Tech
How good are VPN apps in comparison?
- How good are VPN apps in comparison?
- Eight VPN apps in a comparison test
The situation should sound familiar to you: you want to check e-mails or send a Whatsapp at your holiday destination or on a business trip. In the absence of mobile roaming, you are dependent on a WLAN. It’s a good thing that many hotels, restaurants, bars, train stations, airports and shopping centers offer free hotspots. But how secure is this service?
If the wireless router is configured poorly, hackers can take control of it and read the data that is transmitted to and from connected wireless devices. The information on the mobile device is then no longer private. In addition, users with Android smartphones and tablets in particular run the risk of catching malware in an unsecured network. This gives hackers full access to the device and all data.
As handy as public Wi-Fi hotspots are, you should never use them without hesitation if you don’t want to reveal sensitive information about yourself too easily. The solution: Either you avoid unknown or public WiFi hotspots, or you protect yourself with one VPN software.
In a Virtual Private Network (VPN), the data is transported in an encrypted tunnel and cannot be viewed even in public networks. Incidentally, we selected the same eight VPN providers for the app test. If you take out a paid subscription, you can also use the VPN services on a variety of other devices such as PCs, notebooks, tablets and game consoles at no additional cost. We have therefore also listed the available clients in the table.
expert opinion
If you use your smartphone and tablet a lot in foreign and public WLANs, you should definitely use a VPN. The plus in security costs only a few euros a month and is therefore much cheaper than damage that can be caused by spied data. With a subscription to a VPN provider, you are not limited to mobile devices and can also protect Windows and Linux PCs and Macs. I can no longer imagine the Internet without a VPN.
Test procedure VPN apps
We tested the VPN apps on a Samsung Galaxy A13 running Android 12. The mobile connection ran via the Telekom LTE network with a maximum of 300 Mbit/s. For the WLAN test, we set up a hotspot on the FRITZ!Box 6690 Cable. We used the broadband measurement app to measure the data throughput from a smartphone with an active VPN to VPN servers in Germany, the USA and Switzerland. Design, equipment and operation as well as the price of the VPN apps were then included in the overall rating.
