That’s especially true if you don’t mind paying for a subscription up front which lasts several years. It’s worth knowing that a paid-for VPN service, which doesn’t have the limitations of free services, can be surprisingly cheap. Using a VPN ensures all data is encrypted, protecting you from such attacks.

That means data sent between your phone, laptop or tablet and the Wi-Fi hotspot could be visible to anyone if it isn’t encrypted by another means. The Wi-Fi networks there often have no password, which means the connection isn’t encrypted. They’re also a great option when you need to connect to free Wi-Fi in airports, hotels and other public places. However, if you just want a VPN so you can browse the web without your ISP, government or websites themselves tracking your activity, a free one can certainly enable that.

Often they’re not in the locations you want, either because their distance from you is too great, which means slower browsing speeds, or because you can’t unblock US Netflix because there’s no US server to select. The second reason is that free VPNs limit you to a choice of just a few servers. Video uses up data fast and once that limit is reached, either the VPN connection will be stopped and you’ll be returned to your normal internet connection or you’ll find you can no longer stream video due to throttled connection speeds. First, most free options only allow you to use a certain amount of data per day (or month). Securing your internet connection on public Wi-Fi hotspotsĪ free VPN might well be all you need, so long as you don’t want to stream lots of video.None of them will sell your data in return for your use of their servers and, while they do impose restrictions that paid-for VPNs don’t, they can still do the job you need them to.Īnd the job we’re talking about is actually one of three possible jobs:

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