VPN is a great tool for securing your privacy on the internet. And on the other level to stream movies and series from Netflix, HBO Max or Prime Video or else from another country if in yours they’re not distributed. It works as a tunnel for your internet connection. No one outside can see what you do with your VPN switched on. How will you know, which VPN you can trust from the hundreds of options out there? Oh, you should not trust anyone to be honest, but read the entire article and you will see why.
How to choose
1. A free VPN does not exist. If it is free they collect your data and sell it to others.
2. VPN solutions are about online security and privacy, so demand transparency and a decent background in cyber security from your provider.
3. When you look for a VPN, you probably search for information online. You can find countless VPN comparisons and reviews. It’s not always easy to tell which ones are non-biased, so be critical about which ones you trust.
4. VPN provider’s home country matters extremely. VPN companies must follow the laws of their home country. Useless to say never get an American VPN.
5. Almost all VPNs claim to keep “no logs”. But this is not true. Most VPNs must keep at least connection logs to provide the service. But some data, such as your browsing history, you may want to keep private. Verify your VPN provider’s claims and read their privacy policy.
6. VPN providers rent servers from all over the world. Especially if they offer tons of server options. This means that they may have less control of their whole server network. Less is better in this case.
7. Talk to a friend who knows. Will be more useful if they have a VPN and know how to use it.
What we recommend
Based on all the above we recommend the following three choices. We hate to propose tens of choices. We based our recommendations on what we used and the details above.
1. PrivateVPN
Based in Sweden.
2. SurfShark
Based in the Netherlands.
3. ProtonVPN
Based in Switzerland.
As advice: Besides the VPN use safe search engines like DuckDuckGo.
Important: A VPN by itself does not guarantee secure navigation. And the trust in a VPN company should be put on doubt always. It was recently announced that the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the company ExpressVPN was fined 1.6 million dollars in the USA for spying on US citizens on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (Express VPN was acquired by Kape Technologies who already owns other well-known VPN providers with Cyberghost, Private Internet Access (PIA) and Zenmate). So, the game is complicated.
One more thing: iOS is not protected by VPN. So, your iPhone is as exposed as ever. “VPNs on iOS are a scam,” Michael Horowitz formulates it unequivocally in a post on his blog – because they have massive data leaks. The advice to try to prevent this: Users should briefly switch flight mode on and off after activating a VPN service in order to force all open network connections to be interrupted. Still, we can not guarantee perfect security.
Wanna have real protection and not only stream movies from other countries? If you need serious protection of your anonymity, you should generally keep your hands off VPNs, they simply cannot do such a thing. It is then better to immediately resort to a live system such as Tails, where all network traffic is handled exclusively via the anonymizing Tor network.
GAY45 uses PrivateVPN combined with Tor Browser. Using tails will slow our research. For more security, if needed we use Tails, Tor Browser and for messages and secure calls Threema (See our article about message apps).
The article was written by Dominik Böhler with Răzvan Ion and the support of DerAffe Elevation Lab Vienna.
Dominik Böhler is a 23 y.o., PhD. candidate, passionate about the transcendence of science in the philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. Works in Vienna and from September he will relocate to England at the University of Oxford where to continue the DPhil (doctoral) programme in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences.
