What You Should Know About Google One VPN
What You Should Know About Google's Virtual Private Network
If you pay for Google's cloud storage, you may be eligible to use the Google One VPN.
VPNs preserve your surfing privacy by hiding your online activity and making it much more difficult for websites, internet providers, advertising, even a hacker sitting behind you at a coffee shop to see what you're doing. VPNs are generally beneficial, and Google provides one free of charge provided you pay for storage. Is it, therefore, something you should employ?
Google's VPN, dubbed VPN by Google One, is exclusively available to Google One customers—those who pay Google for more cloud storage beyond the 15GB that everyone receives for free. Users on the 100GB ($2 per month) and 200GB ($3 per month) plans do not need to pay for 2TB ($10 per month) or more of storage.
Google's VPN, dubbed VPN by Google One, is exclusively available to Google One customers—those who pay Google for more cloud storage beyond the 15GB that everyone receives for free. Users on the 100GB ($2 a month) and 200GB ($3 a month) plans do not qualify for the VPN advantage since they do not pay for 2TB ($10 a month) or more storage.
If you absolutely want to go all out, you can pay $150 per month for 30TB of storage. However, if you've signed up for a plan with 2TB of storage or more—what Google refers to as "premium" plans—you'll be able to use the Google One VPN on your computer.
If you really want to go all out, you can go all the way up to 30TB for a monthly fee of $150. However, you'll be able to use the Google One VPN on your phone if you've signed up for a plan with 2TB or more of storage—what Google refers to as "premium" plans.
It couldn't be much easier to enable the VPN. Open the Google One app for Android or iOS and scroll down the Home tab's choices to see an Enable VPN button among the advantages you're eligible for. The next page allows you to turn the VPN on or off, as well as indicate which apps should not use it (in case any of them have problems connecting).
What you don't get with the Google One VPN is a lot of configuration options: You can't pick which servers to connect to or pretend to be someplace else in the globe because Google does it all for you (sites will still perceive you as originating from the nation you're presently in when you appear online). A more comprehensive VPN bundle may be preferable if you want more flexibility.
When your phone is connected to a VPN, you’ll see a persistent notification.Screenshot: Android
Furthermore, Google maintains and operates the VPN tunnel to which you are connected. Google guarantees that it will "never utilize the VPN connection to track, log, or sell your browsing activity"—in other words, your online actions will not be recorded in addition to what Google currently does. Google issued a white paper on the subject if you want to learn more about the technical intricacies of their VPN.
Because you're effectively placing your surfing behavior into the hands of the VPN operator, using any VPN requires a certain level of confidence. Most of them, including Google, will pledge not to store permanent recordings of this behavior, but it's difficult to verify this unless you sneak into their data centers and check around.
It's an issue of whether you trust Google to keep your surfing history private (which may already be logged by Chrome and the other Google services you use). Using the Google VPN will not prevent Google from tracking what you view on YouTube, what you search for in Chrome, and where you travel on Google Maps.
Last year, Google hired NCC Group, an independent firm, to examine the security and privacy features included into Google One VPN. The research revealed a number of issues, but Google quickly addressed the bulk of them, and the Google VPN was given a thumbs up in terms of security and privacy.
The assessment says, "NCC Group judged the product to have a highly solid security posture." "The consulting team discovered that by combining current operating system libraries with strong, openly standardized cryptographic protocols, Google was able to develop a VPN that provides users with instant network traffic security advantages."
It's important to remember that no VPN is completely immune from evil actors, especially if those terrible actors are also VPN workers. In this respect, the auditors noted that the Google One VPN was similar to other VPNs, but that measures were in place to "impede" malevolent personnel from accessing data without authorisation.
You can easily turn on and then snooze the Google VPN.Screenshot: Android
"While the supplemental cryptographic privacy protections did not categorically eliminate the opportunity for Google to violate its privacy claims," the report stated, "they did provide a framework within which the application can provide authentication and authorization for users without sending identifying information to the VPN nodes."
Another issue mentioned by Proton, the firm behind ProtonMail and other technologies, is Google's VPN. The concept of what a VPN is meant to be, according to ProtonMail creator Andy Yen, is in contradiction with Google's advertising and data profiling business, stating that "the fundamental purpose of a VPN is to avoid the sort of monitoring that Google participates in on a large and unprecedented scale."
Because the usage of VPNs is hurting Google, the company's decision to provide its own software might be interpreted as an attempt to snare some of that data—even though Google won't be able to follow you as thoroughly as it would if you didn't use one at all. Google executives may have reasoned that since people are using VPNs, they may as well be using Google's.
Another reason to avoid using any VPN, even Google's, is the effect it has on your connection speed. Google claims that its "best-in-class network design" will keep your data flowing rapidly, but you'll have to test it out for yourself to see whether it has any effect on web surfing or app use. Using a VPN consumes extra battery life and data, which is something you'll need to keep track on on a regular basis.
When everything is said and done, using a VPN when you connect to the internet is a good idea if you want to safeguard your online privacy and security as much as possible. The second question is who you trust the most not to look into your data and to manage it responsibly—and whether you go with Google or one of the other VPN providers, we recommend conducting as much research as possible on the firm behind your encrypted online connection.