A study made by several universities (Data61/CSIRO, UC Berkeley, UNSW Sydney, UCSI) found out that many Android VPN apps, even the most renown, put your devices at risk. Using these apps may result in security breaches, Javascript injection to trace your habits, redirect to particular sites, show you aggressive ads and so on.
Some use VPN to avoid geographical blocks to web content, such to access to websites blacklisted in some country. These services usually have a monthly cost, but they can also offer some free plans for their users to try them out. The study proved that, out of 283 different Android VPN apps, 80% of them access to private data such as messages and passwords, 18% don’t actually encrypt traffic, 84% resell your data to undefined third parties, 38% hid malware or unauthorized ads.
As you can imagine, risks abound, and concerns most of the VPN providers, which don’t admit they hijack traffic or use advertising in a shady way. Most developers didn’t comment on the matter, while some others simply admitted their bad behavior.
Unfortunately, the study as mentioned above doesn’t tell us the best apps tested, and it doesn’t say the most secure either. It shows a chart with the worst, based on VirusTotal evaluation system. Some of the worst ones are no longer on the Google Play Store, but the best way to stay safe is never to use free VPNs. They are the first suspects to jeopardize your privacy. Please remember that this issue may happen on iOS as well, not only Android.
Secure Android VPNs
Among the most secure VPNs, we’ll find Hideman, Tunnelbear, Private Internet Access, SlickVPN, and NordVPN.