Free Android VPNs: Potential Risks

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Free Android VPNs: Potential Risks

We have created this Free VPN Risk Index to help users avoid using potentially unsafe free VPN apps that compromise their privacy and security.

Our study focuses on the technical performance of free Android VPN apps available on Google Play.

If you need to know more about Virtual Private Networks, read our guide to understanding VPNs first.

To create this Index, we first identified the top 150 free VPN apps by total installs. We tested for effective encryption, browser leaks, viruses and malware, dangerous app functions and behaviors, along with comprehensive network tests. We also analyzed excessive app permissions.

Many of our Risk Index findings are straightforward in what they reveal about individual free VPN apps. It’s clear, for example, that a DNS leak or network anomaly puts user privacy at risk.

Our findings on risky permissions and functions, however, need to be placed in proper context as they provide us with illuminating insight into the category of free mobile apps as a whole.

The mere presence of some of these intrusive permissions or risky functions may not be necessarily malicious but equally neither does that mean they are typically benign.

Some app permissions and functions facilitate the aggressive advertising keeping these VPNs “free” for example. What’s even more disturbing however is when location-based permissions and functionality are used to geo-target ads to users with an active VPN connection – which is not a practice with which many consumers would be comfortable.

https://www.top10vpn.com/research/free-v...isk-index/