Vodafone security with free VPN

[gipjon]

I remember reading a story about free VPN's but I did not know if it was true or not.

"when you are connected to a free VPN , you are also giving other users access to the web via your connection. so the free VPN software is acting as a VPN server when you are connected " 

I have often wondered if that was true or not because if someone else was doing, let's say downloading a pirate film using something like torrents then it could look like it's come from your connection. 

any ideas 

[Jayach]

That would definitely be true if you were using Tor, but whilst some "free" VPNs may use similar technology (I don't actually know if they do) it is certainly not true of all.

The thing you need to remember is if it's "free" you become the commodity. Don't forget whilst a VPN can conceal your identity from the rest of the internet including your ISP, the VPN themselves know everything you do, so you have to trust them not to be recording everything.

[Anonymous]

It all depends on how it's all set up!  "VPN" covers quite a range of different configurations, and if you expand the idea to tunnelling there are even more possibilities!