Preface

Introduction

This preface is a relatively new addition to the series of articles that share the information that I have compiled, beginning in late 2018, during my quest to find a trustworthy VPN service for my personal use.

Avoiding biased reviews and disinformation

Unfortunately, during my search for a trustworthy VPN service, I came to realize that there is a great deal of misinformation and deception about VPNs that can be found on the World Wide Web. This disinformation is mainly promulgated by the plethora of VPN review sites that purport to delineate the quality of various VPN services via supposed thorough investigations performed by the sites’ self-proclaimed internet security experts.

Beware: almost all VPN review sites cannot be trusted. They are financially incentivized to provide glowingly positive reviews of VPN services that kick back a portion of a VPN subscriber’s fees to the VPN review site that has referred that subscriber. (Even worse, some VPN review sites are actually owned by VPN companies!) Consequently, there are very few honest and reliable reviews of VPN services that can be found when searching the web.

Nevertheless, the non-review content of some VPN review websites can be useful. General information about Internet security and privacy and the technology behind VPNs is usually not biased, and I use such information in my articles. Warnings should be heeded, however, about not trusting the reviews and rankings of specific VPNs that are published on the VPN review websites.

Update about changes to a previously reliable source

There are only a few principled sources of information about VPN services that I have found, and I referred to them repeatedly in the early versions of my series of articles. Unfortunately, after I wrote the articles in early 2019, the VPN commentary and comprehensive database of one of those trustworthy sources, the “That One Privacy Site” website, was sold to a VPN review website that is owned by a holding company which also owns at least four VPN services.

Due to this obvious conflict of interest, any reviews of and recommendations for VPN services on the VPN review website that bought out the previously reliable source must be considered to be biased and untrustworthy.

Beginning with the 2023 revisions of my series of VPN articles, I have decreased my reliance on the original data (of which I have copies) from the old “That One Privacy Site” website, partially because that data is becoming outdated but also because some other reliable sources about VPNs have become available.

For more background and information about this situation, please see the “That One Privacy Site” section of the “VPN Series Appendices” page.

Note that links in my VPN articles and the appendices refer to copies of the original trustworthy versions of the information from the old “That One Privacy Site” website.

Summary

The “Choosing a Trustworthy VPN” series of articles presented here is based on my assessment of multiple sources of information available about VPNs. Unfortunately, disinformation about VPN services and biased VPN reviews is pervasive. Nonetheless, reliable sources can be found, and my articles rely on those sources, as well as original research that I have done. I hope the information presented here is useful as you search for Internet security and privacy.

In the first article of this “Choosing a Trustworthy VPN” series, titled “Can VPN Review Sites be Trusted?”, we’ll further examine concerns regarding the reliability of VPN review websites.