80% of popular free VPN services in the AppStore transmit users' personal data to third parties, and 38% of free VPN services for Android contain malware.
Hello everyone, dear friends!
We wrote this article to warn you against using free VPN services. After all, as we know, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Everyone knows that traffic passing through a VPN should in no way be accessible to hackers and other curious third parties, including advertising agencies, intelligence agencies and your ISP.
However, in reality, the vast majority of VPN services (especially free ones) don’t give a damn about protecting your personal, and in many cases, confidential information.
February 2024. Databases containing more than 21,000,000 users of three popular VPN services for Android were leaked online:
These databases contain useful personal information for us, hackers, on each of the 21 million users. Namely: name, e-mail address, information about payments and user devices.
SuperVPN is considered one of the most popular VPNs for Android with over 100 million downloads on Google Play. GeckoVPN has 10 million downloads, and ChatVPN has 50 thousand.
The hacker who stole the databases said that he was able to penetrate the storage because the services did not change the passwords on their servers for a long time.
July 2024. Hackers discovered and exploited vulnerabilities in many free VPN services. Here is just a small list of those affected:
As a result of the attack, information about more than 1,000,000 users was leaked to the public. The leak includes passwords, home addresses, and BTC transaction details.
These are just a few figures showing that VPN service owners are primarily interested in their own income, and not at all in your convenience and security:
Developers of free solutions do not have the ability and motivation to reliably protect user data. They exist on donations and advertising income. Therefore, most often, they themselves are not averse to selling their user base to some company or individual.
As for large commercial (paid) VPN services. They, in turn, receive profit from clients, so they value their reputation a little more and try to pretend that they protect their information. But there is one important point: almost all of them cooperate with the authorities. Therefore, if you have done something illegal, rest assured that all information on you will definitely be transferred where necessary. It is worth considering this.
The forum has already described in detail how to set up your own VPN based on OpenVPN.
Hello everyone, dear friends!
We wrote this article to warn you against using free VPN services. After all, as we know, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Everyone knows that traffic passing through a VPN should in no way be accessible to hackers and other curious third parties, including advertising agencies, intelligence agencies and your ISP.
However, in reality, the vast majority of VPN services (especially free ones) don’t give a damn about protecting your personal, and in many cases, confidential information.
- In order not to be unfounded, here are some examples:
February 2024. Databases containing more than 21,000,000 users of three popular VPN services for Android were leaked online:
- SuperVPN,
- ChatVPN
- GeckoVPN
These databases contain useful personal information for us, hackers, on each of the 21 million users. Namely: name, e-mail address, information about payments and user devices.
- We also have these databases. Enjoy the screenshots:
SuperVPN is considered one of the most popular VPNs for Android with over 100 million downloads on Google Play. GeckoVPN has 10 million downloads, and ChatVPN has 50 thousand.
The hacker who stole the databases said that he was able to penetrate the storage because the services did not change the passwords on their servers for a long time.
- Want more examples? No problem!
July 2024. Hackers discovered and exploited vulnerabilities in many free VPN services. Here is just a small list of those affected:
- SuperVPN (again)
- Rabbit VPN
- Fast VPN
- Secure VPN
- Free VPN
- and others
As a result of the attack, information about more than 1,000,000 users was leaked to the public. The leak includes passwords, home addresses, and BTC transaction details.
- Here are some more interesting statistics for you:
These are just a few figures showing that VPN service owners are primarily interested in their own income, and not at all in your convenience and security:
- 80% of popular free VPN services in the AppStore transfer users' personal data to third parties.
- 38% of free Android VPNs contain malware.
- To sum it up: a free VPN is a dangerous VPN.
Developers of free solutions do not have the ability and motivation to reliably protect user data. They exist on donations and advertising income. Therefore, most often, they themselves are not averse to selling their user base to some company or individual.
As for large commercial (paid) VPN services. They, in turn, receive profit from clients, so they value their reputation a little more and try to pretend that they protect their information. But there is one important point: almost all of them cooperate with the authorities. Therefore, if you have done something illegal, rest assured that all information on you will definitely be transferred where necessary. It is worth considering this.
What's the way out? What to do?
- The most reliable option is to set up your own VPN!
The forum has already described in detail how to set up your own VPN based on OpenVPN.
