AlphaAtlas
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2018
- Messages
- 1,713
There's a perception that free VPNs provide an almost charitable privacy service. Users who are censored by their own government, for example, typically can't afford subscription VPN services, and often turn to free alternatives to circumvent oppressive restrictions. However, HackRead wrote up an article debunking that myth. Through data from other sources and their own testing, they found that pretty much every free VPN service is a "glorified data farm." Sometimes it goes beyond simply selling your location and history, as some services are accused of hijacking links to major e-commerce websites or turning client computers into botnets. As we've said before, free VPNs don't protect your privacy. Thanks to our resident security expert Joe Wood for the tip.
People are rushing to VPNs (especially free ones) in droves in an attempt to escape the prying eyes of the government and their ISPs. Unknown to them, however, these free VPNs are much worse: not only do they have less of a reputation to protect (many free Android VPN apps are a one-man operation) but my investigation revealed that many actually have a business model of gathering user data and selling to advertisers. Those who do not gather these data directly give advertisers freewill to do it in order to deflect responsibility, but that is much worse. Even worse, some of the data gathered are transmitted over insecure data connections, compromising user privacy - and some users have indeed complained about being victims of credit card fraud as a result
People are rushing to VPNs (especially free ones) in droves in an attempt to escape the prying eyes of the government and their ISPs. Unknown to them, however, these free VPNs are much worse: not only do they have less of a reputation to protect (many free Android VPN apps are a one-man operation) but my investigation revealed that many actually have a business model of gathering user data and selling to advertisers. Those who do not gather these data directly give advertisers freewill to do it in order to deflect responsibility, but that is much worse. Even worse, some of the data gathered are transmitted over insecure data connections, compromising user privacy - and some users have indeed complained about being victims of credit card fraud as a result