I think we can all agree by now that there's no perfect privacy online.
The whole point is to get as much privacy as possible/manageable. Which is a
legal right.
From there, Tor is not perfect either. It's slow, and some (many?) exit nodes
are wired.
Plus, for the average user, online behavior gives away some decent data. To
really use Tor properly, it's not convenient for daily use. It feels more
adapted to special situations.
As for a VPN, at least it can run most of the time without too much headache.
It's indeed not perfect, but it's at least something. Online behavior remains
important.
VPNs cannot make online connections completely anonymous, but they can
usually increase privacy and security (from Wikipedia). Mainly thanks to
encrypted data. Some metadata can be figured out, but the data itself is
still encrypted.
So, free vs non free VPN ?
Chances are that if it's free, you're the product. Which can be also true if
you pay for it (but less likely, since there's an incentive not to do so).
Is there a way to know if such a company leaks data or not? It seems very
unreasonable to rely solely on online users reviews. It's like buying tap
water marketed as a super remedy to all pains in the old west. How am I
supposed to know that I'm actually logging into a real service? And to know
if my data is safe or not?
As for the legality of such tools, the legislation in europe and north
america seems to not go in the right direction. Thankfully, freedom and
privacy are taking more space in the public debate.
I'm reading about no log VPNs right now, I don't know yet how legal it is,
but it seems safer.
