In case you weren’t already aware, China has created one of the most expansive surveillance systems on the planet. Without explicit approval, VPNs are banned in China, though enforcement tends to target big firms as opposed to specific individuals. Also, without the privacy features available in VPNs, nothing you do on the internet is private. 

A new report from developers in China shows that most of the popular free VPNs are either owned by Chinese firms or have been created by Chinese developers. These means that many people have unwittingly invited these companies to pirate their data.

Simon Migliano, the head of research at Metric Labs analyzed a total of 30 different free VPN apps. This included all of those appearing in the top 20 of free VPN searches on Google and Apple mobile app stores.

He found that 17 of them were registered in China or owned by a Chinese company. Popular free VPN apps, such as HotspotVPN, SecureVPN, and TurboVPN were included in that list.

All of the data harvested by these apps are made available to the Chinese Communist Party. Users of the apps are supposed to be protected by a suitable privacy policy, so their data isn't made available to third parties. Unfortunately, many of these services don't even provide that.

The report from Metric Labs showed that more than 86% of the free VPNs had privacy policies that did not explicitly protect the data of their users.

Many of the included policies were generic, copy-pasted pages without reference to the VPN. The most telling sign when examining VPNs is whether or not they log user data.

Many of these free VPN apps even seemed to think that the requirement of a privacy policy was a joke with nothing more than a plain text file posted on Pastebin, raw Ip addresses, or AWS servers.

Some don't even attempt to obscure the fact that they are selling their user data. Some even admitted to tracking internet usage and selling off the data to third parties, including Chinese firms. Almost all free VPNs do this.

As it occasionally is said, if the service is free, then you are the product. Always remember that when you receive a service you’re not paying for, you’re still paying in another way.

Another worrying sign when evaluating a VPN is checking whether or not they have a website dedicated to their service. If a VPN doesn't have a dedicated website, it might be because they can't acquire hosting from China. To save themselves the trouble, they post their apps on Google App store or Apple Play Store.

All they want are users, not to provide a dependable service. Moreover, if a VPN is selling your data, there's no reason even to be using one.

This is just more in a list of accumulating reasons why a free VPNs isn't worth it. You have to understand that without privacy protection, using a VPN is even riskier than using nothing at all.

Think about all of the things you do online. Think about financial information, corporate data, and company trade secrets. You don't want to hand this data over when using a free VPN.

This could prove to be especially worrisome, especially for firms who have employees using the apps without approval.

There is just no reason to accept this level of risk, especially when there are so many distinguished services available for only a few dollars a month.

When we’re talking about “free VPNS,” we have to clarify what we mean. If you’re using a trial of a premium service, they should work fine and not be as dangerous to use. VPN's like ExpressVPN, Tunnelbear, or VyprVPN all come with free trials.

But if a VPN service is completely free, it’s because they are making money off of your data. Also, with free VPNs, the service tends to be spotty, as they tend to be the first to get attacked by web censors or premium content providers like Hulu or Netflix.

No, they’re not. Using a free VPN is probably one of the worst things you can do with your device. If you care about privacy and security at all, then you should look into a no-log vpn provider.

When you use a VPN on public wifi, you are not vulnerable having your information stolen by strangers on the same network, but you can still be tracked by adware and other analytics like that from Google or Facebook.

While using a VPN does hide your IP address, the activities you participate in while using should not be tracked back to you unless you use personal identification online. One of the biggest risks involved in using email is that your passwords and billing data will be stolen.

If you use a free VPN, you will very likely be tracked by the VPN provider so that they can sell your data to third parties. You don't want to do this.

It's very interesting that VPN services would be available from China when some citizens have faced jail time for providing these services to other nationals.

The defunct Google Play store page for TurboVPN, a high profile free VPN, states, “For policy reasons, this service cannot be used in China. We apologize for the inconvenience caused.” What does it mean when a Chinese VPN service is only available to people outside of China?

Wondering which VPN services are advisable with dedicated websites and no-logging policies? Check out my list of the Best VPNs for China.

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