Underrated VPNs

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VPNs have been very much in the news in recent months, in view of the well publicized developments in the monitoring and control of social media by governments. I'm particularly concerned at the focus on YouTube by the way, of which I'm a serious addict, and which I'd never even realized was 'social media'.

All the VPN recommendations I see appear to revolve around Nord, Mullvad, Proton and Express, but as a 'parsimonious' person , I'm more interested in those programs which have viable free versions. At present, I'm using Windscribe, Privado and Hotspot Shield free VPNs, and first impressions are favourable. Windscribe and Privado give 10GB per month, and Hotspot (of which I'd never heard 24 hours ago) seems to be unlimited.

Anyone else got experience of these lesser known VPNs, and are there any downsides of which one should be aware?

^ In addition, I also use the Browsec and Opera browser extensions, which are not apparently regarded as proper VPNs, but are exceptionally simple to set up and use, and appear to do the basic stuff very well.

https://protonvpn.com/pricing has a viable free version too. Be cautious of browser extension VPNs ... they snoop.

I've also been testing Hide.Me

https://hide.me/en/pricing

The free version is just fine with no account details which is nice.

Have you looked at Planet VPN? That was on my shortlist as well.

https://freevpnplanet.com/

^Never heard of it until you posted this ... will test asap.

Just keep in mind ... if its "free" YOU are the product ... just remember that much. If you have an old computer around you can always set up an virtual private server with only 2GB of RAM and a Pentium 4 will suffice. For the most part, unless I'm super paranoid, I go raw as I'm hiding in plain sight. Blend into the crowd with Windows 10 and Chrome 'out of the box' no changes nor modifications. Not for the 'faint of heart' though.

Not impressed with Planet VPN. Loses connection too easily and doesn't facilitate the downloading of YouTube videos. That one's off the list, then.

I've been having good luck with hide.me

I had Hide Me on an older laptop running Windows 8.1 and found it very competent, if a little intrusive. It used to activate and impose itself on my internet browsing whether I wanted it to or not.

I tried to transfer my account to my present Windows 10 laptop, but had forgotten my user name and password, and all efforts to contact the app have been unsuccessful.

Very annoyed to find that Windscribe has reduced its monthly allowance from 10GB to 2GB on its free version. This makes it unviable in my view. Presumably it's to 'persuade' users to switch to the paid version. Not interested, folks!