The real alternative ultimately lies in the trial versions that we can have of known and recognized VPNs. If you want to hide your IP address, you must use a paid or free VPN. In the meantime, if you’d like to know your public Internet Protocol or IP address, simply search the query “ what is my IP address” and Google will show your public IP address. If you have to access potentially sensitive information with these tools, needless to say that it is mandatory to look into them. It is sometimes long and tedious but you learn a lot of things.
It is always extremely important to read the full terms and conditions of use of these VPNs. While some may be good and respect the privacy of Internet users (just by funding themselves through ethical advertising), we cannot take the risk of recommending them to you. Nevertheless, there has been a real increase in recent years.
The scandals surrounding free VPNs are recurrent and numerous. Note also that China prohibits the use of VPNs in theory, which makes the whole thing even stranger. They are also constantly developing for several reasons: they are profitable and it is a way to collect more and more information on users. These services are downloaded tens of millions of times from the Play Store and the App Store. How can we continue to believe in a reliable tool in these countries where, by simple request from the government, these VPNs must provide all user logs? The question still deserves to be asked. If these tools work without problem, we must admit that ethically this poses a problem. The vast majority of free VPNs are also located in this country where privacy does not matter. In countries like this where the government can control and verify just about everything, then your data can be used for much more. Where it gets worrying is when these services are located in China.
This information is in theory encrypted but these services can still sometimes see what transits on their servers. The latter then belongs to an external service that you do not always know but in which you trust. When you use a VPN, all of your information flows through a tunnel.