What is free VPN?

Expressfree VPN

A free VPN represents a secure, encrypted "tunnel" through the Internet between your PC, smartphone or tablet and the website or app you want to visit.

This is made possible by a free VPN server in another country that redirects your connection. This will make you appear as a different “local” user.

Since your IP address is replaced by the free VPN server, you are traveling anonymously on the Internet.

All you have to do is set up a free VPN application on your device. The best free VPN Services work on all devices such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.

If you want to hide your real place, you can just start the free VPN Service and connect from the country of your choice. Then use your browser or other Services as normal and do what you would normally do.

How can I connect to a free VPN?

The most common method is to install a free VPN application on the device you want to connect to the free VPN. The free VPN Service enables you to connect to a selection of servers from different locations worldwide.

The number of available locations depends on the free VPN provider you use. By using a free VPN, you establish a secure connection between your device and the server, network or other digital device that you want to connect.

Which type of free VPN you use depends on how you want to connect to the Internet and how secure the connection should be.

In most cases, you only need to register with the free VPN service and install the Service before you can connect to the free VPN. The majority of free VPN services offer their software for all common operating systems.

Can I use free VPN on all devices?

Most free VPN Services are available for use on all devices. Nevertheless, you should clarify whether the Service you want to use supports your operating system. Express free VPN and CyberGhost for example support all leading operating systems.

If you want to trust the highest security, you will also have to choose the right free VPN protocol. free VPN services offer different free VPN protocols for different operating systems. Therefore, depending on the free VPN protocol you want to use, you should check which free VPN service supports this for your operating system.

Use paid or free VPN Services?

There are quite a few free VPN providers and many also offer free services. The problem, however, is that these Services tend to offer less speed, reliability, security, and customer service. If you use free VPN for streaming data, speed and reliable connection are important.

Security is also an important factor when choosing a free VPN provider. free VPN services mostly offer a point-to-point tunnel protocol (PPTP), which is the easiest to set up. Some vulnerabilities are reinforced by PPTP, which make these connections interesting for attacks. Paid offers on the other hand offer a variety of free VPN protocols such as IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) and L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol), which are more secure than PPTP.

Another important factor is the bandwidth of the free VPN service. Free providers often don't have the resources to invest in effective Internet connections, which leads to slower connections. On the contrary, paid solutions offer more security and a faster connection.

In addition to security and bandwidth, it is important that the provider has many servers. Payment services for free VPN usually have many servers to make your free VPN connection fast and stable, so that you can stream without problems and not lose the connection.

Payment services are always getting better customer service compared to free services. Free of charge often require you to identify or fix your BPN problems yourself, while payment services have 24/7 customer service. Payment services also offer good customer support over the phone, which is useful if you can't solve your problems online.

Can I use a free VPN as web designer?

Absolutely. A free VPN secures your connection when designing websites and also protects sensible client data. You can easily use WordPress Page Builders like Divi Discount from Elegant Themes or connect to your web server.

1. CyberGhost: The streaming and all-rounder

What an awesome name! After all, with a free VPN, the user actually moves through cyberspace like an invisible ghost. CyberGhost has much more to offer than a sonorous name and a cute logo.

At the company’s headquarters, CyberGhost takes an interesting middle course. It is located in Romania, i.e. within the EU. The seat is therefore not at an offshore location (e.g. Panama or the British Virgin Islands) as with other providers, but also not in one of the Fourteen-Eyes states (e.g. Germany, the USA and Great Britain) that spy on their citizens.

With a fast and secure connection without DNS leaks, a well-developed server network, unlimited data volume and anonymous registration, CyberGhost chops off all mandatory criteria that a free VPN should meet. A number of additional functions provide the freestyle . It is worth mentioning, for example, that CyberGhost blocks advertisements, trackers, malware and phishing websites on request.

Users can test CyberGhost free of charge and without obligation for 24 hours. Only a few other free VPN operators offer this option. For the free test, the user simply downloads the client from the CyberGhost website and creates an account. If he then decides to purchase a subscription, he can easily withdraw from the purchase within the first 45 days (30 days are usual).

3. Expressfree VPN: free VPN on all devices

Like Surfshark , Expressfree VPN is based in the British Virgin Islands, according to the website a “tropical oasis without data storage laws”. The provider operates more than 2,000 servers in 160 cities. Expressfree VPN offers an unusually large global coverage . The server network comprises 94 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia, the Pacific region as well as in North Africa and the Middle East. The area of ​​Sub-Saharan Africa, in terms of area and population, is relatively poorly supplied; Expressfree VPN servers are only available in Kenya and South Africa .

Technically, the free VPN with AES-256 encryption and four supported protocols (Openfree VPN, SSTP, L2TP / IPsec and PPTP) is well and modernly equipped. DNS leaks effectively prevent every server from acting as a DNS server at this provider.

A special feature of Expressfree VPN is split tunneling : The user can choose which applications should have network access via the free VPN and which should not. This is useful, for example, if someone uses the free VPN to bypass geoblocking to stream a movie, but also wants to surf the web with their local IP address.

Expressfree VPN does not offer additional functions such as an ad blocker, multihop, Tor-over-free VPN or shadowsocks . The strengths of this provider lie elsewhere, namely in the platform support. No matter which internet-enabled device the user has at home: chances are high that he can use it with Expressfree VPN .

Expressfree VPN has even developed its own client software for many operating systems ; many more can be connected to the virtual network using the device’s own network settings. The supported platforms naturally include the popular desktop and mobile operating systems such as Windows , macOS , Linux , Android and iOS , but also game consoles such as the PlayStation and Xbox , streaming media adapters such as the Chromecast and various routers. In addition, browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome are available.

In terms of price, Expressfree VPN is in the upper middle range. There are no greatly reduced offers with a long commitment period of up to three years with this free VPN operator. The subscription with the best price-performance ratio is the annual subscription, which costs around 8 euros per month. There is no free trial before purchase, but Expressfree VPN has the industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee.

4. Hide My Ass !: Cheeky performance, solid performance

The free VPN provider Hide My Ass! stands out for its marketing. The company mascot is the donkey Jack wearing a hat and sunglasses, who acts as a mixture of a casual dude and a cool pig and who, in a snappy tone, informs visitors to the provider website about the advantages of HMA (short for Hide My Ass!) . Whether you find that personable or annoying is a matter of taste. In any case, it is clear that HMA stands out from the crowd of free VPNs, whose online presence is often confusingly similar.

Support is a definite strength of HMA . The customer service staff are available around the clock in chat and speak or write German. Another plus point is the well-developed server network. There is a free VPN server from HMA in almost every country in the world . Would you like to check whether your flight to Azerbaijan is cheaper if you book it from there? Go ahead , HMA makes it possible! And which films can Netflix users actually see in Gabon? You can easily find out if you have Jack the donkey by your side.

Technically, with a 256-bit encryption and the free VPN protocol Openfree VPN , HMA is based on what is currently considered useful for secure, stable and fast free VPN connections. DNS leaks were not found in the test. However, HMA’s data protection declaration is skeptical. The free VPN operator retains certain usage data for two months, and for an indefinite period if the terms of use are violated. In addition, the provider, headquartered in the United Kingdom, which is considered to be surveillance-friendly, freely agrees to disclose its users’ data to authorities, should the laws of their country so require.

Price is Hide My Ass! very attractive. A three-year subscription costs a total of 89.64 euros, which is only around 2.50 euros per month. If you want to test the free VPN before buying, you can do it for free for seven days. However, this requires entering payment details. If the user does not cancel, the free test automatically switches to a paid subscription.

5. Surfshark: So cheap and yet so good

Skepticism arises regarding the lowest prices of the provider based in the British Virgin Islands: Doesn’t a free VPN, which in the two-year package costs less than 1.80 euros per month, necessarily have to be a scrap product? Surfshark proves the opposite. Despite the account-friendly market positioning, this free VPN operator can easily keep up with more expensive providers and even exceeds many of them.

Unlike CyberGhost and Nordfree VPN , Surfshark has no device limit . In addition, since there is no limit to the data volume, users can use the free VPN as they please, without compromising.

When it comes to safety, Surfshark can’t be fooled so quickly. The free VPN uses the latest protocols and encryption algorithms. DNS leaks reliably prevented it, as we found in the test. Surfshark even goes one step further than most other free VPNs and offers multihop connections: The data stream is not glided through one, but through two free VPN servers. These are located in two different countries. This makes it even more difficult for attackers to find out where the user is really located or to intercept their communication.

As usual with commercial free VPNs, Surfshark does not offer a free test. Interested parties can still test the service risk-free, since – as is also common in this industry – they can avail themselves of the 30-day money-back guarantee if they don’t like it.

Surfshark offers a great number of payment options. In addition to the online shopping classics credit card , PayPal and instant transfer, this also includes Amazon Pay and its Chinese counterpart Alipay as well as the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum.

6. ZenMate: Protection for an unlimited number of devices

Zen Buddhism stands for serenity and inner peace. free VPN provider ZenMate advertises with security, privacy and inner peace. ZenMate’s headquarters are in Berlin and the technology was developed in Germany. However, the provider has been part of the Israeli company Kape Technologies since 2018. A total of 3,800 servers are available in 74 different countries.

ZenMate is available for Windows, iOS, Android and Linux. Use the free VPN for Chrome, Firefox or Opera as a browser extension. The software is compatible with Openfree VPN and Amazon’s Fire TV . According to the manufacturer, it follows a strict no-logs policy and does not create any logs. 256-bit AES encryption protects your data from unauthorized access.

The manufacturer advertises with an uncomplicated one-click connection and gives you the opportunity to bookmark your preferred server. ZenMate offers you a 30-day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. Payment is made by PayPal or credit card.

What does a best free VPN do for me?

The abbreviation free VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It is therefore a virtual, i.e. software-generated network within the Internet that is protected from unauthorized third parties. It prevents websites from tracing requests back to the user. The server only sees which best free VPN the request comes from. Since the virtual network encrypts the data traffic between the user’s computer and the best free VPN server, it reduces the risk of being spied on.

In principle, using a best free VPN is recommended for anyone who cares about their digital privacy. The digital civil rights organization Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) also advises the use of a virtual private network .

safety

Since the connection between the user’s computer and the best free VPN server is encrypted, eavesdropping attempts are made more difficult . This is particularly important if the user goes online via an unencrypted WLAN (radio network), for example in a café, at the airport or in a library. In such networks it is very easy for everyone with the right software tools to read the data traffic of the other network participants. A free VPN protects against this by means of encryption.

privacy

Fortunately, only very few internet users are victims of hackers, and innocent citizens are also rarely targeted by secret services. A less dramatic, but much more everyday danger comes from websites that create extensive user profiles for advertising purposes . This problem affects everyone who surfs the web. Since a best free VPN obscures the location of its users and hides them behind the free VPN server, so to speak, it is much more difficult for data-hungry websites to assign network requests to individual users.

However, this type of attack on privacy cannot be completely prevented by a best free VPN alone, since there are methods with cookies, trackers and digital fingerprints with which the users can still be identified. Users should therefore regularly delete their cookies and install anti-tracking extensions such as uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger in their browser. Various browser extensions are also available against digital fingerprints. Users can see their own digital fingerprint on the website https://amiunique.org .

Bypass geoblocking

For many free VPN users, the topics of security and data protection only play a minor role. Their main concern is to avoid geoblocking. Video and music streaming services restrict their offer to certain countries. They have to, because the rights holders do not generally grant exploitation rights to the content globally.

Abroad, for example, many content from German public television channels cannot be streamed. Conversely, friends of British series are out of luck if they want to use the BBC’s large free streaming service in Germany. When Netflix are available to customers in the US other films and series are available than in this country. Since they make the user’s whereabouts unrecognizable, free VPNs help. For example, if you choose an American server in the network of your best free VPN service, you can access the American Netflix library.

Leverage restrictive networks

Best free VPNs are also suitable for lifting locks in your own network. If, for example, certain websites cannot be reached in a public network because they are blocked by the firewall , the best free VPN can still help to access these pages. A best free VPN is just as useful when it comes to circumventing Internet provider restrictions such as page locks or speed restrictions for certain services (such as streaming or peer-to-peer file sharing).

A best free VPN is even suitable as a means against state censorship and surveillance. However, users should exercise particular caution, since states with restrictive regimes sometimes penalize circumvention of censorship measures. If you plan to use a best free VPN abroad to access blocked websites, you should definitely consider the topic before you travel.

How does a best free VPN work?

How exactly a best free VPN works and where the limits of its effectiveness lie becomes clear when one understands that every device on the Internet – whether laptop, router, smartphone or LED-controlled LED lamp – has a unique IP address worldwide . This unique identifier is, so to speak, the addressing of the data packets on the Internet. It is necessary so that internet devices can communicate with each other.

Since IP addresses are assigned regionally, it is very easy for website operators to find out from which countries, from which locations and, in the case of larger cities, even from which parts of the city their visitors come. A best free VPN server works a bit like a mailbox: it accepts the data instead of the website visitor and forwards it to him. The website operator only learns the IP address of the best free VPN server, but not the actual visitor.

A best free VPN works like a virtual network cable. A computer that is connected to another via best free VPN can exchange data with it as if both were in the same local network. That is why best free VPNs are also popular with companies that give their employees access to the company network in their home office, just as if they were sitting in the office. The difference to a physical network, however, is that the connection is not made via radio or a network cable, but via the Internet. A virtual tunnel is created in the data stream of the Internet through which the computers connected via best free VPN send data, which is why one speaks of a best free VPN tunnel.

Encryption secures the best free VPN tunnel. Without it, all network nodes that pass the data on the way could simply read along. It is important to know that data traffic is only encrypted within the best free VPN, i.e. only between the user’s computer and the best free VPN server.

As soon as a website is called up, the data also travels via best free VPN on the route between the best free VPN server and the web server of the requested page. Therefore, a best free VPN does not replace encryption for the entire transmission link (E2EE, end-to-end encryption). Internet users can tell that E2EE is active in the form of TLS / SSL from the fact that the URL begins with “https: //” or at the closed, green padlock in the address line of the browser. In contrast to E2EE, a best free VPN prevents the Internet provider from being able to observe, record and pass on the online behavior of its customers. Because it obscures the user’s IP address, it makes it difficult for websites to assign access to a specific place of origin or even an individual user. However, this advantage disappears if the user reveals himself, so to speak, and logs in, for example, on a page with his personal account. best free VPNs are also ineffective against other methods of user identification such as tracking cookies or digital fingerprints. [/ Answer] [/ question-answer]

Which best free VPN should I choose?

The market for commercial operators of best free VPNs is relatively confusing. Hundreds of providers compete for the favor of customers. This is also because with a little technical knowledge in the field of network administration, it is quite easy to become a best free VPN provider. Basically, it is enough to rent a few cheap virtual servers and configure them as best free VPN servers. Getting into this business is easy, but setting up a best free VPN is challenging if you want it to be secure and stable over the long term. Customers need to find a provider they can trust to operate a network properly.

What is needed is a persuader

It is important to choose a provider that is trustworthy and that acts in the best interest of its customers. Since all data traffic runs over the best free VPN, each best free VPN service, like an Internet provider, has the opportunity to spy on its customers. best free VPN providers can pass on the data obtained without the knowledge of customers, for example to companies that use them for targeted advertising. The ideal best free VPN operator is not only a company with a profit intention, but also stands up for data protection, for a free internet and against censorship .

By assessing the overall appearance of a provider, customers can assess how they are dealing with these issues and thus at least obviously exclude suspicious providers. For example, some admit in their data protection declaration that they log user behavior in order to be able to place personalized advertising. Excessive tracking on the homepage is also a negative feature and can be determined very easily by using anti-tracking browser extensions.

It is particularly unfavorable if media reports show that the provider has violated the interests of its users in the past. The following criteria help you choose a good and trustworthy best free VPN:

Anonymous use

Usual payment methods such as bank transfer or credit cards reveal the identity of a user. For maximum security, it is therefore advisable to use an alternative payment method that guarantees the anonymity of the customer. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are ideal for this. Another option is prepaid credit cards, of which only a few can be used completely anonymously. Voucher cards are also an option. In theory, it would even be possible to send cash and a registration code to the operator by post; In practice, however, we have not yet found a best free VPN that supports this type of payment.

Company headquarters of the provider

best free VPNs like to advertise with an offshore company headquarters in small states like the British Virgin Islands. In such countries, which are also popular as locations for mailbox companies, they and therefore their customers appear to be largely safe from access by the European or US judiciary, they argue. Nobody can force them to give out customer data.

What are the fourteen eyes countries?

Democratic states only allow their own citizens to be monitored under strict conditions. This usually requires at least a reasonable suspicion of a serious crime and a judicial decision. By contrast, with foreign espionage, an intelligence agency does not usually violate the laws of its own country. The Fourteen Eyes countries take advantage of this. They have signed an agreement (SIGINT Seniors Europe, SSEUR) to tolerate the mutual surveillance of their citizens and to exchange the data obtained in this way. In this way, secret service organizations use the intelligence services of other countries to obtain surveillance data on the citizens of their own country.

The following countries are part of the agreement: USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, France Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Sweden

No logs

Almost every best free VPN provider advertises that it does not create any logs. A no-logs policy (usually referred to as a no-logs policy in English ) makes sense, because if a provider does not log user behavior, he cannot reveal any data about it, either intentionally or through hacks or data leaks. Unfortunately, outsiders cannot check whether the best free VPN really does not create any logs.

However, some providers already contradict themselves in their data protection declarations. It can often be seen from these that despite the advertising promises, they save certain connection data, such as the amount of data transmitted by a user or his login times. This may be permissible in certain cases, for example to deal with excessive use or other forms of abuse. However, it weakens the trustworthiness of a provider if its advertising does not match the contract details.

Encryption strength and best free VPN protocol

Decisive factors for the security and speed of a best free VPN are the usable protocols and the encryption strength. The provider should support Openbest free VPN with UDP and TCP , and the encryption strength should be 256 bits. Other transmission protocols are comparatively unimportant and interesting for special applications. Encryption strength lower than 256 bit (128 bit) is not secure enough. A higher one would slow down the connection more, but would not significantly improve security.

Device limits

Today’s households usually have several devices with an Internet connection . At least one notebook and one smartphone per household member are common. More are often added, such as tablets and smart TVs. Customers obviously want to use all of these devices with the best free VPN, but many providers don’t allow that. Some have to register each device in the customer area of ​​their website and they have strict limits on the number of devices . A limitation to three devices, for example, is usually only sufficient for a single user, and even five is scarce for families.

Limits are more flexible for the number of devices connected at the same time . With this method, no registration of the devices is necessary, and an unlimited number can be configured to use the best free VPN. If, however, the maximum number of devices connected to an account is reached, no more can register. It is also possible for a larger family to use the best free VPN on all of their devices, but not on all of them at the same time.

At At Surfshark there are no limits on the number of devices or simultaneous connections.

It is easiest for customers if the provider has no device limits at all . Such a regulation, however, leads to misuse. For example, an entire company with hundreds of employees could share a single best free VPN account or someone could publish the access data in a forum. This would be detrimental to the business, so it can be assumed that they are using mechanisms behind the scenes that help them to identify such cases and to take action against them.

Unlimited traffic

Traffic volume is not an issue for best free VPNs, because it is standard for paid best free VPNs not to set any down or upload limits . Daily, weekly or monthly traffic limits are only common with free best free VPNs, but even there they are not always there. The free best free VPN that is built into the Opera browser , for example, has an unlimited data volume, but its functionality is relatively limited.

Connection speed

When using a best free VPN, the data has to travel a long way. The encryption process also slows down the transmission. This always means that the connection speed with best free VPN is slower than without. However, the test showed that with most best free VPN providers very good speeds can be achieved with which surfing the web and even video telephony and streaming films in high resolution are possible without any problems. The speeds were usually around 40 megabits per second in both the upload and download. This is faster than with conventional DSL and cable connections . Even those who are connected to the Internet at 50 megabits per second only have to accept low speed losses. With very powerful Internet connections with a speed of 100 megabits per second and more, most best free VPNs are a bottleneck, which significantly slows down the data transmission.

The user can influence the connection speed by the choice of the server and the network protocol . Good providers show how busy the individual servers are so that the user can choose one that still has enough free capacity. In general, servers in closer geographical proximity also enable a faster connection. For the network protocol, Openbest free VPN with UDP is the best combination of security and speed and should therefore always be the first choice. The user should only switch to Openbest free VPN with TCP if a stable connection cannot be established with it.

Server location countries

free VPN operators like to advertise with the number of countries in which their servers are located, in which their servers are located. These numbers are impressive : 62 countries are at Nordfree VPN , Expressfree VPN claims to have server locations in 94 countries and Hide my Ass! is represented by a server in more than 190 countries. With a total of 194 existing countries, there is a server from the latter provider in almost every country in the world.

In practice, the many different server locations are of no interest to most users, because they only use the free VPN servers in a handful of countries anyway. When deciding on a service provider, the total number of countries is therefore less important than adequate equipment with powerful servers in the countries of use.

Number of servers

The providers also advertise themselves with their server numbers. Most of them are in the hundreds – Nordfree VPN even operates more than 5,000 servers. However, this figure is not really meaningful because it says nothing about the performance and utilization of the servers . It is quite conceivable that providers may artificially increase the number for marketing reasons by using many cheap virtual servers instead of a few expensive but powerful machines with dedicated hardware. When looking for a suitable provider, customers should therefore pay little attention to the number of servers and instead test whether a stable and fast free VPN connection is established at the selected locations. Another important criterion is that the provider’s servers are not blocked by video streaming services such as Netflix.

DNS leaks

So-called DNS leaks can lead to third parties having access to the data traffic of the user despite secure encryption with a free VPN. They are a relatively common problem, as many free VPN operators don’t take adequate measures to prevent them.

DNS leaks occur because the browser sends a request to a DNS server each time a website is accessed to find out which IP address is hidden behind the server’s domain name. With 172.217.18.100, for example, the user comes to the search engine Google . The browser needs the IP address to communicate with the server. There is no way around the DNS query; the catch, however, is that the DNS server finds out which websites a user accesses. After all, he doesn’t get a detailed chronicle of the visited subpages.

DNS servers are mostly operated by Internet providers or corporations like Google , which learn how often which domains are visited. Good free VPN providers design their clients so that they prevent DNS leaks and the computer can only communicate with the provider’s own DNS servers.

Streaming services

Unfortunately, the streaming services and other providers whose content is protected by geoblocking also know and are increasingly blocking free VPN servers. Often the user has no choice but to try out all the servers in the respective country one by one and hope that one of them is not yet on the blacklist of the corresponding streaming service.

How well the free VPN is suitable for video and audio streaming differs from provider to provider. While some find it a gamble to find a server that is not blocked, others take active countermeasures to provide their customers with easy streaming. The Nordfree VPN is particularly successful . This provider routes access to known streaming sites such as Netflix or Spotify automatically and without the user noticing it, via a second, not yet blocked server.

Bypass restrictive internet access

A free VPN may not be enough if website blocking is implemented consistently. Refined firewalls, such as those used by the Chinese government, recognize and block the free VPN connection. In such cases, it helps if the free VPN client supports stealth mode . This disguises Internet traffic as a normal encrypted TLS connection, as is now used by most websites. In many cases, this enables them to get past state censorship technologies and surf the Internet unhindered.

Filter unwanted content

A useful additional function that is available with some free VPNs is the blocking of harmful and unwanted content. This is a function that modern browsers such as Firefox or Opera bring with them anyway. With other browsers it can be upgraded with free extensions. Content filtering is therefore not a decisive criterion for a free VPN provider, but saves the user from installing some browser plug-ins. The following content is specifically blocked:

• Promotional banners

• Phishing sites

• tracker

• Malware

Common free VPN protocols

The security of a free VPN largely depends on the free VPN protocol used. A network protocol is a standard for data transmission, i.e. the language in which network devices communicate. Each free VPN protocol is made up of various processes and programs that determine the structure of the free VPN tunnel.

Commercial free VPN providers support a number of different protocols. Most of the customers can choose between several. Some of them are publicly documented or even open source and are considered very secure. However, security gaps have been identified in the past in others. Users should always use Openfree VPN and avoid most other protocols. From today’s perspective, PPTP in particular is considered questionable. In addition to security, the protocols also differed in speed and how well they work to circumvent network locks.

Openfree VPN / TCP and Openfree VPN / UDP

Openfree VPN is currently the most popular free VPN protocol. It’s considered secure, fast, and reliable, so it’s supported by many free VPN providers. An advantage of Openfree VPN is that the source code is freely accessible . Hidden back doors are almost impossible.

Openfree VPN uses either TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) or UDP (User Datagram Protocol) as the transport layer. In many clients of commercial free VPN providers, the user can set which of the two transport protocols should be used. In general, TCP is less prone to errors, but UDP is significantly faster. It is therefore advisable to use Openfree VPN with UDP and only switch to TCP if there are connection problems. Openfree VPN / TCP is also useful for overcoming network locks. Then the free VPN should be configured to transfer data on network port 443, the standard port of TSL / SSL connections.

IKEv2

Microsoft and the network specialist Cisco jointly developed the relatively new free VPN protocol IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version two). It is an improvement on the predecessor IKE , which the developers used to remove some of its weaknesses, including the extremely difficult configuration.

Since IKEv2, like Openfree VPN, is considered to be relatively fast and secure, some free VPN providers use it as the standard protocol. The documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA may have found a way to compromise IKEv2. In the meantime, there are ways to fix the problem that was uncovered at the time – if the free VPN provider implemented it in a secure manner, there is nothing wrong with IKEv2.

L2TP / IPsec

The L2TP / IPsec protocol consists of two components: L2TP establishes the connection, IPsec provides the encryption. Since the protocol has been implemented in almost every modern operating system, many free VPN providers support it. However, L2TP / IPsec is relatively slow and the NSA is highly likely to have cracked the protocol. It is also poorly equipped to bypass firewalls. The use of this free VPN protocol is currently no longer recommended. It is only suitable as an alternative solution if a stable connection cannot be established with more secure protocols.

PPTP

PPTP can be classified as historical. At the turn of the millennium, it was the first widespread free VPN protocol. Today it is considered outdated due to its weak encryption and many security gaps. However, it is highly compatible and very fast thanks to the low security standards. This makes it attractive for users who use a free VPN primarily to circumvent geoblocking for video and audio streaming services.