Far from my worry that the onslaught of snoopery and endless app permissions requests will wear down people’s resistance to digital surveillance, more and more folks are downloading tools to fortify their online privacy and anonymity. Nearly half of Americans are using a virtual private network (VPN).VPNs are a complicated topic, but just like how you don’t need to know how your refrigerator works in order to enjoy cold food, you don’t have to be a programmer to use a VPN. Using one is as simple these days as using any other app. The web is full of tools that like to snoop on your online browsing behavior. There are cookies, advertisers, and cross-site trackers all jostling to find out what you’re doing online all the time and everywhere, not to mention data thieves, hackers, and spyware with more nefarious goals.Your internet connection has a unique identifier called an IP address. When you connect to a website, that site knows it’s you because it logs your IP address. A VPN acts like a middleman that routes all the activity between your device and all websites, in both directions, which masks your IP address. When you use a VPN, these websites and trackers can’t tell that it’s you who’s accessing them, only that “someone” on a VPN’s server is accessing them. And because VPN servers are shared among thousands of users, the trackers lose you in the crowd.best vpns at a glanceThe Speed Demon: NordVPNBest Free VPN for Cheapskates: Proton VPNFor Anonymous Sign-Up: Mullvad VPNLeast Finicky: Surfsharkhow I choseNever use a VPN that doesn’t have an explicit no-logs policy. That means that the VPN provider explicitly states it doesn’t record, collect, or save data about how a customer uses its VPNs. Any VPN worth considering doesn’t track any kind of browsing data. Zip, nada, zilch.Every worthy VPN also regularly opens itself up to independent, third-party auditors to peek under the hood at the VPN’s infrastructure to verify that, in fact, the VPN provider is being honest about not collecting any user data and that it’s free from adware, spyware, and other malware. These audits should be released for the public to read, and performed several times every year.I also preferred VPNs based in countries that aren’t members of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes international security alliances, although I didn’t exclude any just for not meeting this criterion. These alliances allow for member countries to request that logs citizens’ online browsing data be handed over from one country to another upon request.All the VPNs I recommend are regularly and thoroughly vetted by independent, third-party analysts to demonstrate that they adhere to their no-logs policies and are, in fact, trustworthy VPNs deserving of your dollars.The Speed Demon: NordVPN(opens in a new window)NordVPNNordVPN Plus(opens in a new window)Available at NordVPNBuy Now(opens in a new window)Time and again I return to NordVPN. There are plenty of good VPNs—ok, there are actually very few good ones—but for my daily bread-and-butter usage, NordVPN gets the nod because its servers are consistently the fastest of the rest of my top picks.Just in the past six months alone I’ve connected to NordVPN servers based in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Montreal, South Africa, Kenya, and the UK during travels from Quebec City to East Africa, and speed has never been a problem.vpn server selection screen — credit: matt jancerEven when downloading large files, video conferencing across an ocean, or streaming 4K movies the VPN connection’s slowdown (all VPNs introduce some slowdown) was so slight as to make no practical difference to me.Best Free VPN for Cheapskates: Proton VPN(opens in a new window)Proton VPN(opens in a new window)Available at Proton VPN (Free)Buy Now(opens in a new window)Available at Proton VPN (Paid)Buy Now(opens in a new window)There are loads of free VPNs floating around on app stores and unsecured internet sites. I’d rather pull out my molars with a pair of pliers than use most of them. I’d probably suffer less in the long run too, actually, since the vast majority of free VPNs are sketchy as hell. Spyware, malware, or just linked to shady companies within other companies in Russia or China.Proton is a different kind of free VPN. It states prominently that it keeps no logs of customers’ VPN usage, even those using the free version, and it regularly opens itself up to independent auditors to confirm that it’s not just lying or hiding anything.you can only pick your server on the paid plan — credit: Matt jancerYou’d be sane to wonder why you’d ever pay for a Proton subscription when the base product is free. You get to choose your VPN server from a larger selection of servers, for one thing, rather than the free version assigning you a server (that you can’t change) each time you connect. Those servers tend to be faster, too. You can also connect up to 10 devices at a time, rather than the free version’s one.Proton is based in Switzerland, but as the Swiss government mulls a law that would encroach on the country’s famously anonymity-friendly internet laws, Proton has declared that if the law passes, the company will depart Switzerland for a location more friendly to online privacy. That’s a hell of a gauntlet to throw down publicly, but it goes a long way toward reinforcing trust in Proton’s well-vetted transparency and privacy credentials.For Anonymous Sign-Up: Mullvad VPN(opens in a new window)Mullvad VPN(opens in a new window)Available at Mullvad VPNBuy Now(opens in a new window)No-logs policies are vital, as are independent audits to verify a VPN’s claims of honesty and privacy. Mullvad VPN delivers on both. If your insistence on the utmost privacy goes beyond even a no-logs policy, if you want it undetectable that you’ve even ever signed up for a VPN service or sent them a single, solitary cent, then Mullvad VPN is your best pick.You don’t even need an email address to sign up for a Mullvad VPN account. No phone number either, or any personal information, actually. To create an account you just click a button to generate a random account number, which you use instead of an email address or user name. Just don’t lose it, because it’s harder to remember than those.Mullvad VPN’s payment methods can be similarly anonymous, if you like. There are the usual, convenient options for PayPal, credit cards, and debit cards, but you can also pay in Bitcoin or Monero cryptocurrencies. Hell, you can even send cash if you want anonymity without dillydallying with cryptocurrencies.extra-protective quantum resistance is on by default — credit: matt jancerMullvad VPN is based in Sweden, which is a member of 14 Eyes but not the other two surveillance alliances. There are protections in Swedish law regarding VPNs specifically, though, so it doesn’t worry me. And it has a robust no-logs policy vetted as being upfront, honest, and comprehensive.Last and most definitely least, Mullvad VPN is also the only VPN with the endearing mascot, Cookie the privacy mole. Just look at the little fella.Least Finicky: surfshark vpn(opens in a new window)Surfshark VPN(opens in a new window)Available at SurfSharkBuy Now(opens in a new window)Why do I bestow upon Surfshark the odd title of least finicky? Because it’s the only VPN on the market that includes split tunneling on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Most other VPNs have it on one platform, maybe a few, but not all four.Split tunneling allows you to designate certain websites as being exempt from VPN coverage. When you access those sites, Surfshark will automatically route them through your naked IP address and not a Surfshark VPN server. You don’t get the VPN’s privacy protection, but you also don’t get blocked from accessing those websites, either. Companies increasingly seek to detect VPN use and block VPN connections to their websites.Normally that means temporarily pausing your VPN connection to allow access to such sites. It’s not hard to do on any VPN, but it is an annoying (albeit small) gesture if you have to visit such sites multiple times a day. Plus, doing so brings down your VPN protection for your entire connection to all websites at the same time. Split tunneling keeps your VPN connection live on all your other websites while simultaneously letting you access the VPN-blocking ones (without the VPN connection on those).Surfshark is based in The Netherlands and therefore subject to the Nine Eyes and 15 Eyes security alliances. The company downplays the significance of that, stating that if a VPN company has a no-logs policy, then it doesn’t matter if an “Eyes” government demands customer data; they have nothing of yours to turn over. It’s a fair point, even if I’d prefer them to be based in a country outside all the “Eyes” alliances. Given Surfshark’s well vetted independent audits, though, it doesn’t stop me from using (and trusting) Surfshark.what else to know before you buyRemember in the “How I Chose” section at the beginning of this guide when I said that I look for VPNs that have a clear no-logs policy, are regularly vetted for adherence to this policy by independent third-party auditors, and aren’t members of the three international surveillance alliances,: Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes? Aside from using the VPNs personally, I take a long, hard gaze into each one’s transparency, trustworthiness, and history of the companies that own and run them.This is why I don’t recommend ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, or Private Internet Access. Kape Technologies owns all three, and it has a sordid past as the purveyor of adware. Malwarebytes, a computer security company, wrote about the Kape-owned Crossrider’s tendency to hijack browsers and come bundled into software without users being explicitly aware.Trust is hard to win back, and with several excellent VPNs on the market that I trust far more, I found no reason to select one of these. They come with the shadiness baggage of their parent company’s past, and in my past use of ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access nothing about their feature set, speed, or connection reliability jumped out as being worth the ick. My top VPN picks perform just as well or, in most cases, better and don’t come with the nagging sense of unease and doubt.Kape also owns the VPN review site vpnMonitor. Sound like a conflict of interest? I think so, too. The website is up-front that its parent company owns several of the products it recommends as the best VPNs on the market, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s a massive conflict of interest.When it comes to TunnelBear, the situation is more nuanced. American company McAfee, heavyweight among anti-virus software, acquired TunnelBear in March 2018. That means the Canadian-founded TunnelBear became subject to US jurisdiction, and that’s a worry to me because the US has a history of pressuring tech companies for access to users’ records.what about all those free vpns?I touched on this earlier when I called a bunch of ’em spyware, malware, and downright shady. The allure of free has a strong pull, though, so to further drive home my point that you should avoid these I’ll dive into why these are so risky.You’ve heard the sayings, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” and “If you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product,” right? Free VPNs that don’t have explicit no-logs policies, or even ones that lie about having them, often make their money by selling your internet browsing data.They may come bundled with spyware that covertly installs itself on your device along with the VPN, which lets criminals steal your data or take control of your device. Some secretly inject code into your browser that subtly redirects you to risky websites when you try to access legitimate ones.And plenty of free VPNs saddle the user with excessive app permissions to read data they have no business reading, such as photos, text messages, and the like. Why consider them, anyway? You have a solid, trustworthy free VPN in Proton VPN already.The post Best VPNs for Dodging Trackers, Snoops, and Data Vampires appeared first on VICE.