How to Critically Choose a VPN

• Date: Wednesday, December 7
• Time: 10am to 11am EST / 3pm - 4pm UTC (What time is it in my city?)
• Who: Viktor Vecsei, COO at IVPN
• Location: Zoom

RSVP: https://digitalrights.formstack.com/forms/vpnvillage2022_4

How to Critically Choose a VPN Service (Talk and Q&A)

In a market so saturated with commercial VPN providers, it is a challenge not only to determine if you need a VPN or not, but also to navigate search results and the network of VPN review sites as you try to find a trustworthy VPN.

What are the key things you should look for when determining if a VPN service is trustworthy? How can you determine if a VPN recommendation site is legitimate? What red flags signal that you should steer clear of a VPN provider?

In this session, you will learn how to recognize signals of trustworthiness in VPN providers and more effectively analyze VPN recommendation resources in your search for a VPN service that respects your privacy, safety and security as a user.

Note: This session is not geared toward high-risk users or those for whom anonymity and/or circumventing severe censorship is a necessity.

Bio: Viktor Vecsei is a privacy activist, researcher and writer. He is the COO at IVPN, a privacy-focused VPN provider, where he works on increasing transparency, honest communication and improving ethical standards in the commercial VPN space.

Notes & Resources

How to Critically Choose a VPN Service Slides

Critically Choosing a VPN Resource List

What will this session do?

• Provide tools to critically analyze and chose a VPN service

What will this session not do?

• Give specific recommendations
• Say anything negative about certain providers

Before you start to choose a VPN service, you need to ask “Do I need a VPN?”

• A VPN is not going to protect you 100%
• VPNs are not a one-button solution to all of your privacy problems.

Threat modeling is key to determining if you need a VPN or not.

• Use Cases:
  • Circumvention
  • ISP surveillance
  • Untrusted Wi-fi networks
  • Geo-blocked content

What makes a good VPN?
Can you trust the VPN? How do you find the right service?

• Misaligned incentives, ads, misleading information, review sites etc. make it challenging to filter the good content and trustworthy information from the noise.
  • Search Results
    • Highest ranked sites are all tech magazines and VPN review sites.
    • There is a lot of money to be made in ad revenues
  • VPN Sponsorship
    • They usually don’t have any technical expertise or background.
    • They are often incentivized by monetary gain.

Route 1: Trust the Experts (The easier route)

• Examples of more trusted VPN recommendations
  • Privacy Guides
  • Freedom of the Press Foundation

Route 2: Do it Yourself

• Do not default to trust. Make the VPN provider work for your trust.
• Start with a long list and narrow it down.
• Review the website of the provider and implement a check-list.
• Be vigilant.
• Do a safety check (searches, forums etc.).

The VPN Provider Checklist:

• Jurisdiction
  • Transparency / accountability
    • Depending on the location of the company, they will be subject to the local laws which will determine business practices and consumer protections.

Red Flags (Avoid)

• Overpromising
  • Promises perfect privacy or anonymity.
  • Best / fastest service (yellow flag, not so red).
  • Promises “military-grade” encryption.
    • This is just meaningless marketing jargon
• Privacy Policy
  • There needs to be a policy.
  • It should be clear and concise.
• No transparent ownership
  • You want to see clear ownership so that there is full accountability.
• No details on security practices
  • This is hard to do if you don’t have a security background.
• No audits
  • There needs to be an independent auditor.
  • It should be an auditor who specializes in VPN or technical audits.

Yellow Flags (Proceed with Caution)

• Trackers on the website or in the VPN app
  • This means they don’t fully respect your privacy.
    • It’s for marketing and website optimization in most cases.
  • In the AppStore, Apple will tell you what the VPN actually tracks in the app.
• No legal guidelines
  • How do they handle law enforcement requests?
  • You want to see transparency reports
• Too good to be true deals
  • Multiple years for under 50 USD etc.
  • Lifetime accounts
  • Not sustainable, or need other ways to make money
    • Selling browser data etc.
• Fear / Uncertainty / Doubt
  • Service stoking user fears to get them to use VPNs
• Dark patterns
  • Fake countdown timers
  • Exit consoles
• Social Proof tricks
  • Made up user numbers
  • Trustpilot problem
    • It’s really easy to purchase reviews

Green Flags (Big Pluses)

• Open source
• Minimal information for sign up
  • Some providers don’t even need an email address for sign up
  • Your provider should only know minimal information about you.
• Uses the latest protocols available
  • WireGuard is the gold standard and default for best providers.

Once you've narrowed down a trusted shortlist, choose a service based on other preferences:

• Price point, platform support, server locations, streaming support.
• Killswitch
• Multi-hop (allows you to jump through multiple servers in different jurisdictions)
• Ad blocking
• Cryptocurrency payments