With free VPNs getting more and more popular, research conducted by Hola investigates just how effective such services are in their protection and how much they’ll be required in the future.
VPN software has become rather common, with many users across the world utilizing it for a variety of reasons. Some individuals just want some protection from cybercriminals, others are paranoid about the government tracking their every movement. Overall, VPNs are a useful investment since they’re typically not that expensive and pride users with a comfortable degree of online privacy that they can then utilize as they wish. Online privacy nowadays is generally difficult to come by, what with every website that exists attempting to track your data via necessary cookies. Third party advertisers have used the likes of Facebook and Google as their starting points, so it’s nice to not encounter weirdly specific ads every now and then.
A major point of discussion throughout Hola’s research article is geopolitical interference on the internet. Certain countries across the globe have certain forms of online censorship that affect the average citizen’s surfing. China and the UAE are prime examples, with many publicly accessible platforms having been already banned in these countries. In fact, Hola lists China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam as some of the biggest offenders of censorship; naturally to the chagrin of local internet users (which consists of everyone these days). Hola, which is itself a free VPN service, led a poll for the publication, which revealed that 82% of the sample population sees VPN usage increasing in the coming years. Of the Chinese respondents for this poll, 93% shared the same sentiment, expressing concerns over censorship accelerating in the coming times.
TechRadar, writing on Hola’s research as well, cited its top picks for free VPN software; ProtonVPN, Privado, and Hide.me were some of the most popular and well-regarded names that popped up. It’s always good to do your research Before using free VPN software; there’s no knowing if and when you’ll accidentally run into malware.
Illustation by Vectorjuice/freepik
Read next: New Research Proves Most Government Websites Are Filled With Third-Party Tracking Cookies
VPN software has become rather common, with many users across the world utilizing it for a variety of reasons. Some individuals just want some protection from cybercriminals, others are paranoid about the government tracking their every movement. Overall, VPNs are a useful investment since they’re typically not that expensive and pride users with a comfortable degree of online privacy that they can then utilize as they wish. Online privacy nowadays is generally difficult to come by, what with every website that exists attempting to track your data via necessary cookies. Third party advertisers have used the likes of Facebook and Google as their starting points, so it’s nice to not encounter weirdly specific ads every now and then.
A major point of discussion throughout Hola’s research article is geopolitical interference on the internet. Certain countries across the globe have certain forms of online censorship that affect the average citizen’s surfing. China and the UAE are prime examples, with many publicly accessible platforms having been already banned in these countries. In fact, Hola lists China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam as some of the biggest offenders of censorship; naturally to the chagrin of local internet users (which consists of everyone these days). Hola, which is itself a free VPN service, led a poll for the publication, which revealed that 82% of the sample population sees VPN usage increasing in the coming years. Of the Chinese respondents for this poll, 93% shared the same sentiment, expressing concerns over censorship accelerating in the coming times.
TechRadar, writing on Hola’s research as well, cited its top picks for free VPN software; ProtonVPN, Privado, and Hide.me were some of the most popular and well-regarded names that popped up. It’s always good to do your research Before using free VPN software; there’s no knowing if and when you’ll accidentally run into malware.
Read next: New Research Proves Most Government Websites Are Filled With Third-Party Tracking Cookies
