Is it REALLY a FREE VPN?

Free VPNs and the Privacy Tradeoff

While free VPNs might seem like an attractive option, they often have serious downsides when it comes to privacy. Here's why using them could put your PII at risk:

• Tracking and Monetizing Your Data: Many free VPNs make money by collecting and selling your data to third parties, including your browsing history, personal information, and even device data. This undermines the core reason for using a VPN—to protect your privacy.

  • Advertising and analytics: Free VPN providers often use your data to serve targeted ads or for marketing purposes.

• Limited Transparency: Free VPN services may not have the resources to maintain robust privacy practices. They may not be transparent about what they log or who has access to your data.

  • Some free VPNs have been caught logging detailed user activity or even selling bandwidth from their users to create a peer-to-peer network.

• Weak Encryption and Security: Some free VPNs may compromise your data’s security by offering weaker encryption or running outdated software. This can leave your personal information exposed to hackers, especially if they lack the infrastructure to protect your traffic.

• Potential for Malware: Some free VPN apps have been found to include malicious software or adware that can steal your data or track your activity.

In addition to pFsense having Enterprise level firewall protection, it also provides many other helpful features for which people pay monthly fees - for example a VPN service. This is actually included in PFSense (a VPN Server) and you no longer have to pay someone to host your VPN connection. Keep in mind that all VPN traffic is decrypted at the endpoint. Thus, it’s important that you trust the company that you are paying this service for, as they have all of your logins and passwords. And if you’re using a “free” VPN service - well, it’s not really free. Look at it this way: If you're providing all of your logins to banks, email, investments, etc., then you’re “paying” them in the form of your personal data, which they sell for money…so it’s not REALLY “free” for you because your giving all of your information away. Whereas, when you use the PFSense VPN, it is your VPN. Therefore - most importantly - you are maintaining security, privacy, and control of your own data.