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check back often. accounts or other data. Yes, they may have little
How to set up a VPN on your iPhone or Android phone,
and why you need one
What's the best free VPN?
None of them. Seriously. While there are plenty of ex-
cellent free security and privacy apps online, VPNs
sadly aren't among them. Safe VPNs cost companies a
lot of money to operate and keep secure, and free ones
are almost always malware-laden data snoops. But
there's good news: The burgeoning VPN market is hy-
percompetitive right now, so prices for even the best
VPNs regularly drop to less than $5 a month. In fact,
the least expensive VPN we've seen so far ranks in our
top three VPNs overall for security and speed. Check
out our quick list of budget-savvy VPNs to find one in
your price range.
How do I choose the right VPN for
me?
We're keeping a close eye on how each VPN provider
stands compared with its competitors, as well as any
new VPN services that may become available. We've
cataloged our most recommended VPN services to
date -- and listed some less viable VPN selections, too,
based on our testing. We'll be regularly updating this
VPN guide as new contenders hit the market.
That said, the VPN landscape can be confusing and
mystifying. Here are some quick tips, each of which link
to a more in-depth discussion.
Don't use free VPN services: You'll find only paid VPN
options below because they're the only ones we can
recommend.
Look for a no-logs VPN, but understand the caveats:
The best VPNs keep as few logs as possible and make
them as anonymous as possible, so there's little data to
provide should authorities come knocking. But even "no
-logs" VPNs aren't 100% anonymous.
VPN transparency is important, but warrant canaries
are only the beginning: Many services use "warrant ca-
naries" as a way to passively note to the public as to
whether or not they've been subpoenaed by a govern-
ment entity, as many investigations from national secu- tion
rity agencies can't be actively disclosed by law. But --
like the no-logging issue -- warrant canaries aren't al-
ways as straightforward as they seem. You should
spend more time investigating whether your prospec-
tive VPN has cooperated with authorities in the past --
and how and when it's disclosed that fact.
Think twice about using a US-based VPN: The Patriot
Act is still the law of the land in the US, and that means
US-based VPNs have little recourse if and when the
feds show up with subpoenas or national security let-
ters in hand demanding access to servers, VPN user
October 2021 10
data to access if the service has a strong no-logs
policy, but why not just choose a service that's
based outside Uncle Sam's jurisdiction? (If this is a
concern for you, you'll want to avoid countries that
the US has intelligence-sharing agreements with,
too.)
After researching and testing a number of VPN
services, we rounded up a list of the VPN provid-
ers that do the best job in keeping your online in-
formation totally secure. When determining the
best VPN, there are a lot of details to consider. In
our current ranking and testing system, we evalu-
ated more than 20 factors, including price, securi-
ty, performance, ease of remote access, number
of server locations, bandwidth caps, logging, dedi-
cated and dynamic IP, client VPN software and
customer support. Below, we've listed your best
VPN options, including such popular names
as ExpressVPN, Surfshark, IPVanish and NordVP
N.
The best VPN right now
Let's look at each of our VPN vendors below in
more depth. Keep in mind that this is an evolving
list: It's constantly being updated. We're actively
working on more VPN testing and research, so ex-
pect this guide to change throughout the year as
our VPN use continues and we put each option
through its paces.
The list below presents our favorites in an overall
ranking; if you want to see each top VPN judged
by more specific criteria, check out the links below.
Best VPN for Mac
Best Android VPN
Best VPN for iPhone
You'll mostly find the same names you see here,
but we'll call out when and where specific traits
make for a better choice in a more narrow evalua-