p>If you want a VPN based in the good ol’ USA, we recommend WiTopia?’s PersonalVPN. The speeds are good, the price is right, and the app is very easy to use. It’s true that a lot of VPN review sites stress the importance of having a VPN that’s outside of the so-called Five Eyes countries, which includes the U.S.-some will even say to avoid the Fourteen Eyes. The idea being that if you use a U.S.-based VPN your activities may end up being secretly monitored by Western authorities. Snowden revealed such truths back in 2013. But if you’re using a VPN to access your accounts for Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other U.S.-based service, then staying outside the Fourteen Eyes is more or less pointless. Sure, that VPN with an exotic locale may be able to easily ignore U.S. subpoenas for data, but the American online services you use are another story. Besides if an American VPN does you wrong, it’ll be a lot easier to hold it to account than one based in Singapore, or even Sweden.</p>
p>VPNs create a secure tunnel between your PC and the internet. You connect to a VPN server, which can be located in the United States or a foreign country-say, France or Japan. Your web traffic then goes through that server to make it appear as though you’re browsing from that server’s location, and not from your actual location.</p>
p>When you’re using a VPN, it’s difficult for others to snoop on your web-browsing activity. Only you, the VPN service, and the website you’re visiting will know what you’re up to.</p>
p>A VPN can be a great response to a variety of concerns, such as online privacy, anonymity, greater security on public Wi-Fi, and, of course, spoofing locations.</p>
p>While a VPN can aid privacy and anonymity, I wouldn’t recommend fomenting the next great political revolution by relying solely on a VPN. To become an internet phantom (or as close as you can realistically get to one), it takes a lot more than a $5 monthly subscription to a VPN.</p>
p>Beyond that, a VPN is an excellent choice for staying secure while using Wi-Fi at the airport or your local café. Hackers sitting on public Wi-Fi can try to hack your PC, but a VPN makes that task much harder.</p>
p>Finally, you may want a VPN to spoof your location to download content you shouldn’t have access to, but this too has limits. A VPN used to be the go-to solution to watch U.S. Netflix overseas. That changed in 2016 when Netflix opened up to almost every country on Earth. Since then, the company has invested a lot in detecting and blocking VPN users. Even people using a VPN inside their own country will be blocked by Netflix if detected. https://grnonline.info/ </p>
p>There are VPNs that can fool Netflix, but they are rare and there are no guarantees these services will outsmart Netflix forever.</p>
p>Beyond Netflix, a VPN can help to download an Android app that is only available on a foreign version of Google Play, or stream content from regionally restricted services such as the UK-bound BBC iPlayer or Disney Plus.</p>
p>One final note of caution: Do not rely on your VPN to protect banking information on an open Wi-Fi connection. Whenever possible, leave online financial dealings for home over a hard-wired connection.</p>
p>Before anything else, understand that if you want to use a VPN you should be paying for it. Free VPNs typicall sell your browsing data in aggregated form to researchers and marketers, or give you a paltry amount of data transfer every month. Either way, a basic rule of thumb is that a free VPN will not protect your privacy in any meaningful way.</p>
p>The next thing to consider is a VPN’s logging policies. In other words, what kind of data is a service collecting about you and your VPN activity, and how long is that data saved?</p>
p>Privacy is the basic principle of a VPN, and what good is it to avoid passive government surveillance only to have a VPN provider record all your website visits?</p>
p>Ideally, a VPN will say it only keeps logs for the briefest of periods. Some providers, for example, only log activity in RAM during a session or automatically send all records to oblivion once they’re created. Other providers may keep records for a few hours, days, weeks, or even months.</p>
p>VPN policies also vary when it comes to personal information. Some VPNs want to know very little about you, preferring users sign on with a pseudonym and pay with Bitcoin. That’s a little exotic for most people, which is why many services also accept PayPal?.</p>
p>Paying this way isn’t ideal for privacy, but it means the VPN doesn’t have your payment information on record-though it would be available from PayPal?.</p>
p>After the logging policies, you want to know how many servers the VPN offers and how many country connections it has. The number of servers provides an idea of how much load a VPN can take before slowing to a crawl due to overwhelming traffic.</p>
p>The country connections, meanwhile, matter most to those who want to spoof their location; however, non-spoofers should also make sure there are connections in their home country. If you live in Los Angeles, for example, and want access to American content, then you’ll need a VPN that provides U.S. connections. It won’t work to try and watch Amazon Prime Video over a Dutch VPN connection, because as far as Amazon’s concerned your computer would be in the Netherlands.</p>
p>Some users will also want to research a VPN provider’s peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing policies. There are VPNs that block torrents. Others turn a blind eye to them, but will sell you out in a heartbeat should you be up to no good. P2P is not our main focus here, but we will note in each review whether a particular provider allows file sharing or not.</p>
p>Finally, how many devices does a VPN support from a single account? In this age of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs, a VPN’s cost should include licensing for at least five devices. Also, a provider should have Android and iOS apps to make it easy to connect a smartphone or tablet to the service.</p>
p>We judge VPNs on a variety of criteria including overall connection speeds, privacy protection, usability of the interface, country choices, server count, and cost.</p>
p>Speed tests are kept as simple as possible. We connect to five different global locations for a given VPN-typically North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and a wild card somewhere in Asia-on three different days at different times of the day running the test at each location multiple times.</p>
p>Before the test begins we check the speed of our base Wi-Fi connection using an online speed test. Then we connect to the VPN’s servers around the world and run the speed test again. We then show each result, average them out, and calculate the average as a percentage of the base speed.</p>
p>Remember that internet speeds can vary wildly based on location, routers, PCs, time of day, connection type, the load on the VPN and speed test servers, and numerous other factors. In other words, our test results will likely differ from yours. For that reason, consider our speed results only as a rough guide for how each VPN performs.</p>
p>Judging server choices by country is also kept simple. We expect a VPN to offer a variety of country connections with a minimum of at least 20.</p>
p>Privacy and anonymity is judged on the guarantees the companies make, as well as its reputation from any news items we’re aware of that may impact the trustworthiness of these claims. We also take a look at the data encryption, authentication, and handshake protocols used.</p>
p>Finally, for pricing we expect to pay $60 per year, and anything over that needs to justify its cost with extra features or unique selling points of some kind.</p>
p>Other notable VPNs</p>
p>There are many more worthwhile VPNs than just our favorites listed above, including AVG Internet Security, CyberGhost?, ESET Security Premium, FastestVPN, Hide.me, HMA Pro 4, OVPN, Trend Micro Maximum Security, Windscribe Pro, Perfect Privacy, PrivateVPN by TrunkSpace? Hosting, PureVPN, Speedify 10, VPNCity, ClearVPN, Malwarebytes Privacy, TorGuard?, VeePN, AceVPN.com, and SurfEasy?.</p>
p>We’ll keep evaluating new ones and reevaluating services we’ve already tested on a regular basis, so be sure to come back to see what else we’ve put through their paces.</p>
p>FAQ</p>
p>Is it legal to use a VPN?</p>
p>Yes! It is perfectly legal in most countries, including the United States, to use a VPN. While using a VPN, you might find some websites that try to block your connection, but this is an individual website’s use policy and has nothing to do with the legality of the VPN itself. One thing to note though, while it’s legal to use a VPN, some of the activities done while using a VPN might be illegal. Such things as downloading pirated copyrighted content or accessing dark web markets are illegal whether you use a VPN or not.</p>
p>Do VPNs protect against malware and computer viruses?</p>
p>No, a VPN connection itself does not protect you from malware and computer viruses. It does however encrypt your internet traffic and keep prying eyes from accessing your browsing history.</p>
p>Some VPN services, such as Nord VPN, do however provide additional security features such as ad and malware blockers. Additionally, many antivirus suites now offer VPN services along with their security features. Although VPNs and antivirus software are used for different purposes, there is still a degree of overlap that makes using both tools together beneficial.</p>
p>Will a VPN affect my internet speeds?</p>
p>Most likely you will see a moderate speed decrease to your internet while using a VPN. This is mainly due to the process of your internet traffic being rerouted and encrypted through a VPN server before heading on to its destination. The amount of latency you will experience through this process is down to what country’s server you choose to proxy your traffic through. If you choose a server located on the other side of the world, then you will notice a much greater hit than if you were to connect to a server nearby in your same country.</p>
p>Thankfully, most modern VPNs should have the infrastructure to maintain high-speed, secure data transfer rates. So it’s likely you can still browse and stream with no noticeable impact while using a reputable VPN like those listed above.</p>
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