Disadvantages of Free VPNs

While free VPNs are great vist the top free vpn website for the internet, you should be cautious about the amount of advertising they show. Some are aggressive and go beyond annoying pop-ups to trespass on your privacy. Some sneak ad-serving trackers through the media reading capabilities of your browser, and they also leave a digital footprint that can’t be untraced. Using a free VPN to browse the web is a great way to stay safe while compromising your privacy.

There are many disadvantages of using free VPN services. Many of them are infamous for selling user bandwidth to botnets. A free VPN called Hola has been caught stealing users’ bandwidth to sell to spammers. The company’s CEO later admitted that his users were spammed, but defended harvesting as “normal” for peer-to-peer networks. Ultimately, though, a free VPN service may be better than no VPN at all.

Some free VPNs sell your bandwidth. This is a very common practice among free VPNs. In 2018, Hola was caught spamming users by selling their bandwidth to botnets. Although the CEO of Hola apologized and admitted to having spammed users, he explained that this was a standard practice of peer-to-peer networks. This is not the only downside to free VPNs. It doesn’t matter if you want to stay private online, as long as you have a VPN.