There are many free vpn like wireguard, openvpn, orbot and proton vpn which provides free vpn tunnels. Why Brave not integrating one of these
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We use a proper vpn provider (not a proxy), with good privacy. There is never a free lunch with “free VPN providers” you trade the price for your privacy.
Also Operas “Free VPN” is just a proxy, not a proper VPN
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Why they are proxies?
You need to ask them. This is for Brave, not to answer questions on other products/companies. That said, a lot of it is because of cost.
Yes and no. Nothing is ever completely free. Some are able to support by also offering premium tiers. But many others sustain themselves through collecting and/or selling your information, even if they claim they don’t. A good example of this is https://www.techradar.com/news/millions-of-free-vpn-users-records-leaked where they had announced they don’t collect your data but then a database containing this information was found.
It’s important to note that any VPN or service that’s going to keep you the safest and offer the best protections will have to be able to pay for their services somehow. If not from you, then where do you think the money is coming from? Without money, quality and safety drops.
But when talking of safety, let me link you to some pages you may want to check out things online, such as https://us.norton.com/blog/privacy/are-free-vpns-safe
Also part of what isn’t included, many free ones may also have IP or location leaks. So while you’re connected and think you’re safe, the sites you’re visiting can still see your location and other details.
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This is a good read about the differences:
but a regular proxy will, in fact, send your IP address to the website using the X-Forwarded-For header. After all, the proxy owners would not want to be blamed if you were to try to attack the website – this way, the website owners will know it was actually an attack coming from your IP address.
Also, about OpenVPN and Wireguard… they are protocols for VPNs, not VPNs, Brave/Guardian’s VPN use Wireguard on mobile. Brave is working to implement the same for Desktop instead of System APIs, especially on Windows where it causes too many issues.
Those protocols are in fact free, and there are even routers that can act as server/client or just server. But then, try to use a commercial grade router to try to achieve high speed connections, you sometimes can’t, because they need good processor and memory because of the encryption making connections slower, especially OpenVPN.
But, you always need to connect to a server, which you need to pay to get access to, so the famous VPN will give you a guide to connect to their VPN servers through OpenVPN and Wireguard or PPTP.
About ProtonVPN, well, it offers a free version, with limitations for only 3 countries.
But do you trust Proton?
I wouldn’t, for years I have read the same issues, over and over again with them.
For example:
how Proton has connections with the NSA and CIA, just how TOR is funded by government organizations and same as Signal messenger.
Can you really trust them because they say you should trust them? Will you trust tools where 3 letter organizations had something to do with its creation?
You can read more about it here:
You can use their free ProtonVPN, it’s your choice but free costs them a lot of money, so maybe you should start by wondering: Why are they so caritative giving things for free and losing money doing that?
About Brave VPN, well, Brave Company needs money, they don’t work for free, they hired many developers, and well, Brendan Eich has mentioned they are not a charity. Brave even has a Search Engine which limits their partnerships, like how Apple gets billions from Google and Mozilla gets 400million a year, Vivaldi gets money from Microsoft to have Bing as default, and Opera doesn’t even let you set your own Default search engine, you have to use what they say you should use as default because of partnerships’ $$$$$.
So what would be the gain to have Brave VPN as free? If you want Brave VPN, then pay for it, you will be helping Brave’s development unlike donating to Mozilla’s foundation, like many think they are doing. You will also get features you might want like Android Extensions, which is something that needs a bigger team that Brave currently has for the work to maintain it and stay in sync with Chromium updates. More money = more developers = faster development = Better Brave products, like the browser.
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