Warning: That free VPN app I used for 2 years just sold my browsing history

I got an email from my ISP last month about copyright notices I never expected. Tracked it back to this free VPN I had been using since 2022, thought it was protecting me. A security guy at the parts counter told me "if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product" and I laughed it off at first. But after digging into their privacy policy with a friend who does IT, I found a whole section about selling anonymized user data to third party ad brokers. Anyone else get burned by a free service that seemed too good to be true?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia_carter701d agoMost Upvoted

Did you check their privacy policy before or after you started using it?

the_patricia1d ago

julia_carter70, you ask about checking the privacy policy and honestly, who reads those things top to bottom? I glanced at it when I first downloaded it but it was like 30 pages of lawyer talk. I get the whole "you're the product" warning people throw around but come on, some of us use free stuff because we're broke, not because we're dumb. And "anonymized user data" could mean anything - your browsing habits with your name crossed out isn't exactly someone tracking your credit card purchases. Feels like people get real dramatic about this stuff sometimes but half the time it's just them being mad they didn't read the fine print.