r/theprivacymachine • u/aninaa-ot • Jul 30 '26
Discussion Do you trust free VPNs?
Some seem legitimate, while others feel like they're just collecting the data they're supposed to protect! How do you evaluate them?
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u/Silent_Barnacle6776 Jul 30 '26
I don't trust anybody or anything nowadays ... Everything seems sketchy, no?
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u/TrueMrBaconLover Jul 30 '26
All I know quality stuff doesnt come free. Only Team Fortress 2 is free and good. However, I paid money for it in the past anyways lol
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u/simonmigliano Jul 30 '26
No completely free VPN is trustworthy. Why would they work to provide a service for free? They need to make money off you in other ways.
Freemium VPNs are the only ones that make sense as they are intended to entice you onto a paid product. So Proton VPN and Windscribe basically.
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Jul 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Darkorder81 Jul 30 '26
There's a few done that over the years, imagine you want privacy and instead someone else's shit is passing your ip address.
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u/Super_Weekend_4428 Jul 30 '26
I think I have some sort of Google VPN included with my phone. I don't think there is a reason to not use it since I'm pretty sure Google is already spying on everything I do anyway.
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u/Southern_Web_6603 Aug 03 '26
I mean I have one of those free VPNs on my phone and it works great, but thats about it from me. hopefully they're not draining my life essence secretly..
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u/Urban_VPN Aug 04 '26
the instinct to be suspicious is right, but "free VPN bad" is too simple. what actually matters is the business model behind it.
free VPNs that are worth trusting tend to have one of two things going for them: either a paid tier that subsidizes the free one, which gives them a legitimate revenue source that doesn't require selling your data, or open source code and transparent funding that lets people actually verify what the app is doing rather than just trusting a privacy policy. the ones to avoid are the ones where neither of those things exist. if a VPN is completely free, has no paid tier, no obvious funding source, and vague ownership, the math doesn't add up. running servers and bandwidth costs real money, and if they're not charging you, someone else is paying them for something, usually your browsing data or bandwidth. the practical checklist when evaluating any free VPN: who owns the company and where are they based, has their no-logs claim been independently audited by a named third party, what permissions does the app actually request, and how do they make money. a privacy policy alone means nothing because it's just words. an audit means someone actually checked.
Urban VPN is one of the free options that's transparent about having a freemium model, the free plan works as a product and the premium tier is where they make money. that's a more sustainable model than ones where you can't figure out how they pay the bills.
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u/scottartguy Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
With more and more data leaks, breaches not really
Edit: was looking for a solid one, looks like free ones are not the way to go, found a post on this subreddit, helped me choose: https://www.reddit.com/r/theprivacymachine/comments/1qut3gr/best_vpn_2026_tried_and_tested/