provider which has a positive reputation. The last thing you want is to sign up with a free VPN that shares your information. They can easily share your info with ad companies or government agencies without your knowledge or consent.
IPVanish is one of the most trusted in the industry because they won’t share or even look at your information. They have a Zero Traffic Log Policy, which means they don’t keep any records of users’ Internet traffic. So there’s no way for them to see your activity even if they wanted to because it’s not saved anywhere.
Browsing speed is another important benefit of good quality VPNs. Free VPNs will slow you down, especially when downloading content or even just browsing the net. That’s because they don’t have fast downloading speeds and their ability to stream HD videos is remarkably limited.
While most free providers offer freemium VPN options (both free and paid), their free VPNs clearly state that they have “slow” loading speeds compared to the paid version. Meaning, in this case, the question is free VPN safe or not, isn’t as relevant as Internet speed loss.
Conclusion
As you can see, free VPNs cannot be trusted to provide a safe, reliable and fast connection.
Rather go for a paid option instead, like IPVanish, which is one of the best known and trusted VPNs. In addition to their fast download speeds and great VPN service, IPVanish promises to offer excellent customer support. It gives you also guaranteed safety and privacy, as well as a money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.
IPVanish is able to offer these fantastic benefits because it has over 1,000 servers which are spread out across 60 different countries, with over 40,000 different IP addresses to boot!
