Never trust free VPN or other products, nothing is free in this world. There has to be a revenue model because how else could you set up something like this. There are plenty of free VPN apps that use malware and tracking to sell you private data and track you. Securing people costs money through development, and you can never do that with free apps. Even though you don’t have to give any data, your IP is always known to the VPN operator and as far as no logs are concerned, that’s what they all say.
Looking into it, this is backed up by donations and has been around since 1999, and they have a Wikipedia page that lists several significant things they were a part of related legal things that happened.
Downloaded, Installed, Configured, Ran VPN Application and exhausted several IP Leak Tests with the following results…
IP Location Test: Passed
IP Leak Test: Passed
Web-RTC Leak: Passed
DNS Leak: Passed
DNT: Passed
Proxy: Passed
Tor: Passed
System: Passed
Browser: Passed
IPv4: IP not Blacklisted
IPv6: IP not Blacklisted
Ports: Failed (1 Open Port found in Listening State)
ASN: Could not be Verified (An officially registered autonomous system number detected by geo api)
Only negative I found through testing was the open Port found and while it seems a little fishy, this is sometimes a requirement for older-standing VPN services. That being said, one would have to wonder what information you’re leaking through said open port.
My Conclusion: While taking in account the positives and the negatives, the tests show that RiseUp VPN boasts an anonymity rating of 81%. What it ultimately comes down to is, do you trust it enough; your privacy and security with a service that you are not paying for? I suppose the answer is entirely different for every individual. Hopefully this will shed some light on the trust factor, in respect to riseupvpn. Number One Rule I follow though, never trust a service that you don’t pay for. Because if you’re not paying them directly, then you are paying them indirectly and they are making money off of your data, in other ways!
For those who would like to run their own tests, I found this free, online tools a valuable resource, to check against a VPN’s level of privacy.