A VPN lets you browse the web and download files as if you were located in a different country. That means you can access sites and services that aren’t available in the UK, like Hulu or the ad-free YouTube Red. The connection is encrypted, so even your ISP won’t be able to restrict or monitor your traffic – which means a VPN is also the perfect way to access blocked sites and download files over BitTorrent without exposing your identity. There’s a serious side to VPNs too: those in repressive regimes can use the secure connection to safely communicate with the world outside, and whistleblowers can leak information and classified documents without fear of being exposed.
Want to find out more about VPNs? Then click through to page 2 where we explain everything you need to know. Want to buy one right now? Then scroll down to find the best VPNs for every purpose.
Best VPN services of 2016
Best VPN for everything (and Netflix, too): NordVPN (click here to read our full review)
PRICE: £9 per month, £52 per year
For most of us, the great benefit of NordVPN is its “Smart Play” technology: this allows you to watch Netflix in the US and Canada, while most other VPNs are detected and blocked. It’s not the fastest connection we’ve seen – our download speeds dropped by 70% while we were online, which is annoying if you want to use it to BitTorrent. But since it’s based in Panama, you can be confident that your personal details are safe. You can also use up to six devices at once, which is more generous than most VPNs will offer.
Best VPN for BitTorrent: Hotspot Shield (click here to read our full review)
PRICE: £8 per month, £19 per year
Hotspot Shield is one of the best-performing VPNs we’ve seen: even when connecting via the US we were able to download at 78% of our regular unprotected rate. That makes it a solid choice if you’re a BitTorrent user who wants to protect their identity. It’s also excellent value if you buy a yearly subscription, costing just £19 per year. It’s a shame that US Netflix is blocked, and you should also note that Hotspot Shield is based in the US, so we don’t recommend you use it to leak classified information. For the rest of us though it’s a great choice.
Best VPN for occasional use: TunnelBear (click here to read our full review)
PRICE: Free (up to 500MB per month), £22 per year (Mobile only), £37 per year (Unlimited data, Desktop and Mobile)
Canadian-based TunnelBear offers a fun and friendly interface, all based around our grizzly companions. It’s not the most versatile VPN, however: in addition to Netflix being blocked, BitTorrent is also disallowed, so if you want to fill your boots with illicit downloads you should look elsewhere. However, performance is great by VPN standards – connecting via the US gave us 79% of the bandwidth we’d normally see in the UK – and what’s more TunnelBear offers up to 1GB of private data per month absolutely free. That makes it the perfect choice for those who just need to unblock the occasional website or post anonymously once in a while.
Best VPN for simplicity: Avast SecureLine (click here to read our full review)
PRICE: £45 per year
Like Avast’s antivirus software, SecureLine keeps things straightforward: you simply choose your country from the drop-down list and then hit Connect. You can set SecureLine to automatically enable the VPN whenever you connect to a network; otherwise it just sits in the background and does its thing. We were pleasantly surprised to find that Netflix US works with SecureLine, but there’s no guarantee that will continue for your entire year’s subscription. Our other caveat is that, although your licence lets you use five devices, they all have to be on the same platform – you can’t mix and match laptops and smartphones.
Click through to page 2 to find out everything you need to know about VPNs
“Virtual private networking” sounds complex, but it’s not. A VPN is simply a service that encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a remote server, rather than sending it through your own ISP as normal. Businesses use VPNs to allow their employees to connect securely to company servers from home or while they’re abroad – and there are many good reasons why you, as an individual, might want to sign up to your own personal VPN service.
For a start, a VPN hides your location. That’s very valuable to whistleblowers who need a way to get information out to the public without it being traced back to them. None of the VPN operators we’ve tested keep logs or monitor what you’re doing online, so even if they were to be hit with a subpoena, they wouldn’t be able to confirm your involvement in a leak.
For similar reasons, VPNs are popular among BitTorrent users. Anyone trying to track you down won’t be able to find you, and your ISP won’t be able to monitor which sites you’re connecting to, or which files you’re downloading. There’s a trade-off, though: encrypting and re-routing your traffic has an impact on performance, so even if you’re paying for a fast fibre line, you won’t see your full download speed over a VPN.
A VPN also lets you choose which country your traffic “emerges” in, so you can get around geographical restrictions. People in China, for example, can use a VPN to access Facebook, Google and other blocked sites – and it works just as well with sites that are blocked by your office or university.
This also means you can access media services as if you were based somewhere else in the world. For example, if you’re fed up of seeing YouTube videos “not available in your country”, you can use a VPN to tunnel your connection to a server in the US, and magically the video should become available. This works for almost all music and video sites, but sadly Netflix has recently started deliberately blocking VPN connections. The block isn’t perfect, though: NordVPN has a trick that allows it to bypass the Netflix block, giving you access to the larger libraries offered in the US and Canada.
By now you’re probably eager to get set up, and the good news is it’s very simple to do so: in most cases, once you’ve paid for your subscription, you simply have to download the VPN client for your chosen service, select a country and click Connect. In a few seconds, your connection will be private and secure.
We’ve a few caveats though. Most services have a “kill-switch” that automatically halts all network activity when the VPN disconnects. Without this, programs might keep running, but now their traffic will go via your ISP and the sites you’ve been visiting will be exposed. If that’s a concern for you, check our feature table for the kill-switch function.
Lastly, while VPN operators don’t log your online activity, they naturally store your user account details – otherwise you wouldn’t be able to log in – and in order to route your traffic they have to track where you’re connecting from. If you want to keep all this information private, you might want to avoid VPN services that are based in the so-called “Five Eyes” nations – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Digital surveillance is routine in these countries, and information is automatically shared between them.
If that’s a problem, choose a VPN based in a more obscure jurisdiction, where your details are much less likely to be exposed. If you really want to keep things quiet, several VPN providers accept payment in bitcoins, for an extra degree of anonymity. Although, of course, while your ISP won’t be able to see what you’re doing online, the big load of encrypted data going back and forth will make it pretty obvious you’re using a VPN of some sort.