5 VPNs to consider very carefully on Google Play Store

5 VPNs to consider very carefully on Google Play Store

By Ray Walsh

Unless you have been lost at sea for the past 10 years, you have probably heard about Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and the benefits that they can provide. With a trustworthy VPN for Android, you can pretend to be in a different country by concealing your IP address with one belonging to the VPN provider.

The very best VPNs provide access to servers dotted all around the globe in anything between 35 to 100 countries. This lets you bypass geo-restrictions to access content that is usually locked to that region. Some examples of popular content that VPN users unblock includes locally televised sports competitions from around the globe, Netflix US, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and BBC iPlayer.

What’s more, by letting you “spoof” your IP address to a foreign country, internet uses can also bypass local censorship and restrictions. In some countries, such as China, huge amounts of websites are blocked. However, even in some European countries, some online content is restricted by ISPs on behalf of the government – meaning that a VPN is necessary to gain free access to the entire World Wide Web.

Some websites are blocked due to political reasons, meaning that news is not always freely accessible. Other times websites may be blocked for religious or moral reasons. Whatever the reason for wanting to unblock content, a VPN is the ideal solution.

As if unblocking more content wasn’t reason enough to get a subscription, reliable VPNs also provide encryption so that all the data coming and going from your devices is private. You may not realize it, but your ISP is able to tell everything you do online.

Furthermore, in many countries, ISPs are forced to retain your web browsing history and communications metadata on behalf of the government. This is a massive invasion of privacy, that a VPN can completely mitigate against by ensuring that all your data is securely encrypted before it leaves your device.

VPNs also provide privacy from the websites you visit by concealing your IP address, and can protect you from revealing your real IP address to potential hackers on P2P services, or while accessing the internet from public WiFi hotspots. Click here to find out more about these apps.

A careful choice

There can be no doubt that a VPN is one of the most useful and versatile tools available on the market (as evidenced by the fact that around 40% of internet users have used one before at some time). However, simply heading over to the Google Play Store and typing in the word VPN to the search bar is not necessarily a good idea.

There are hundreds of VPNs on the market, and many of those are services that have been specially set up to steal data from consumers. When you connect to a VPN with an app, all your data must pass through its servers. As a result (like your ISP) it is possible that it could monitor your traffic. This means that you need a trustworthy service that promises never to retain any logs of the traffic that passes through those services.

The very best VPN providers are dedicated to privacy, but there are just as many (if not more) that are deliberately set up with troubling privacy policies that permit the VPN provider to harvest your data and sell it to third parties. This is best thought of as an umbrella that has been manufactured full of holes.

As if that wasn’t enough, some VPNs actually lie about the level of encryption that they provide. Or have services that are full of IP leaks, DNS leaks, or WebRTC leaks. Some have even been discovered that install spyware onto devices to track you on behalf of marketing firms. That means that in addition to stealing your data to make a profit, they are also providing a false sense of security (which also means that your ISP and the government may still be able to track all your data even with the VPN switched on).

VPNs to avoid

To help you out, and stop you from falling into a trap, we have decided to pinpoint some of the worst offending VPNs in this article. So that you know which VPNs – that appear high on the Google app store – are actually concerning services that you should never download.

And remember, VPNs are a perfect example of why you should often take the customer rating score that appears next apps with a grain of salt; consumers do not always fully understand the privacy and security aspects of the apps that they download and are often fooled into using dangerous apps due to other people’s positive ratings!

Hola VPN

This free VPN service is an absolute terror, which is shocking considering that it has 150 million subscribers worldwide. Hola serves adverts, and its privacy policy lets it sell your data to third parties. Hola shares its users’ email addresses with marketing partners and it sells traffic data to its parent firm Luminati.

Hola was also discovered to be fraudulently stealing and resells user bandwidth through its parent company Luminati. This allows random people to use your bandwidth and IP address (meaning that you could theoretically be busted for illegal activities performed by those users). And, Hola suffers from both DNS and WebRTC leaks, which means it isn’t even providing digital privacy for its users.

Betternet

This is another dodgy VPN that has been found to do some pretty invasive things. The software was found to contain tracking libraries and the privacy policy lets it collect and share data with third parties. In addition, it belongs to the marketing firm Anchor Free and it serves adverts to its users. It also permits advertisers to place cookies on people’s machines via the API and is considered spyware by a CSIRO study on dodgy VPNs.

HoxxVPN

This service has more than 5 million users worldwide. However, it is a service that you should definitely avoid. The privacy policy lets it collect data and sell it to third parties, and it is known to collect both connection logs and usage logs from its users. That means you are simply taking the power to track you from your ISP to your VPN; which could actually be worse if the VPN provider is extremely untrustworthy. This would appear to be the case, because Hoxx admits that it will track users on behalf of the authorities, meaning that it is not providing watertight privacy. Plus it suffers DNS and WebRTC leaks too.

Hotspot Shield

This service is not as dodgy as some of the other services in this guide. However, it does belong to the marketing firm Anchor Free – and it does serve adverts – including by injecting them into web pages and your browser. In addition, it has a less than desirable privacy policy (for its free service).

While that free service is extremely popular, the VPN is based in the US which means it could be served warrants and gag orders. And it is generally not up to par when it comes to providing strong digital privacy. Not the worst service ever, but there are much much better services on the market.

Psiphon

This VPN has been downloaded by around 30 million users, which is troubling because it has a terrible privacy policy. The VPN collects data from users, seels it to advertisers, and serves targeted ads using their data. Not good for your privacy.

Written by Digital Privacy & VPN Expert, Ray Walsh from ProPrivacy.com

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