On this page
Someone always pays
A VPN server has to be rented, connected to fast bandwidth and maintained, and bandwidth alone is a large bill for a popular service. Free VPNs cover that cost in one of five ways:
- Freemium. A limited free tier paid for by paying customers. This is the honest model, and several reputable providers use it.
- Advertising. Ads in the app, and in bad cases ads inserted into the pages you visit.
- Selling data. Logging which sites and apps you use and selling it, often described as anonymised analytics or market research.
- Reselling your bandwidth. Turning your device into an exit point for other people's traffic.
- Harvesting access. Apps that ask for far more permissions than a VPN needs, or that exist mainly to deliver malware.
What research and real incidents show
These are not hypothetical risks.
- A 2016 study by CSIRO's Data61 with university partners examined 283 Android VPN apps. About 38% showed signs of malware, 18% did not encrypt traffic at all, 84% leaked IPv6 traffic and 66% leaked DNS requests. Read the study.
- In 2020, researchers found an unprotected database shared by seven free VPN apps, including UFO VPN, holding about 1.2 TB of user logs, although the apps advertised no-logs policies. Report in The Register.
- In 2015, the free Hola VPN was found to be selling its users' bandwidth through a sister business, so free users' connections carried paying customers' traffic.
- In 2018, Facebook pulled its free Onavo Protect VPN from Apple's App Store after Apple said the way it collected data about users' app activity broke the store's rules.
The pattern is the same each time: a privacy promise nobody checked, and a business model the user could not see.
Red flags before you install
- No company name or address on the website or in the app store listing.
- A privacy policy that allows sharing with partners for advertising, analytics or research.
- Permissions a VPN does not need, such as contacts, text messages, precise location or accessibility access.
- Unlimited everything for free, with no paid plan at all. The bandwidth has to be paid for somehow.
- Ads inside the web pages you visit while connected.
- Unknown protocols with no security documentation, instead of WireGuard, OpenVPN or IKEv2.
- Reviews that all sound the same, and a flood of ads promoting the app.
What a trustworthy VPN makes easy to find
Free or paid, the same checks apply. A provider you can trust makes these things easy to find:
- Who runs it: a named company, the country it is registered in and a way to contact it.
- What it stores: a logging policy that lists specific data, not just the words no logs.
- How it is built: standard protocols such as WireGuard or OpenVPN, and apps you can download from official stores.
- How it makes money: clear prices, or a clear explanation of what pays for free users.
- Independent checks: security or no-logs audits when the provider has had them, with the report or a summary published.
We hold ourselves to the same list. BoltVeil is run by a registered US company, named in our Terms of Service. Our VPN network is operated by an infrastructure partner under contract, we have not had an independent audit yet, and our no-logs policy says exactly what we keep and what we never keep. You can judge us on that.
Honest ways to get a VPN for free
Free does not have to mean unsafe. Three models are honest about how they are paid for:
- Limited free tiers from paid providers. Established companies such as Proton VPN and Windscribe offer free plans with limits on locations, speed or data, funded by their paying customers. Read the terms, but the model is sound.
- Trials and money-back guarantees. Try a paid VPN and get your money back if it does not suit you.
- Earning premium time. Some services let you earn access by doing something of value instead of paying with your data. That is how BoltVeil works.
How BoltVeil's earn-it model works
BoltVeil is a paid VPN that you can also earn. In your dashboard you collect Bolts, our reward points, from a daily check-in, a daily spin, missions, inviting friends and completing offers from advertisers. 1,000 Bolts buy a full day of premium VPN access on the same network paying customers use.
- We do not sell your browsing data, because we do not collect it in the first place. Our no-logs policy lists exactly what we store.
- No ads are inserted into your traffic. Offers appear only in the Earn section of your dashboard, and you decide whether to open them.
- Advertisers pay, not your data. When you complete an offer, the advertiser pays for that action, and part of it pays for your VPN time.
- Free sources are capped. Check-ins, spins and missions are limited each day, which keeps the model sustainable without hidden income.
One rule matters here. Offers come from advertisers who pay for real people in real places, so complete them with the VPN switched off, and never through a proxy or a second account. Faking your location or identity on offers is fraud, it is banned by our Acceptable Use Policy, and it gets Bolts reversed and accounts closed.
The free VPN page explains every way to earn Bolts, and pricing shows what you get if you would rather pay.
If you still use a free VPN app
- Install it only from the official app store or the provider's own website.
- Search its privacy policy for the words sell, share, partners and advertising.
- Run a DNS and WebRTC leak test after installing it.
- Do not use it for banking, work or anything sensitive.
- Uninstall it, rather than just disconnecting, when you stop using it.