I’ve been parsing all of my monthly subscriptions because I’m broke as fuck and the only thing I’d rather not do without is a VPN. Are free VPNs a thing and are any of them worth using? I tried looking this up, but I feel like yall would know better then the normies

edit: had someone hook me up, ty goat

  • dead [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    The way that some “free vpns” work is that they use you as an outnode and sell your bandwidth to other users. ‘Hola VPN’ is an example of a company that did this. This most certainly puts you into more danger than it would save you from.

  • juniper [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    If you can’t do without it, pay for it. Joining a “free” VPN would almost certainly open you up to all sorts of badware and surveillance. It’s a lib thing to say, but if you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product.

    Others may have opinions on VPNs generally, but I’d only trust them for piracy or something. If you are doing anything else that you want to hide, I wouldn’t trust a single one in the anglosphere.

      • juniper [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        Well it’s your digital safety comrade. I’m not sure what you’re doing with a VPN that you desperately need to keep doing even though you can’t afford it, but I can’t reasonably believe that a free VPN would be the way to go in your situation…

        • GoebbelsDeezNuts [any]@hexbear.netOP
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          5 days ago

          I would still like to be able to consume media without getting threatening letters from my ISP

          If the answer is just “no” that’s fine it’s why I asked

          • juniper [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            5 days ago

            I feel you, the slop is one of the few things keeping me going in this shithole. You may be able to use a free SOCKS5 proxy to achieve it, and I guess if you only use it when pirate-jammin you’ll probably be ok. I would still be highly suspect.

          • juniper [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            5 days ago

            Yeah they do. They are only pirating stuff, not doing super secret spy shit. What they may expose themselves to with a “free” VPN could be malware or really anything. I’d rather risk a scary letter from my ISP instead. It would be irresponsible not to educate them on the potential pitfalls.

  • bananon [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 days ago

    I like ProtonVPN, it’s by ProtonMail so some opsec conscious people here might be more critical of it than others, but I’ve had a good experience with both services. The VPN has a free version that you can upgrade later, so there’s limited features, but importantly no ads or insane data tracking. For any normal web surfing, I find it more than enough.

    • juniper [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      The VPN has a free version that you can upgrade later, so there’s limited features, but importantly no ads or insane data tracking.

      My comrades if a Swiss VPN company is offering you a free version, your data is being tracked.

      • bananon [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        Believe me I know, Swiss banks even make you pay a fee to open an account it’s insane. But given the free restriction it’s the best one I’ve seen.