Free VPN Apps: Chinese Ownership, Secretive Companies & Weak Privacy

[BCGuy]

https://www.top10vpn.com/free-vpn-app-investigation/
We investigated the top free VPN (Virtual Private Network) apps in Apple's App Store and Google Play and found that over half are run by highly secretive companies with Chinese ownership. Very few of these hugely popular apps, which have hundreds of millions of installs worldwide, do anywhere enough to deserve the trust of consumers looking to protect their privacy.

After the big names like Facebook and Snapchat and games, VPNs are the most searched-for apps in the world. The most popular have amassed hundreds of millions of installs between them worldwide and yet there appears to be little vetting of the companies entrusted with the responsibility for redirecting all their users’ internet traffic through their servers.
A VPN or Virtual Private Network encrypts a user’s internet connection and diverts their traffic via a remote server in order to replace their IP address. They are primarily used to keep internet activity private, evade censorship and use public WiFi securely.
It’s therefore vitally important that consumers choose their VPN provider wisely given the potential for misuse of their data. Unfortunately, the majority of apps appearing in the top results for “VPN” searches are free products from obscure and highly secretive companies that deliberately make it very difficult for consumers to find out anything about them.
We decided to shine a light on these companies to help consumers avoid inadvertently compromising their privacy by using untrustworthy products. We recorded the top 20 free apps displayed in the search results for “VPN” in the App Store and Play Store for UK and US locales. This resulted in a list of 30 apps due to the overlap between stores and locales. See the notes at the end of this report for the full methodology.
Our investigation uncovered that over half of the top free VPN apps either had Chinese ownership or were actually based in China, which has aggressively clamped down on VPN services over the past year and maintains an iron grip on the internet within its borders. Furthermore, we found the majority of free VPN apps had little-to-no formal privacy protections and non-existent user support.
Apple and Google have let down consumers by failing to properly vet these app publishers, many of whom lack any sort of credible web presence and whose app store listings are riddled with misinformation.
Key Findings

• 59% of apps have links to China (17 apps)
  
• 86% of apps had unacceptable privacy policies, issues include:
  • Lack of important detail around logging policies that could lull people into false sense of security
    
  • Generic policies with no VPN-specific terms
    
  • No policy at all
    
  • Tracking user activity or sharing with third parties
    
  • Several privacy policies explicitly stated that they share data with China
    
• 55% of privacy policies were hosted in an amateur fashion
  • Free WordPress sites with ads
    
  • Plain text files on Pastebin
    
  • Text files on Amazon servers
    
  • Text files on raw URLs, such as IP addresses
    
• 64% of apps had no dedicated website – several had no online presence beyond app store listings.
  
• Vast majority of companies make it very difficult to find out where they are based and who is involved – for a minority it was impossible to track down the provider.
  
• Over half (52%) of customer support emails were personal accounts, ie Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc
  
• 83% of app customer support email requests for assistance were ignored
  

Summary Table
The below table lists every VPN app we investigated. Click the app name to jump to its detailed findings. Android install numbers are total installs worldwide, iOS are estimated monthly with all data from Sensortower.
 

App
Android installs
iOS installs
OwnershipTurboVPN
3M
300K
Chinese
VPN Proxy Master
1M
800K
Chinese
Snap VPN
10M
N/A
Chinese
X-VPN
5M
600K
Chinese
VPN 360
1M
500K
Chinese
VPN – Super Unlimited Proxy
N/A
400K
Chinese
Free VPN by FreeVPN.org
500K
200K
Chinese
Secure VPN
1M
N/A
Chinese
VPN – Master Proxy
N/A
60K
Chinese
HotspotVPN
1M
70K
Chinese
SkyVPN
1M
200K
Chinese
VPN Patron
N/A
200K
Chinese
VPN for iPhone
N/A
100K
Bangladeshi
YogaVPN
5M
40K
Chinese
VPN Guru
N/A
80K
Chinese
Hola
10M
60K
Israeli
Hotspot Shield
50M
1M
American
Betternet
10M
1M
American
TouchVPN
10M
70K
American
Shield VPN
N/A
70K
Chinese
VPN Wifi Proxy Security Master
N/A
50K
Chinese
Victory VPN
N/A
20K
Chinese
Storm VPN
N/A
5K
Unconfirmed
SuperVPN Free VPN Client
50M
N/A
Chinese
VPN Private
10M
N/A
Ukrainian
Thunder VPN
1M
N/A
HK Chinese
VPN Melon
1M
N/A
Unconfirmed
Super VPN
5M
N/A
Chinese
#VPN
N/A
200K
American
Psiphon
10M
100K
Canadian

[Nana]

I use setup vpn and so far have had no problems with it.

[Wayne49]

Be skeptical of free anything. Especially free security.

Beef cattle get all their food free. Get moved to better pastures as necessary.

Would it be any different if the VPN was provided free by a USA corporation?

[Nana]

Wayne, Nothing is really free and there's always some form of price we pay. We are lead to believe that all these services are there for our benefit and security while all the while we are constantly being monitored and our data is being breached in the name of governmental security and or for marketing purposes. But we do it anyway.

[rvpopeye]

Cuz it's free !
Skuh kuh kuh kuh kuh

[frater secessus]

People flocked to VPNs out of unfounded panic, now they'll run away out of unfounded panic.