Are Free VPN Services Collecting and Selling Your Data?
VPN’s are regarded as a secure and safe option for anonymizing your internet traffic and keeping you away from prying eyes. But as is the case with everything, there are good VPN providers and bad ones. This is most noticeable when you’re using a free VPN service. Many free VPN services are secretly saving your private data and sharing them with third parties in order to make a profit. This often leads to the VPN causing you more harm than good. So, how and why do free VPN’s collect and sell your data, and what can you do about it? Continue reading and find out.
Most Free VPN’s Sell Your Private Data
No matter if you’re using a paid or free VPN service, it’s highly likely that you’re being protected. But, there’s one very important difference between them. When using a free VPN, there is a huge possibility that your private data and information is being collected and sold to the highest bidder. To a newbie user, a free VPN service might look like a great no-strings-attached option for streaming and downloading, but the truth is that the VPN is making good money of off selling your data.
How do they Access Your Private Information?
There are a few ways free VPN’s can harvest private data from their users. Some free VPN services have been found to log connection times and locations, monitor their customers browsing and search habits, and even use their user’s computers as exit nodes for various activities.
Why do They Apply Such Underhanded Measures?
From a business standpoint, this is a very viable way of making money as far as the providers are concerned. They are not selling you the product, and have to make earnings some way or another. This may be the case due to many different reasons:
In order to make money
If you’re not being sold the product, high chances are that you are the product. In this case, where there is no product being sold, it can be tough for a free VPN service to make ends meet. This is mostly done by displaying advertisements. But simple and general don’t cut it anymore. That’s why these VPN providers use your private data, to offer more targeted ads and charge advertisers more money. In some cases, they providers go a step beyond and blatantly sell your data in order to make money.
Operational Costs
All of the VPN servers you are using cost the provider. As the VPN gets bigger and more popular, it also expands its server list, which costs more money. Bigger free VPN services run into costs of tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Selling your private information helps the provider keep its services up.
Greed
Let’s face it, when you have millions of online users signed up to your platform with unlimited information access at the tip of your fingers, it can be difficult overcoming the urge to try and make money off your product. VPN’s often stray off their path and exploit their user’s data in order to earn millions of dollars each month.
Illegal or Not?
Although this kind of behavior from free VPN services is not by any means moral or ethical, strictly speaking, what they’re doing is not even outside of the boundaries of the law. The free VPN service is, after all, stating their business model in the privacy policy. Unfortunately, many people look only at the ‘free’ part, overlooking the fact that using a free VPN can cause them more damage than not using one. Since this issue hasn’t been regulated, its’ completely up to you, the user, to do the research before signing up for a service. Don’t commit to a free VPN just because of the convenience it offers, but read up on it, as it can save you from a lot of potential trouble down the road.
Choose a Safe Alternative
When all of it is said and done, what can you do to ensure privacy and security without compromising your sensitive data? However hopeless this may seem, there are free VPN services out there that run a trustworthy and user-friendly business model. If you’re looking for a free VPN service, ZoogVPN is your best choice. The VPN barely collects any information about their users, except an email address for confirmation and account management. You don’t have to worry about information sharing or anything being stored on their database. ZoogVPN has adopted a ‘Zero Logs’ policy. This means you can browse the internet freely with 100% confidence in your privacy. You can read the ZoogVPN Privacy Policy and make sure for yourself that this service is worth your while.
The forever free plan comes with 2GB of monthly data, alongside 128-bit encryption and access to a slightly smaller number of servers compared to the paid plans. You can sign up now at ZoogVPN and enjoy a world-class free VPN service.
- Yaroslav S.
