5 Most Critical Reasons to Avoid Using Free VPNs for Online Streaming

By Ankit
Critical Reasons to Avoid Using Free VPNs for Online Streaming
Oct 31, 2023 Reading time : 6 min

Considering the current situation where many people have to work from home, VPN popularity is gaining traction. With more people using the internet, it is more critical than ever to safeguard your privacy. The majority of consumers prioritize money above functionality, which is why they choose inexpensive VPNs. However, when a user utilizes a free VPN, the issue quickly spirals out of hand.

When talking about VPN companies that provide their services without any charges, they appear to be the perfect answer to all your problems. Anyone would enjoy getting everything for nothing, especially when it’s a valuable service like a VPN. 

Free VPNs are appealing because they provide “excellent” protection at no expense. Their services are far too good to be true. Therefore you should be cautious and avoid them. Likewise, utilizing a free VPN has drawbacks, just like pirating the latest movies does. You will jeopardize your security, privacy, and private information.

You need to sit back and contemplate if you want to employ a free VPN and start reading this post. The following are the top 5 critical reasons to avoid using free VPNs for online streaming.

1) DNS and IP Address Leaks

The most fundamental aspect of a VPN that everybody understands is concealing or disguising the IP address. All of your information gets sent through a pipe and out of sight of inquisitive eyes. 

When you use a free VPN, though, the pipe’s reliability is less durable, and it’s more vulnerable to breaches. Here is where anyone can take your data and personal IP as their own. Cybercriminals can watch your activities, and worse, you may get exposed to a slew of privacy dangers.

Afterward, you will undoubtedly confront some horrifying events, of which you do not wish to be a target. That is why users should invest in a paid VPN service to hide your IP address. It will almost always result in a well-built pipe and a secure connection.

2) All of Your Activity Gets Stored and Sold

A commendable part about VPNs is how they ensure never to store any of their user’s information and data. Their ‘No Log Policy’ is something to praise as it helps consumers trust them while using their services. However, bear in mind, this is only available for VPN platforms you pay for, not the free ones. 

Free VPNs have gotten involved in selling full rights to anybody willing and able to buy an ‘anonymous’ IP service that redirects traffic via your connections. If you want to talk about the things that get stored by a free VPN, users’ internet usage, activity histories, and event logs are just the tip of the iceberg. 

To back up all of this with facts, a CSIRO research looked into 283 VPNs. It showed that 75% of free VPN applications have some kind of tracking.

The harsh reality is that most Free VPNs save crucial users’ information and sell it to advertising companies. As a result, the highly-sensitive personal information of the particular individual winds up on the dark web. In return, this exposes individuals to hacks such as money extortion and cyberbullying.

So, if you are using a free VPN and believe that no one is watching you, you are entirely mistaken.

3) Obnoxious Advertisements and Poor Service

We have all had the irritating adverts come up on our screens at least once or twice, severely ruining our online experience. Several free VPNs include tons of ad scripts that are re-installed by the creators for various reasons.

Free VPNs use adverts that might lead to you landing on an unsafe website. It can subject you to risks and hackers that can gain immediate access to your documents and information. Apart from the privacy risks, high-volume advertisements might slow down your device and degrade your surfing quality.

Although your free provider is not monetizing your data or turning your connection into an endpoint, it still has to earn a profit. In many situations, advertising-income is used to do this. Many employ it for Adsense, while others use it for flash marketing. The constant pop-up advertisements are utterly annoying and significantly slow down our internet ad efficiency.

4) Exposure to Malware and Viruses

Sacrificing your privacy and security to get free stuff is not something that goes with anyone’s moral code. If you search for “the best 30-40 free VPNs,” you’ll discover that at least 38% of them include malware pre-installed. 

Some free VPNs include advertising banners, which we call Malwartising. The businesses rely on the fact that a typical user would not be able to detect it. They provide free VPN trials to consumers who already have a virus kit installed, and when the individuals use the program, all of their data gets sent to the organization.

Security measures are vital to guarantee that your connectivity is as safe as possible, and you may pick which ones to use from the options offered. The best VPN service providers for streaming, on the other hand, give you the alternatives of using the most prevalent and famous protocols, such as PPTP, OpenVPN, and L2TP. 

Such flexibility will not be possible with a free VPN.

5) Buffering

One of the most significant disadvantages of utilizing a free VPN is the unquestionably poor internet connection, which is comparable to a tortoise trudging through cement. Almost all of the time, when using a free VPN to watch online films or games, you will experience significant delays. You may also experience a lot of buffering and lags while visiting some resource-intensive websites that are not very valuable.

A premium VPN, on the other hand, does not compromise speed while you stream your favorite content.

Final Thoughts

If you want to be safe, choose a premium service. Instead of a VPN with a single nation that you will have to set up painstakingly, you will pay a modest price and get dozens of countries and hundreds, if not thousands, of outgoing IPs.

So, with all the information at your disposal, we can only hope you make the wise decision and choose a premium, paid VPN over a free one. It is a question of your privacy and security. Why would you want to risk any of that for online streaming?

Ankit
Posted by
Ankit

Internet of Things and Streaming Expert