5 Signs You’ve Found the Most Secure VPN – The Apopka Voice

By Emily Walsh

Are you working from home and need to secure your company data? Maybe you are in the journalism world or trying to blow the lid off government corruption and need to protect your identity? These scenarios, and many more, require top-notch security, and a VPN is a great way to achieve that. Fortunately, you dont need to be a tech wiz to find the most secure VPN for the job.

If youre short on time, heres a list of secure VPNs from ProPrivacy. Each one of their recommendations ticks all the boxes for privacy and security. Read on for the details so you know what keeps your data safe and sound.

Even the most secure VPN isnt perfect, but thats why safety features are a thing in engineering. Lets say you have trouble connecting to your providers server, or your VPN connection drops for whatever reason and you dont notice until later. Any cyber criminal worth their salt can take advantage of that small window of opportunity.

Since your network traffic isnt encrypted (i.e. obfuscated) by your VPN, you can be the victim of a man-in-the-middle attack. This is especially the case if you use an unsecured Wi-Fi network. In fact, due to some security flaws in modern Wi-Fi encryption protocols, even password-protected networks arent as safe as you think.

This is where the kill switch comes into play. This feature automatically stops all network traffic until you can safely reconnect to the VPN preventing any accidental data leaks.

If you werent aware, many ISPs have been caught selling your data to the highest bidders. VPNs encrypt your traffic so not even your ISP can snoop on your browsing behavior. However, your VPN provider can see the websites you access and which of your apps access the Internet so youd better pick someone reliable to protect your data.

One way to know if your provider is trustworthy is to look at their data logging policy. No-logs VPNs dont keep tabs on your browsing behavior, meaning your online data wont be exposed to potential hacking incidents. Nor do you risk your data being seized by restrictive governments.

Bonus points if they dont keep connection logs either. They are relatively harmless on their own, as they only show non-identifiable data such as connection times, the amount of data used, etc. However, connection logs could leave you open to a traffic correlation attack which is sometimes used to break the anonymity of TOR users.

Claiming they keep no logs in their privacy policy is nice and all, but having that fact verified is even better. This could be done through two methods:

Nothing useful could be found in either case, because the providers dont keep any logs.

The 5/9/14 Eyes alliance is a group of countries whose intelligence agencies collaborate and share information. This wouldnt be a problem in itself until you realize they also share data about their own citizens. Moreover, the countries that are part of this collective tend to have dystopian surveillance programs in place (see the UK Investigatory Powers Act).

Ideally, the VPNs jurisdiction should have strong privacy laws (for example, no mandatory data retention). ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a small territory with no data retention laws. Furthermore, other countries (such as the UK or the US) cant compel BVI companies to share data about their users.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. The US is a major player in the 5 Eyes alliance, and Private Internet Access is a US-based VPN. However, theyve had the security of their service proven twice, as seen in the previous section.

VPNs encrypt your data using complex mathematical equations. The only way that data can be read is by having the correct key to decrypt it. Now, if a VPN used a single master key to encrypt your data and a hacker got their hands on that key, they could intercept everything thats being encrypted with it.

Perfect Forward Secrecy solves that by using a different key for each session. Say, you log into your VPN in the morning before work to make a quick online payment then log off a few hours later. When you log back in, the VPN will use a different encryption key.

Of course, thats just one example. Some encrypted messaging apps can generate a new key for every message, as described in the Wired article linked above. VPN providers like ExpressVPN use dynamic encryption keys that change every 60 minutes if you tend to browse the web for longer periods.

In the unlikely event that a hacker obtains one key, all they could see is the data for that specific session. Its still not an ideal scenario, but certainly not as bad as if they could continue to spy on your online activity with the master key.

We could also talk about how secure VPN clients shouldnt expose your IP address through things like WebRTC or DNS leaks. Although, truth be told, we consider IP leak protection to be a bare minimum for a quality VPN provider.

Other than that, the encryption protocols they use in their software are another deciding factor. Most providers nowadays offer OpenVPN, which is widely considered the most secure VPN protocol out there. As such, we couldnt include it as much of a distinguishing feature though its good to keep in mind for your research.

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5 Signs You've Found the Most Secure VPN - The Apopka Voice