There are hundreds of people on the Internet who provide VPN without asking a dime, and they agree to pay all associated costs, including data center services, support, creating convenient applications, etc.
In return, they need just a little – information about everything you create on the World Wide Web in order to sell your detailed digital portrait to advertisers. Along the way, they show you their ads based on your preferences unlike paid VPN services, which do not make use of your personal data for advertising and commercial purposes.
Big Brother is watching you
There is a separate category of paranoid individuals – ordinary people, who sincerely believe that someone from the authorities can be interested in their incredibly busy life. They are banking on VPN with enhanced privacy and anti-surveillance capabilities.
Then there is a small issue to face: most of these resources, especially those which are registered in The Alliance of Fourteen Eyes or on the territory of the Russian Federation, will transfer information about the user to law enforcement agencies, if they just ask.
What is VPN for?
VPN allows you to bypass geographic and legal restrictions.
Many states have internet censorship that restricts access to certain sites. You decide to visit one of these resources, but find that it is blocked. To open a site, you need to go online through the VPN server of the country where the block is missing.
VPN is a very useful technology that perfectly copes with a certain range of tasks. However, the security of personal data still depends on the conscience of the service provider, user’s sanity, caution, and Internet literacy.
Nowadays VPN has left the scope of corporate use. The connection is provided through the World Wide Web: to enter, you need the server address, sometimes a login with a password. However, the VPN connects directly to the necessary portal and gives you traffic from there.
However, hardly anyone can guarantee that the service does not have keys to decrypt your traffic or it does not encrypt it at all.
How does free VPN service make money?
Those who own free VPN need to earn money, because they have already bought the equipment, paid for IP-addresses and to their employees.
Top method of making money is based on advertising. Well, it is crystal clear: if you want free access, watch ads first.
However, you cannot make a lot of money on this. There is far more interesting way – to collect information about the users.
And other troubles
Once it can happen that a free VPN can fall off, and the user will not know what to do. In the best case, you simply will not be able to open another page, and the problem will pop up by itself.
And what if you deliberately hid your IP or transferred anonymous information, and suddenly it was leaked to the public?
To prevent the VPN from falling off abruptly, providers need to use a system for switching to a backup channel or an emergency shutdown system. The first, when the connection is lost, switches to the backup VPN tunnel. The second monitors the connection and, if it terminates, drops it.
Obviously, paid VPN is not insured from this either. However, such clients test and refine more meticulously, so the probability of error is significantly reduced.
How to be with it?
It is simple – use a paid VPN, at least where you enter your data and transfer confidential information.
Paid VPN will earn much more from their good reputation rather than selling traffic. They will also provide good speed, the ability to choose a server in the required country and other benefits.