If you’re looking for the best VPN for torrenting, privacy, bypassing censorship, staying anonymous online, getting around geographic restrictions, or just location shifting, you’ve got a lot of confusing choices. Keep reading as we help you pick the right VPN for you.
VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, are a quick and easy solution to making your computer appear to be coming from a different location. They accomplish this by creating a virtual network that routes all of your PC or smartphone’s network traffic through an encrypted tunnel and out the other side, making it seem to the world that you’re actually in whatever location the VPN server is located. This can help you bypass geographic restrictions, avoid censors, or keep you (relatively) anonymous online.
The problem is that there are scores of different VPN providers out there, and a ton of different reasons to use one — so which one do you choose?
Assessing Your VPN Needs
Every user is going to have slightly different VPN needs, and the best way to pick the ideal VPN service is to take careful stock of what your needs are before you go shopping. You may even find you don’t need to go shopping because home-grown or router-based solutions you already have are a perfect fit. Let’s run through a series of questions you should ask yourself and highlight how different VPN features meet the needs highlighted by those questions.
To be clear, many of the following questions can be satisfied on multiple levels by a single provider, but the questions are framed to get you thinking about what is most important for your personal use.
Do You Need Secure Casual Browsing?
Even if you aren’t particularly security or privacy conscious, everyone should have a VPN if they regularly use public Wi-Fi networks. When you use Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, the airport, or the hotel you’re staying at while traveling cross-country, you have zero idea whether or not the connection you’re using is secure.
The router could be running outdated and compromised firmware. The router could actually be malicious and actively sniffing packets and logging your data. The router could be improperly configured and other users on the network could be sniffing your data or probing your laptop or mobile device. You never have any guarantee whatsoever that an unknown Wi-Fi hotspot isn’t, either through malice or poor configuration, exposing your data. (A password doesn’t indicate a network is secure, either–even if you have to enter a password, you could be subject to any of these problems.)
In such scenarios, you don’t need a beastly VPN provider with massive bandwidth to secure your email, Facebook, and web browsing activities. In fact, the same home VPN server model we highlighted in the previous section will serve you just as well as a paid solution. The only time you might consider a paid solution is if you have high-bandwidth needs that your home connection can’t keep up with (like watching large volumes of streaming video through your VPN connection).
Do You Need to Geo-Shift Your Location[Streaming]?
If your goal is to appear as if you’re in another country so you can access content only available in that are (e.g. BBC Olympic coverage when you’re not in the UK) then you’ll need a VPN service with servers located in the geographic region you wish to exit the virtualized network in.
Need UK access for that Olympic coverage your crave? Make sure your provider has UK servers. Need a US IP address so you can watch YouTube videos in peace? Pick a provider with a long list of US exit nodes. Even the greatest VPN provider around is useless if you can’t access an IP address in the geographic region you need.
Selecting Your VPN Provider
What makes for a VPN provider? Aside from the most obvious matter, a good price point that sits well with your budget, other elements of VPN selection can be a bit opaque. Let’s look at some of the elements you’ll want to consider.
It’s up to you to answer these questions by reading over the documentation provided by the VPN service provider before signing up for the service. Better yet, read over their documentation and then search for complaints about the service to ensure that even though they claim they don’t do X, Y, or Z, that users aren’t reporting that they are in fact doing just that.
How Many Servers Do They Have and Where?
If you’re looking to access US media sources like Netflix and YouTube without geo-blocking, then a VPN service with the majority of its nodes in Africa and Asia is of very little use to you.
Accept nothing less than a diverse stable of servers in multiple countries. Given how robust and widely used VPN services have become it isn’t unreasonable to expect hundreds, if not thousands, of servers across the world.
In addition to checking how many servers they have and where those servers are located, it’s also wise to check into where the company is based and if that location aligns with your needs (if you’re using a VPN to avoid persecution by your government, then it would be wise to avoid a VPN provider in a country with close ties to your country).
How Many Devices Are Allowed?
You might be thinking: “I only need one connection, don’t I?” What if you want to set up VPN access on more than one device, for more than one family member, on your home router, or the like? You’ll need multiple concurrent connections to the service. Or, perhaps, if you’re particularly security oriented, you’d like to configure multiple devices to use multiple different exit nodes so your collective personal or household traffic isn’t all bundled together.
At minimum, you want a service that allows for at least two concurrent connections; practically speaking at the more the better (to account for all your mobile devices and computers) and with the ability to link your router to the VPN network is preferable.
What Kind of Logs, If Any, Do They Keep?
Most VPNs won’t keep any logs of user activity. Not only is this of benefit to their customers (and a great selling point) it’s also of huge benefit to them (as detailed logging can quickly consume disk after disk worth of resources). Many of the largest VPN providers will tell you as much: not only do they have no interest in keeping logs, but given the sheer size of their operation they can’t even begin to set aside the disk space to do so.
Although some VPNs will note that they keep logs for a very minimum window (such a only a few hours) in order to facilitate maintenance and ensure their network is running smoothly, there is very little reason to settle for anything less than zero logging.
How to Get Started With a VPN in 5 Minutes
- Choose a VPN service.
- Install the VPN app on your computer/phone. Most VPNs are easy to install, and come with an installation manager that guides you through the process.
- Connect to a server, and you’re ready to go! You can browse the internet as normal, knowing that you’re fully protected.