Best Free VPN for Canada

[PhotoStrider]

What is the best free VPN for use from Canada ?

 

[Rene Ritchie]

What is the best free VPN for use from Canada ?

I'll defer to Daniel Bader on this, since he's super smart about this stuff.

In general, though, VPNs have risks involved so you'll want to consider the pros and cons of a "free" VPN carefully.

 

[Daniel Bader]

Hey PhotoStrider, I would echo both Ethan and Rene by discouraging the use of a free VPN unless you're comfortable with some of your metadata being shared with third-party advertisers. A free VPN will route your traffic through another country, perhaps to circumvent geographical restrictions, but you can't be sure that traffic won't be sniffed along the way.

If you do insist on a free VPN, I like Opera VPN for iOS. It's actually run by Toronto-based SurfEasy, which Opera purchased in 2014, and has proven to be both reliable and fast. While the company does use third-party advertising servers, which obtains a small amount of your anonymized personal data in exchange for the free traffic routing, it doesn't do anything egregious.

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/opera-free-vpn-unlimited-ad/id1080756781?mt=8&at=10l3Vy

Hope that helps!

 

[Ipheuria]

I would just like to add that a lot of people have this misconception about the use of VPNs. They think it's simply used to mask your whereabouts so you can watch streaming video from wherever. The fact is that VPNs are a security measure and more people should be using it with the proliferation of free wifi which are poorly setup. When you're sitting in that coffee shop checking your email, on facebook, connected to your bank there is a lot of data you're sending out over the wifi network which most times aren't even encrypted. Any hacker with a little bit of knowledge can scoop up lots of info and that is why a VPN should be used. As for free VPNs I'll echo what's been said, in this world money is king. Which makes you wonder if they are offering the service for free how are they making money? Personally I use Cloak VPN because it's available for iOS and MacOS with a single account.

 

[Rene Ritchie]

It's complicated. VPNs basically just transit your end point from your local network to a remote network.

Everything else is up for grabs.

A great VPN can protect you from, for example, people trying to sniff your data at a coffee shop. A lousy VPN could try and intercept your banking info.

A great VPN can help with online privacy. A lousy VPN can serve as an easy point of exit for mass data collection or server log collection.

Finding a service you can trust is key.