The dangers of free VPN: Top secrets you should know
Come closer, let’s talk about free VPNs and the actual dangers of using them that users may not be aware of. Share this post as you might just be saving a life.
Many may already know about some of these dangers but there are a lot of different aspects to it and we are going to look at some of them quickly. Don’t worry we won’t go geeky on you — who needs all that gibberish right? Instead we are going to hit the nail on the head with little to no confusing technicalities. Here we go.
First off, if you’re still new to these whole VPN affair, permit us into shaming you into learning right now. Come on it’s 2020, you need to catch up quick. Click here now to get the gist of what VPN is. Basically it masks your IP address so that your internet service provider can’t see what sites you’re accessing on your Android device, your PC and whatever futuristic device the Elon Musks of the world decides to bless us with this year. A lot of people also use VPNs purely to get past blocks. So if a provider is blocking links and streams from a certain site, a VPN will bypass this.
Now on to the Elephant in the room — FREE VPNs
It means some VPN companies require you to pay nothing to use VPN services. No one is that naive to think there’ll be no catch. For a VPN service to run, it’s obviously not free for them. It costs money to maintain multiple servers in various locations not to mention other operating costs.
So we have been doing our homework on this and talking to people who do actually run VPN services and the stuff we found out is worrisome. And one thing that stood out the most and which is a rule of thumb of some kind is:
If you’re not being sold a product, you are the product
It makes sense right?
Today, data is now more valuable than oil, so you’ve got to guard your data as best as you can. So how is this related to free VPN? Well, bandwidth is one of the things the free VPN services need to have. Also there are millions or hundreds of thousands of people at least using these free VPNs, so where are the VPN companies getting the money to actually run the servers, right?
Let’s dive right into it.
One of the things you need to know is that when you connect to a free VPN, they (VPN company) can actually access your DNS.
So if you’re visiting websites, say you want to visit google.com, they can actually direct you to their version of Google com or any website you actually visit, and then they can manipulate the ads into their own adverts, so they get revenue from that. Also scary is the fact that they can direct you to different places where they can see your login details and passwords for accounts and other places you log on to on the internet.
Now, we are not saying all free VPNs will do this. Rather what is being driven at is if it’s free, there’s got to be a way of them making money to cover these costs. So another way of them making money is selling your data.
Selling your data doesn’t necessarily have to be your details, it can be your IP. Mind blowing, we know. Your IP address could be used by people that need to access a residential IP address. And in this way, they are not actually connected to a VPN server but a residential IP — yours. So it helps them bypass a lot of things; they could buy fake cards and perpetrate fraud in one form or another. What’s more, they can also put malware and adware onto your device. Some stubborn people will tell you if you’re only using a VPN to access the US Netflix, if you’re only using it for geo locked content, or region locked content or torrenting, you’re safe. No, you’re not because you’re still connecting to the same VPN server as you would if you were using it for torrenting. So you’re still exposing yourself the same way.
And then you’ve also got peer to peer VPN as well. How this works is if you connect to a peer to peer VPN server, then you will link to somebody else’s IP address, but it also means the people using the service at the same time will be connecting to your IP address as well. So that means whatever Bob down the road is looking at, is actually going through your IP address. So your internet service provider can see what Bob down the road is doing through your address. Do you see how your security might be compromised in this way? Good.
If you buy a premium VPN service that is peer to peer, it’s premium so your IP address doesn’t get used by other people. Now you’re the exploiter (knowingly or not) who’ll be jumping onto people’s IP addresses that are using the free version which to us defeats the objective of having a VPN in the first place.
What other difference exist between premium and free? We asked the experts. They told us that there are hundreds of free VPNs on Google Play Store. But the majority of those are Chinese owned. The thing is their government can ask for any details or data since as far as we know there are no serious privacy-laws in that country. But using a premium VPN protects you especially in places where there are actual enforceable laws which could open up a law flouting company to lawsuits. We are not lawyers here but we know no one wants that smoke up their behind. In short, premium VPNs gives you rights free VPNs can’t afford.
There’s also the fact that you’re also paying for the service and that covers the cost of what you’re going to be using it for. And that’s why paid VPNs don’t need to do the shady stuff free VPNs are wont to doing. Paid VPNs don’t keep logs, so they don’t know what they don’t know about your stuff, details and other private things you do on the internet. And if they don’t keep logs, there’s no data to sell or to be made available to government organization.
After all these secret information, if you still want to go ahead and download a free VPN, we don’t know what to tell you. Just be safe out there. While we recommend staying away from free VPN, whichever you are using, do a lot of homework on it. Make sure you read the small print and all that kind of stuff. Never go in blind or naive.
Got further thoughts? We’ll love to read it in the comment section below.
