Before we begin I would like to thank today's sponsor Nord VPN!

Okay, jokes aside it's been a second since I did one of these, and in part it was me looking into more information, and just dealing with life things. Please forgive me.

Now I need to address some misconceptions. VPNs do not enhance your cybersecurity, your browser should automatically update your http connections to https connections. If not, I can walk you through the steps to configure that. A VPN cannot keep your passwords secure, or hide your identity on a website you've logged in on. What VPNs do, is enhance your privacy, however do not confuse privacy with anonymity. For starters I need to talk a little about Domain Name Services, or DNS. This is basically a protocol necessary for internet access, and contains information like your IP address, and the physical location of your ISP. If you remember this link from the first blog: https://dnsleaktest.com/ you might recall that this information is available to every website you visit. Likewise your ISP can see and record any and all websites you visit, and anything else that you use the internet for. Now, if like me you don't like the feeling of someone watching your every move online, there is some hope, enter the Virtual Private Network(VPN).

How a VPN works is the VPN company will set up a computer server somewhere, and any VPN user can then connect to, sending encrypted data to the VPN host server. Your ISP can see that you are connected to a VPN, but not what you are doing online. The information you send to the VPN is decrypted once it reaches their servers, and sent out to the internet as if their computer was the one using the internet, all websites seeing their IP address, and location. It's for this reason, that despite the fact that I am nowhere near Seattle right now, that's where the Shard thinks I am located. The VPN server's ISP can see everything that the VPN server does on the internet, but cannot associate it with you, giving you a measure of privacy. Now some of you might have seen the obvious flaw in this system, that being that the VPN provider can see everything you do, and link it to you. That means that you need to have a lot of confidence in your VPN provider that they aren't recording any of that information, which is termed as a no-logs policy.

Since any VPN with a no-logs policy is effectively the same in terms of privacy as any other, there will be no levels given here, I will instead give a list of functional VPNs along with their various prices and advantages if any. There are also so many VPNs I cannot possibly list them all, so instead I'll just list some standouts here that have some interesting features.

Proton VPN

All paid plans have a strict no logs policy which has been backed up by annual third party audits. The VPN is open sourced and has severs in over a hundred countries around the world. They have a free plan available for your experimentation, while they don't promise a no logs on the free account I do still recommend it for anyone new to VPNs looking to learn more. Note that if you use Proton for email or another service, you might want to look into getting a different VPN provider, so that your information and your VPN aren't from the same company, however you can also bundle the purchases, which may be easier on your wallet, and thus be preferable.

Proton VPN's cheapest plan is for $71.76 which covers the first two years, renewing annually for  $83.88. Alternatively you can find it in the Proton Unlimited plan for $191.76 to cover the first two years, and $119.88 for each following year. https://protonvpn.com/pricing

Nord VPN

Probably the biggest name of any of these VPN providers, and easily one of the most famous outright. Nord has undergone six independent audits of its no-logs policy the latest being in 2025.  The report is only available to customers, but was successfully passed. Nord VPN has a host of options you can choose from, some plans will include things like cloud storage, fraud monitoring, and other services. I however only recommend the two most basic plans unless you have a reason to do otherwise. The basic plan starts at $83.43 for the first 27 months, and renews for $139.08 per year, with the Plus plan starting at $96.93 for the first 27 months and renewing at $179.98 per year afterwards. https://nordvpn.com/pricing/

Mullvad VPN

You might recall the Mullvad browser from previous entries, which was designed to be used together with this VPN. When used together their anti-fingerprinting abilities stack, making it basically an impossibility to tell any two users apart, if you use both, and don't do anything to undermine the protection there is little anyone can do to track you between websites, or tell you apart from another user. If you use the Mullvad browser this might be the correct VPN for you. Being open sourced, and having passed several third party audits this is generally a great VPN. It does come with quite the price tag, being 5 Euros a month, regardless of how long you have the VPN for, and no alternative payment plans(for comparison, most of the others charge the equivalent of less than $4 a month) https://mullvad.net/en/pricing

IVPN

This open sourced VPN service takes an interesting approach, in that they don't have any sort of affiliate program, which makes them hard to find. They do however have some interesting features, including options for a three year plan for $140, as well as other plans that include a self hosted DNS system, and a packet manager. This allows you to see all of your web flow, and to build your own web filter to block certain sites. Additionally there is no email required for account setup, which is really nice. All things considered this is one of the more unique options, and long term, one of the cheapest. https://www.ivpn.net/en/pricing/

OVPN

OVPN is one I know the least about, but they have proven in court that they don't track any information from users, in fact they claim that the entire system is built so that not only are logs not stored, but that they cannot be. Within their current legal jurisdiction they cannot be forced to log users data, and if the laws changed they have already promised to move corporate headquarters. Their cheapest plan is for three years totally $151.92. https://www.ovpn.com/en/pricing

There are several others, and I'll list a relevant site that has a Q&A style log of various VPNs along with some relevant information about them here: https://torrentfreak.com/best-vpn-anonymous-no-logging/

Of all of these I have listed(Not including the link above) the cheapest option is Proton's free plan, which does not contain full functionality. For full functionality the cheapest would be to use the first two years of Proton VPN, followed by switching to IVPN's three year plan.

Now should you use a VPN? Despite the advertising VPNs are not the end all be all of internet privacy, and it is far more important to change your browser and search engine as well as related apps as those can collect far more data from you than most other sources could. However, if you don't want to easily be tracked from site to site, or for a website you visit without an account to be able to build a profile of you, or simply just to get around geo-restrictions or government censorship, then VPNs are very helpful, and I highly recommend.