When choosing a free VPN, you can often find good options even with top services that respect user anonymity.
I prepared a small comparison of anonymous VPNs, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their free offerings. For each service, the privacy policy was studied for possible “tricks” in collecting and storing users’ personal data.
I want to say right away that I do not recommend any particular VPN since it is difficult for an outsider to assess VPN services’ actual level of compliance with their own rules. In addition, a 100% privacy guarantee can only be obtained by setting up your VPN.
In a comparative analysis, it is worth paying attention to the jurisdiction of VPN providers. This may indirectly affect the level of privacy provided by the service. For example, some demanding users are wary of VPNs registered in the countries of the Five Eyes alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and USA) or other similar partnerships.
The results of a review of VPN services that claim no logging and tracking of users are presented below and are current as of the material’s publication date.
Proton VPN (Switzerland)
The free plan limits include three countries (US, NL, JP) and 1 VPN connection. They declared average connection speed. From personal experience, many free servers are 100% loaded at peak times, significantly affecting the rate.
ProtonVPN has a strict no-logs policy for user activity, whereby they do not keep logs, incl. IP addresses and visited sites.
Tunnel Bear (Canada)
On the free plan, traffic is limited to 500 MB/month.
They do not log IP addresses of connections and visited sites, but the privacy policy states that the site and applications may use third-party cookies, incl. Google Analytics and Cloudflare. Also, store the operating system version of the user’s device for user support, troubleshooting, and product development purposes.
Hide. me (Malaysia)
They give free traffic of 10 GB/month, 5 locations, and one device.
They do not store connection logs (IP) and visited sites. According to the privacy policy, a non-persistent connection data log includes a randomly generated username and an internal (non-public) IP address. The stated purpose of the temporary register is to troubleshoot possible problems. They also block registration from email in domains with a dubious reputation (for example, temporary email addresses).
ZenMate (Germany)
Only the browser extension can be installed for free, speed up to 2 MB/s, four countries, and one device.
The rates page says 100% “no logs” policy. However, section 8 of the privacy policy, which applies to website visitors and users of software solutions, states that logs are used.
Windscribe (Canada)
Free traffic 2 GB/month. or 10 GB/month upon email confirmation
They do not store logs (including IP and visited sites). You can create an account even without an e-mail. Publish monthly reports on the zero level of satisfaction of requests for disclosure of information due to the latter’s absence.
Avira Phantom VPN (Germany)
The free plan is limited to 500 MB/mo.
They don’t keep logs. The privacy policy indicates that they do not collect information about visited web pages and do not store connection data. I could not find another explicit statement that the client’s IP address is not logged.
Also Read: How To Secure Remote Access To A Cloud Infrastructure?
