Privacy has become a huge concern in recent years – and for good reason. We’ve all become keenly aware of the huge amount of personal data that is being gathered, sold, and used – and that awareness has also led to the rapid rise of services that are geared toward safeguarding our data. Out of all these services, VPNs are by far the most widely known and widely used.
A VPN or virtual private network allows you to securely forward all of your network traffic through a server provided by the service.
VPNs allow you to access region-locked content, avoid censorship, and protect your browsing history, IP address and location from being accessed.
Nowadays, a huge amount of online traffic comes from mobile devices – and the lion’s share of that market, at least 73%, goes to the Android operating system.
We’ll cover the most common caveats and hidden drawbacks of using free Android VPNs down below. We strongly urge you to use a premium service.
Subpar Service
First, let’s cover the less shocking drawbacks. Free VPNs are notorious for providing a watered-down, inferior service when compared to their premium counterparts.
Limited Data, Slower Performance
ISPs vary in both quality and the amount of data they gather. Finding a good internet service provider that has a restrained and sensible privacy policy is a great first step toward achieving security – but make no mistake, even that is miles away from the anonymity that a VPN should provide.
A huge majority of free VPN providers put a cap on how much data you can use in a given amount of time. For many people, that fact alone is an immediate dealbreaker. Once you hit that limit, your activity will be completely visible to your internet service provider.
And you won’t even be able to properly make use of the small amount of data that is at your disposal – most free VPNs provide painfully slow service because their servers cannot handle large amounts of users and because the system prioritizes premium users.
Both of these are common tactics that are used to quite literally frustrate users into purchasing a premium subscription. It’s completely dishonest and unnecessary – and you can spare yourself a headache, and get better results, by simply going straight to a trusted, premium provider.
Premium services can also occasionally slow down your internet speed – but with premium VPNs, this is a solvable issue – however, there is no such thing as a free VPN that is fast.
Fewer Servers
There isn’t a single free VPN out there that can hold a candle to a premium service when it comes to servers.
Free VPNs rarely have a number of servers that’s in the double digits, while the top names on the premium side of things all provide you with a worldwide web of servers, strewn across all continents.
Worse Infrastructure
This shouldn’t come as a surprise – starting a business such as a VPN provider isn’t cheap.
Hiring a good team of coders, purchasing the necessary hardware, and paying for marketing and customer support is expensive enough even when you charge your customers. Without a steady revenue stream, all you’re left with is a house of cards – and one with shoddy foundations at that.
As a rule of thumb, free VPNs offer worse performance, less adaptability, and generally ineffectual customer support.
Sustainability and Improvement
A premium VPN service has the necessary financial means to stay afloat, as well as to innovate, for many years to come. To remain competitive, businesses have to adapt to market conditions, always striving to provide a higher quality of service at a lower price.
A free service just can’t compete. A free VPN provider is a much riskier enterprise – and when push comes to shove, you don’t want your personal data in the hands of someone who is facing bankruptcy.
More to the point, as the years continue to go by, we’ll see most if not all of the big premium services developing proprietary technologies and approaches – something that free VPNs will never be able to catch up with.
Real Dangers and Privacy Risks
It has become common knowledge, particularly with the rise of free online services, that if you’re not paying for the product – you are the product. There are exceptions, of course – but few and far between.
That saying also applies to free VPNs. At first glance, you might think that being free is a huge bonus – it isn’t. That very same enticing fact is the source of all of the problems that free VPNs can present – and some of those problems can pose significant risks to your privacy.
Ads, Ads, and more Ads
A large majority of free VPNs use ads to compensate for the lack of profit. Ads slow down the service and can contain harmful malware that can compromise your device’s security.
It’s a well-known fact that all advertisers prefer to use targeted ads – after all, they’re more efficient. If a service that is designed to keep your data safe is making money via a method that works best if the opposite is true, that service is deep within the territory of conflict of interest.
Malware
Research from Privacy Canada, a Canadian security group has shown that 38% of VPNs have some sort of malicious code attached to them – and the odds are far greater with free services.
The malware that is usually found in free VPNs varies widely – ranging from highly dangerous ransomware to privacy-encroaching spyware.
The vast majority of free VPNs pose both a privacy and security risk. But in truth, the severity of the malware matters little – this shouldn’t be a concern in the first place.
Hijacking Bandwidth
Reading a provider’s privacy policy is hugely important – there have been several high-profile cases, most notably with Hola, of VPNs hijacking users’ bandwidth while their devices are idle.
Selling bandwidth for profit while advertising yourself as a free service is underhanded and deceitful – but the situation is made even worse by the fact that your bandwidth can easily be used for malicious purposes.
In the case of Hola, the company didn’t monitor or log how the bandwidth was being used – and the result was at least one Denial-of-Service attack that was pulled off using the bandwidth of the network’s users.
Having your processing power siphoned and used for illegal activities is a completely unnecessary risk that harms the wider ecosystem of the internet.
Compromised Privacy and Data Selling
Tracking your activity and logging your browsing data defeats the purpose of a VPN – but a huge amount of free services do just that. And there’s no good reason behind it – they do it so they can sell your data to advertisers.
Depending on the source, research has shown that between 65% and 72% of all VPNs make use of trackers – the vast majority of them being free.
Vulnerabilities due to Weaker Encryptions and Protocols
With potentially huge user bases and a lack of steady income, free VPN services are often forced to compromise when it comes to the quality and level of protection that they offer.
Free services make use of weaker encryption methods and dated protocols. As much as 18% of VPNs don’t use any encryption at all, making for unsafe internet traffic – and just as many services don’t even use servers – but transmit data peer-to-peer. Free VPNs are much more likely to fall prey to hackers – potentially revealing a huge amount of users’ personal data in the process.
Free VPNs are also much less likely to make use of important advanced features such as DNS leak protection and kill switches.