While many of the AntiVirus companies are now offering VPN service they are not for everyone.
First a couple of facts:
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network.
VPN’s are used for secure communication between 2 end points.
A VPN will slow down your connection.
There is encrypting/decrypting of data happening.
The VPN is connected to a shared server/router that has a set amount of bandwidth. You the end user will never know what that might be.
While the VPN will keep your data safe from you to the connection point you don’t know where it goes after that.
Legitimate cases for a VPN would be connecting to work:
In this case above the black line shows your internet service which will route through several routers to get to your work destination.
The red line shows the VPN. All data is encrypted from Your PC to Work. But lets say for example your internet is a 100 Meg service, but work is using a 50 Meg service (which is shared with 5 other employees (VPN users)) your speed will be considerably less than 100 Meg and at no fault of your ISP.
Lets use one of these unknown VPN services. The flow of your internet traffic would then look like this:
And while you feel protected because you are using a VPN, any traffic out to the net is not protected (the blue line shown above to a fictitious server xzy.com), you are routing all of your internet traffic through this VPN Provider. Who are they? Where are they located? Are they a legitimate company?
Further Reading: