What is vpn ?

      So you're in the markets for a free VPNservice. With so many options, how on earth are you supposed to decide whichone to go with? Within the world of VPNs though, free is not always the way to go.As with any investment, whether it be your time, money or in this case, security,it's important to do your research and understand what "free" really means. Giventhat you're not paying for their service, the network has to recoup its costssomehow. And with certain VPN providers, they could potentially make their moneyoff of your data on the backend through logging even though from yourperspective, you're completely anonymous for the time being.That doesn't mean information about you isn't being stored for a later date tosay, for example, be sold as a prized commodity. They could also trade youranonymous browsing abilities as an opportunity to show you advertisements,allow third parties to access information about your online activityor even spread malware on the device or devices you are using when accessing theInternet. 

     All of this is bad news no matter which way you look at it. So isthere really a free VPN option out there that won't maliciously take advantage ofyou or your data once leveraging the services? In today's video, we'll becovering exactly that but going over what exactly is the best free VPNservice for you to look into. Number one: ProtonVPN. We've coined this as thenumber one best free VPN service, and for good reasons. With ProtonVPN you havefree, open reign on how much you download, how often you go between servers and howquickly you were looking to download the content you find. The difference betweenthe paid and free VPN service provided is that they limit you as tohow many devices you can use per account. Also, you don't get to use Proton'sadvanced security features. Other than that, they're pretty great. I say thisbecause their free offering touches on the security points that really matterthe most when considering which VPN to use. ProtonVPN leverages encryption onpar with that used by the military as well as a no-fail and reliable killswitch. There are also open to peer to peer, orP2P network traffic. All of these factors combined make ProtonVPN a big contenderin the free VPN realm and in our humble opinion, the number one best option youcan choose. Now that's not to say that there aren't other great options you canchoose from. Sometimes it comes down to a matter of preference. 

     With ProtonVPN inmind, let's move on to some of the other great free VPN services you can find.Number 2: Hotspot Shield. If ProtonVPN was the best, Hotspot Shield still comesin at a close second as the most popular. Hotspot Shield touts this title proudlywith 600 million users to back it. With this many users, wouldn't thatcreate a huge burden on networks? Are they really able to handle this muchtraffic all the time? The short answer is yes. They in fact can. In addition to beingthe most popular free VPN service available, they are also likely theworld's fastest, surpassing speeds offered by ProtonVPN'sfree network. With that said though, there is always an upper limit and it could beonly a matter of time until one Hotspot Shield's servers become overloaded. It isdebatable as to when this can happen and so far it hasn't. Time will ultimatelytell. In the meantime though, you can certainly check out their free offeringand enjoy fast speeds available for free VPNs today. 

     If Hotspot Shield's speeds arefaster than ProtonVPN's and they have an enormous user base, wouldn't thattechnically make them the number one free VPN service available? Notnecessarily. In the past, Hotspot Shield has had some curious data practices thatcould be considered questionable. With this question markhanging over the company's hypothetical head, it's our only barrier to saying it's the number one best free VPN service. Instead,we've coined it the most popular for obvious reasons. And this is still a boast-worth title to have! Number 3: Windscribe VPN. Windscribe VPN made our listbecause of its excellent no logging policy as well as its security andprivacy measures. The Windscribe VPN free offering leverages the samesecurity features that you'd get with its paid premium version, which is almostunheard of. Very few other VPNs offer this withtheir free service, and for that reason Windscribe VPN has made our list of thebest free VPNs out there today. For example, you'll receive their ad blocker,leak protection, and time zone spoofing capabilities, just to name a few.This is really a fantastic deal considering it doesn't cost you a singlepenny. Windscribe VPN is also very user-friendly with its easy to use andsimplistic design. These factors all work to compensate for its admittedly laggingspeeds and at times occasional drop. The privacy surpasses these possible issues,making it a viable contender for users' consideration when looking for a freeVPN service to try. Number 4: TunnelBear TunnelBear VPN would have made ithigher on our list if it wasn't for the glaringly obvious hurdle of its low 500MB monthly bandwidth limit.

      If you ask us, this is more or less a danglingcarrot on a stick constructed by the company to get usersto try their paid version. Despite this though, TunnelBear's free service stilloffers everything that you would want when looking for a free VPN. For example,they have powerful encryption and a reliable kill switch amongst other features. They also have a user-friendly interface which makes their service easy for anyone to leverage. Even with all of this, the data limit is just too restrictive for us to move it up this list any further.Number 5: hide.me VPN. At number five, hide.me VPN offers all of the securitymeasures that you would expect to find in a premium VPN package, which is great!This includes similar qualities like strong encryption, IP leak protection anda no-log policy, which is all fantastic seeing as you're not paying for any ofthese items here at all. The only possible limitations are a 2GBdata camp and the inability to unblock Netflix. So for those of you outthere who are hoping to find a free VPN service for your streaming activities,you won't find what you're looking for here with hide.me VPN. With that said,whether or not this free VPN service is the right one for you all depends onyour individual needs. If you think you'll need a large amount of data orhad your hope set on binge watching a series or two, hide.me VPN may not be thebest choice. Alternatively, if you plan on sharing small to moderate-sized filesvia a P2P network or are looking for the general privacy measures that a VPNcan offer, hide.me VPN may be all you need. 

     And thanks, folks, this concludes ourvideo! To recap, we've reviewed the following 5 free VPN services andshared our thoughts on which ones we think are the best: ProtonVPN, HotspotShield, Windscribe VPN, TunnelBear, and hide.me VPN. What did you think of our list? Are there any free VPN services outthere that you think are worth a mention? Do you disagree with any of the freeVPNs that we've listed here? Let us know down in the comments below. If you're newto the channel, don't forget to subscribe, and if you've returned to this videogive us a like and tell us how you think we did. You can also check out our othervideos for more VPN content to help your information and privacy stay secure asyou browse the web. Thanks again all and we'll see you inthe next one!