Choosing A VPN? Be Careful! Here’s Why.
Notes

The following text is all directly quoted from ThatOnePrivacyGuy’s spreadsheet

Note that these metrics are collected from the official websites and other reputable sources. This section takes each company at their word. It’s up to the user to decide which is trustworthy.

Bandwidth: Some services limit the bandwidth of the user. When a company’s privacy policy explicitly states no bandwidth usage logging, you can be more sure they’re serious and don’t have an invisible, unadvertised cap.

Requires Personal Info: Personal Info includes things like First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Address, etc. Email alone is considered better than a Yes, since it may or may not be tethered to an individual’s identity.

Warrant Canary: Note that not all companies use effective warrant canaries. A “yes” in this field does not guarantee quality, only that they claim to have a system in place. Please research the details for yourself. Also note that there is some debate as to the effectiveness of a warrant canary between experts — as force can be used by governments to coerce companies into maintaining them.

Blocks SMTP: A “Some” in this field means that the companies’ support team may be willing to whitelist your E-Mail providers SMTP server upon request. Another possibility is the company supports some workaround method.

Blocks P2P: Services marked as blocking “Some” P2P, usually only blocks it on servers dedicated for streaming. Other possibilities are that P2P user is throttled — or worse banned. The user is responsible for researching further based on their needs.

# of Proprietary API’s Used on Website: This field is derived from a urlquery scan of each service’s website. Not all services are of equal concern (or even concern at all). This is a loose indication of how dependent on proprietary software a given company is.

Server SSL Rating: Run using Qualys SSL Labs — SSL Server Test Tool

# of Simultaneous Connections: A 10 in this field actually indicates no advertised limit for simultaneous connections. (Done this way for conditional formatting purposes only).

# of Servers: Note that some companies report physical server count, and some report potential virtual server count (to inflate the numbers). Do your own research on a case by case basis if this is an important metric for you.

Refund Window: Often, payments made by cash or bitcoin CANNOT be refunded. Users should research as needed.
['Alice Corona']
['VPN', 'Privacy', 'Surveillance']