Free VPNs: users share alternatives and warn of limits

Free unlimited VPN: the real price is your data

The most downloaded free VPN extensions on Chrome impose a time limit that forces users to pay up, according to the question that opens the debate. The alternative that dominates the free market is not technical, it's economic: if you don't pay with money, you pay with a record of your browsing. That's the core of a discussion that starts with a simple question —is there a free VPN with no limits?— and ends in a catalog of options, warnings and the odd recurring joke.

Which free VPNs work without paying

The list of names circulating is long: Proton VPN in its free version, Browsec VPN for Firefox, TouchVPN on Brave, UrbanVPN as a Chrome extension, VeePN, Hoxx VPN, RiseupVPN on Ubuntu, Opera with its built-in VPN and Kaspersky. Paid options also come up, such as NordVPN, PrivateVPN and Mullvad, the latter notable for accepting cash or cryptocurrency payments and, it is claimed, for operating on the Deep Web.

Some argue that the free ones work fine for the basics: getting into pages blocked by the operator, reading news restricted by geolocation or removing the ads that cover half the screen. Others warn that the real price is a different one. "Obviously nothing saves you from them selling your data, that's where they'll get a large part of their profit", sums up a message pointing to the business model: servers in countries with lax legislation and a relationship with Spain that limits the authorities' ability to claim anything.

Why some websites can't be accessed from Spain

The stated use is not anonymity. Several messages insist that a VPN is for accessing US news sites unreachable from Spain, or sports streams and book websites that the operator has blocked. The cause is not always a deliberate block: server geolocation and licensing restrictions explain why a media outlet is cut off in one country and not another.

Things get more complicated when the block comes from the internet provider itself. Vodafone is mentioned as responsible for cutting access to certain content. The solution lies in the extension, not in the router configuration.

The block affecting Latin America

An unexpected turn in the exchange: users from Argentina and Peru report problems accessing certain Spanish websites, solved by switching on a VPN. "LATAM has banned burbuja", one message comments, halfway between a joke and suspicion of a blacklist. The working hypothesis is that the site is hosted in the United States and the problem is one of routing or regional filtering, not an editorial decision.

Rolling your own VPN and other alternatives

For those who don't trust third parties, there is the option of setting up your own server. The drawback, admitted by those who use it: the hosting provider can indirectly reconstruct part of your browsing. Another technical proposal is to connect the computer to a mobile phone's proxy with an active VPN, a homemade solution that avoids installing anything on the machine.

The consensus, if there is one, is that no free option is neutral. Paid services are defended on estimulante ilegal and for not monetizing traffic; free ones, for solving the immediate problem without paying up. How much of your browsing are you willing to hand over to read a news story your operator blocks?