JANUARY 2022 PCWorld 65After the logging
policies, the next thing
you want to know is how
many servers the VPN
offers and how many
country connections it
has. The number of
servers provides an idea
of how much load a VPN
can take before slowing to
a crawl due to
overwhelming traffic.
The country
connections, meanwhile,
matter most to those who
want to spoof their
location; however, non-
spoofers should also make sure there are
connections in their home country. If you live
in Los Angeles, for example, and want access
to American content, then you’ll need a VPN
that provides U.S. connections. It won’t work
to try to watch Amazon Prime Video over a
Dutch VPN connection, because as far as
Amazon’s concerned your computer would
be in the Netherlands.
Some users will also want to research a
VPN provider’s peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing
policies. There are VPNs that block torrents.
Others turn a blind eye to them, but will sell
you out in a heartbeat should you be up to no
good. P2P is not our main focus here, but we
will note in each review whether a particular
provider allows file sharing or not.Ideally, a VPN will say it only keeps logs for
the briefest of periods. Some providers, for
example, only log activity in RAM during a
session or automatically send all records to
oblivion once they’re created. Other
providers may keep records for a few hours,
days, weeks, or even months.
VPN policies also vary when it comes to
personal information. Some VPNs want to
know very little about you, preferring that users
sign on with a pseudonym and pay with
Bitcoin. That’s a little exotic for most people,
which is why many services also accept PayPal.
Paying this way isn’t ideal for privacy, but it
means the VPN doesn’t have your payment
information on record—though it would be
available from PayPal.
A VPN can let you stream content from regionally restricted services
such as the U.K.-bound BBC iPlayer.