7 Ways Free VPNs Put You at Risk

You may not pay cash when you use a free virtual private network (VPN), but you’re essentially trading your personal data and, sometimes, even access to your internet connection for the right to use the service. Free VPNs go after things like your browsing history, your email address, your internet speed, and your attention.

Free VPNs have server and operating costs just as the paid services do, and they pay the bills by selling your info. Using a free VPN may be one of the worst things you can do to your online privacy, as it’s essentially a fast lane for your data to get in the hands of the highest bidder. Before you sign up to use a free VPN service, we suggest you take a look at the primary ways free VPNs completely trash your online privacy and network security.

1. Free VPNs do log and sell your data (including your browsing data)

It may be hard to believe, but the astounding truth is that much of the free VPN business model relies on exploiting the very information you’re trying to protect: your online activity and personal data. Some free VPN services state this practice right in the privacy policy, but even for those that don’t, you should assume any activity that goes through a free VPN is logged, tagged, and sold to the highest bidder.

To cite just one terrifying example, in August 2025, research from Koi Security showed that the popular platform FreeVPN used its Chrome browser plugin to insidiously take screenshots of its users’ browser windows. The software would wait a few moments for the page to fully load and then take screenshots and send the images back to a server for processing.

This privacy breach operated silently, not requiring any input from the user or any kind of notification to let people know what was happening. And this is just one egregious example. There are many cases of free VPN services being caught logging and selling user data. Just about every free VPN service relies on collecting and selling your data in some way.

2. Free VPNs have poor encryption and security

A lot goes into keeping a VPN connection anonymous and secure, and many of the free services simply are not up to the task. Every VPN needs solid encryption to keep your activity scrambled from prying eyes, and many free services use dated or weak encryption. AES-256 encryption is the gold standard, used by the military and many government agencies: That’s what you want safeguarding your activity, but typically a feature of paid VPNs.

But top-notch encryption is just one piece of the privacy puzzle. DNS leaks, which give away your IP address (and all your anonymity along with it), are a major weakness of free VPNs. The services are also commonly missing features like a kill switch and auto-connect, which prevent any unprotected web traffic from going through. You need these additional safeguards for a truly complete privacy solution, and unfortunately, many free services don’t have them.

3. Free VPNs hijack your IP address and internet connection

A free VPN might use your connection and IP address as the “VPN server” for another user. Some free VPNs create peer-to-peer networks out of their users and use their connections as the VPN servers for other users, exposing your IP address to the online destinations that someone else is trying to hide from.

This means that if someone uses your connection for illegal online activity or for an activity that breaches your agreement with your internet service provider (ISP), it could lead back to you. That’s a lot to risk to save a few bucks on a VPN sub.

It gets worse: Free VPNs may sell access to your IP address and internet connection to cyber criminals

Even worse than getting stuck with some internet rando’s dirty digital laundry, free VPN services have been caught selling access to their user’s IP addresses and internet connections to cyber criminals. The free VPN service, Hola, had a sister company that used a webstore to sell access to Hola users’ internet connections. Cyber attacks were later found to originate from some of these endpoints.

4. Malware, spyware, and adware

Malware often hitchhikes a ride into your devices via free VPN software. The free VPN provider may be allowing advertising or data brokers to install the software on your machine, or it may be designed for the VPN service itself to leech more data from you.

5. Redirect your traffic to advertisers

Don’t be surprised if your search results seem a little off while using a free VPN. Free VPN services are known to redirect your web activity to their advertising partners. In addition to wasting your time with bogus browsing results, this also allows those advertisers to log your activity and plant cookies in your browser, which continue to track your activity. In August 2017, popular free VPN, Hotspot Shield, was caught doing exactly this.

6. Intrusive pop-up ads

Pop-up ads have been an issue with free web services since the beginning of the internet, but it’s worth mentioning that free VPNs are no different. Free VPN services bombard you with advertisements in hopes they’ll pull you away from whatever it was you intended to do online. If you end up clicking any of the ads, intentionally or not, your information will likely be shared with the advertiser.

7. Limit your internet speed and data

Free VPNs strongly regulate the amount of bandwidth and data you can use through the service. Expect significantly slower speeds and to possibly run out of data and have your activity stopped dead in its tracks. While they’re not free, take a look at our hand-picked fastest VPNs if internet performance is your priority.

Is it ever a good idea to use a free VPN?

There are almost no situations that warrant the risk of using free VPN services, as many carry more inherent risk than benefits. Surfing the internet unprotected isn’t recommended, either, but free VPN services require you to surrender personal data, such as your email address, in addition to potentially serving as a fast lane for your online activity to get into the wrong hands. If you plan on using a VPN with any kind of regularity, paid services are the way to get true dependability and peace of mind. We’ve done tons of research on the best VPN services to help you pick the best fit for your privacy needs.

If you must use a free VPN, use Proton VPN

Proton VPN operates a free tier of its excellent paid VPN service. While it’s subject to some potential speed throttling, Proton VPN’s free tier operates under the same exact privacy and no-logs policies as its paid service. Proton places a high priority on privacy and transparency making them the exception to the rule when it comes to free VPNs.