What about "FREE" VPN's?
We had several question lately abobut "Free" VPN services. Here is our take on it.
To begin with, besides love (and again that can be argued), there is nothing free on this earth. Everything has a cost. Some people or organization may choose deliberately to not make you support that cost, but it is nonethless real. It's just payed by someone else than you.
The same principle applies equally to freeware or open source software. "Free" does not mean "zero cost", even if it's relatively easy and convenient to mix up everything. Freeware, or "free software" are not without cost. You can use them because someone else is picking up that tab.
This "freedom" has often a price. About freeware, you cannot usually appriopriate the ownership et all modification or enhancements should be published to benefit others.
About free objects or services, they are generally offered to you to entince you to acquire other related items or services, or because the mere fact of your using them benefits the one who offers it. The example that comes to mind is advertising driven web sites where revenue is generated from the simple fact you are looking at them.
How does this relate to VPN providers?
A VPN Service Provider (we like to believe we invented the "VSP" acronym back in 2009) is before anything else, the guarantor of your identity and privacy protection on the internet and when you think about it, it's a pretty important responsibility.
Operating costs to operate a secured network are well known and quite significant. Just as an example, renting a "rack" in a major Network data center, and associated bandwidth costs can add up to several thousand dollars per month depending on various factors. And you need quite a few of them all over the world.
Factor in structural and labor costs, you can figure it out for yourself: this is not a cheap operation to run. If you are looking for quailty that's it.
Obviously, nobody in his right mind is going to offer you all this for "free" ... unless they benefit from this.
What's the deal then with "Free" VPN?
Well, motivations can vary but we can classify them in 3 main categories:
- Service is provided "for free" during a limited time, limited capabilities, or recurring cutoffs to encourage you to upigrade to a paid service as quickly as possible.
- The merre fact you are using the offered service allows the company offering it to collect useful and negociable information about your surfing habits, or even more personal or confidential data.
- Forced redirect or advertising insertions (This is the preferred way of "Free" proxy services)
- etc ...
These practices are generally well know and inocuous ... except when it compes to protect your privacy.
Moreover, it is usually quite difficult or even impossible to use file sharing services (like P2P) over free VPN. They are generally either filtered out or you get disconnected often enough its not worth the trouble.
In a nutshell : How much trust can you put into a provider who you entrust with your privacy, if it must use some of the information it collects from you to ensure its survival?
Needless to say, we did not choose this approach. We believe we have a commercial contract between our customers and ourselves to protect their privacy and we are paid for this purpose. We do not have to seek any other revenue sources.
What you are paying us every month is in fact your best guarantee we will protect your privacy.
When you think about it, the popular saying "You only get what you pay for" definitely makes sense.
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