Sometimes, I’m surprised how often VPNs (virtual private networks) turn up in online reporting, considering how rarely I hear people talk about them elsewhere. But I suppose I shouldn’t be. Some VPN companies are very aggressive about their marketing, peppering podcasts and YouTube videos with sponsorships. And now, companies like Apple are offering VPNs (or VPN-like features, anyway) as service perks, taking it for granted that you understand the benefits.
Like a lot of people, I pay for Apple’s iCloud+, since iCloud’s default 5GB of storage may not even be enough to backup an iPhone anymore. That gets me Private Relay for free. Nevertheless, when I actually care about VPN functions, I step up to a separate paid service. There are a few reasons why, at least some of which will probably resonate.
The split between free and paid VPN services
Some VPNs are more equal than others
One of the main incentives to use any VPN is privacy and security. Every VPN forwards your internet traffic through at least one remote server, which disguises your IP, although it’s still possible for marketers and others to fingerprint you based on a variety of factors. Usually, there’s also some sort of encrypted tunnel, making it tougher for outside parties to intercept your data.
Private Relay is actually pretty solid on this front. It only applies to Safari, but Apple actually intentionally obscures fingerprinting using two separate relay servers. With other free VPNs, though, you’re not only risking fingerprinting, but lax security in general. Encryption may be weaker, activity logging less restricted. Indeed, you can become the product — targeted with ads, and/or some data about you sold to outside parties. It might be worth using an ad-based VPN if you’re on public Wi-Fi, or the chief goal is disguising your nationality, but otherwise you may benefit more from other security measures, such as anti-tracking plugins for your browser. More on that later.
In a sense, it’s hard to blame a company for targeting you with ads. Those servers cost money, and they’re not in this for charity. Yet even if you’re willing to put up with ads or data brokers, you may be putting up with other limitations. You could have fewer server locations available, or limits on using some services, such as video streaming. This is one area where Private Relay fails too — outside of Safari, it can’t help you convince Netflix or Hulu’s servers that you’re in Texas.
With a better budget, paid services may be able to afford the fastest connections possible within a VPN’s inherent limitations.
The biggest consideration for many people will be speed. Any VPN is going to slow your connection down, since by definition, your data has to take one or more extra hops to go to and from its destination. You should automatically disable VPN services when you’re playing an online action game like Pavlov or Helldivers 2. Yet with a better budget, paid services may be able to afford the fastest connections possible within those limitations, which may have a huge impact when streaming, browsing websites, or downloading files. When I was using Surfshark, for example, there was virtually no difference in my experience most of the time, to the extent that I’d sometimes forget it was active.
Another inherent limitation of free services may be the devices you can use them with. The Apple TV 4K supports VPNs through app-based configuration, but without a browser, Private Relay doesn’t work, and there’s no easy way for other free VPNs to display the ads they’re normally dependent on. There may not be any way to manually enter a free VPN’s configuration somewhere, which is going to be a dealkiller if you want to filter all your connections, not just the one on your phone or laptop.
Do you really need any kind of VPN at all?
The true question
If you are seriously concerned with privacy and security, a VPN may help, but you’ll want to spend some time researching not just the different claims providers make, but their significance, and what cybersecurity experts think. That might sound like overkill at first — but if you don’t understand the differences between the various levels of encryption, or why your activity logs matter, you could end up falling prey to bad VPNs, or spending needlessly on the better paid options.
The average person should probably consider simpler security measures first. There are browsers that make anti-tracking and/or anti-fingerprinting features central, such as Brave. If you don’t want to switch browsers, you may be able to accomplish similar things by installing plugins like the EFF’s Privacy Badger. You should also take advantage of the privacy and security features built into Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe, and secure every account you can with two-factor authentication (2FA). Passkeys and third-party password managers may be a viable alternative to conventional password entry.
These sorts of things are my approach, most of the time. I honestly have only two reasons to use a VPN: research, and fooling geo-restricted video services. One of the most common tasks in my job is tracking down the prices of products, and some companies — like Google — insist on showing you your own country’s prices for their stores, no matter what settings you pick. And even if they do let you choose a region, it’s still more convenient to be directed to the correct version of a site from the start, instead of having to go through cumbersome region and language selections.
Perhaps the strongest argument for a VPN is if you’re in a country with a regime that harasses or imprisons critics, like China or Russia.
The video situation is probably more relatable to you. Some services will dramatically alter their catalogs for different regions, owing to licensing deals. For a while, US Netflix subscribers had to access the Canadian version to watch Community, an American show. Some services are automatically blocked outside the US, in fact, such as Hulu and YouTube TV. Arguably, the situation is getting worse — Netflix is even blocking profiles under the same account if your IP address is too far away from the main account holder. These sorts of barriers can hurt you if you’re a legitimate paying customer who wants to watch something when you’re away on vacation or a business trip.
If your PC is mostly a gaming machine, a VPN can be not just pointless, but counterproductive. As I mentioned, all VPNs introduce extra lag, as packets have to go through an additional server or two in both directions. While I have had instances where I left a VPN on by accident and had decent gameplay, “decent” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. That lag can mean the difference between victory or defeat, especially in games like PUBG, where a skilled enemy can take you out in a single shot.
Perhaps the strongest argument for a VPN is if you’re in a country with a regime that harasses or imprisons critics, like China or Russia. If that’s what you’re dealing with, though, only something extreme like Tor may do, and it’s wise to take politically sensitive conversations offline whenever possible. Strong encryption may not help at all if a government can raid the servers your traffic is flowing through on a whim.
