Security

The Top 3 VPN Services For Android (2024 Edition)

When it comes to subscription based VPN services, there are a few things to look out for when selecting a quality provider. This guide helps you choose the best option for your specific needs.

Published

3 years ago

June 15, 2021

Joanna Melki

Unsplash

If you’re anything like us, you probably spend a great deal of your time glued to your smartphone or tablet. And with every activity on those devices involving an internet connection, it’s vital that our apps and data are secured from hackers and malicious snooping. In this article, we’re going to give you a brief overview of why you need to protect your online activity with a VPN, and then review three of our favorite VPN services for Android.

So What Exactly Is A VPN?

VPN is the acronym for “Virtual Private Network”. When a VPN is installed on your Android device, instead of connecting to the internet directly, the phone or tablet will first connect to the VPN’s server, which will then connect to the wider internet.

In effect, the VPN acts as a go-between for connecting to the web, creating an encrypted “tunnel” that prevents third parties from snooping on your data. When connected to a VPN, you’ll be able to do all of the normal things you might want to do on the internet, using an external IP address through a server that masks your real location.

Why Use A VPN On Your Android Device?

When you’re out and about in public, you almost certainly use your phone or tablet to connect to free WiFi networks. These public hotspots can be targeted by hackers and fraudsters, who can intercept your data and in some cases, steal confidential information. If you regularly check your banking apps, log in to social media accounts or send emails whilst on a public network, you have a very real risk of having your data intercepted and stolen.

Also Read: Is Your Phone Hacked? How To Find Out & Protect Yourself

With a VPN in place, your data and browsing activity are kept safe, because everything that you send or receive on your device is funneled through an encrypted connection to the VPN’s server.

In addition to WiFi security, a VPN hides your location, IP address and browsing history. That means that your phone carrier or internet service provider are unable to view and log your entire browsing history. It also means that you can spoof being in a different country, giving you access to region specific content on Netflix and other services that isn’t available in your part of the world.

Are VPNs Difficult To Use?

Absolutely not! Most VPNs these days are extremely simple to use. Once you’ve paid for an account, all you’ll need to do is download the accompanying Android app and enter your login details.

There’s little or no technical steps required to get up and running. You’ll simply have to decide upon a server location and whether you want to have the VPN running all the time. After that, your device will work as normal and you shouldn’t even notice that the VPN is there.

How To Choose An Android VPN

These days, there’s a huge selection of VPN providers to choose from. You can test out a free VPN service if simply want to understand how the technology works, but we’d suggest opting for a better quality paid offering, as you’ll almost certainly get faster speeds, and you won’t have to put up with annoying adverts or data limits.

When it comes to subscription based VPN services, there are a few things to look out for when selecting a quality provider:

Check that the speeds and response time are good.
Make sure the service doesn’t limit data.
Check the data logging policy.
Find out what encryption the company uses.
Make sure there are plenty of server locations to choose from.
If you’re concerned about privacy, research where the company is based.
Look for additional features like adblocking and multi-hop services.

The Five, Nine & 14 Eyes

“The Five Eyes alliance is an intelligence-sharing arrangement between five English-speaking democracies: the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It evolved during the Cold War” – BBC News

The arrangement later added Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Norway, becoming The Nine Eyes, and eventually Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden to create The 14 Eyes. These countries are known to actively gather information about their citizens and share it with each other when needed, effectively spying on their citizens. If you’re concerned about your online privacy, you should choose a VPN that’s based outside of these jurisdictions.

If that all sounds a little complicated, you’re in luck: We’ve tested a variety of VPN services for Android over the years, and we think we’ve narrowed it down to three subscription based services that each provide fantastic value for money:

ExpressVPN: The Best All Round Android VPN

Decent pricing, a large selection of servers around the world and a base in the British Virgin Islands make this popular VPN service a solid all-round choice. ExpressVPN logs a very minimal amount of data, and doesn’t collect any of your browsing history at all. In addition, the service works well with video streaming sites and even rotates your IP address to deter hackers and tracking.

Why We Like ExpressVPN:

148 locations and a massive 2,000 servers.
Registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Variable IP addresses.
Works well with Netflix.

Things That Aren’t So Great:

Only five devices can use the account at the same time.
Customer support isn’t always easy to access.
Can be slow if you’re a Mac user.
Good value, but not the cheapest option.

Pricing Options

ExpressVPN offers an introductory deal priced at $99.95 for the first 15 months of use, then the same price every 12 months after that. It’s also possible to buy a single month for $12.95 and 6 months for $59.95. There’s a 30 day money back guarantee if you decide that the service isn’t right for you.

NordVPN: The Best Android VPN For The Privacy Conscious

Nord VPN is a very popular service offering a wide range of speedy servers in multiple countries, and is based in Panama, meaning the company has no obligation to hand over your data to your government’s intelligence agency. With that being said, Nord doesn’t actually log your data at all, so there wouldn’t be much to hand over anyway!

Nord allows P2P sharing, works well with video streaming services, and even offered a multi-hop, double encrypted tunnel for extra peace of mind.

Why We Like NordVPN:

A really stable and mature Android app.
Great security.
Strong encryption.
P2P allowed.
Great value.

Things That Aren’t So Great:

Static IP addresses only.
Occasional iOS app connectivity issues.
Throws up more Google ReCapcha requests than others.

Pricing Options

Nord VPN offers tiered pricing just like many other VPN services for Android. There’s a month-to-month option for $11.95, a $6.99 per month option if you pay for a year up front, a $4.99 per month option if you pay for 2 years at once, and a $3.49 option if you’re prepared to shell out $125.64 for a three year plan.

CyberGhost: The Best Android VPN For Casual Users

CyberGhost is a great option for casual VPN users who are looking for a low-cost service for watching the occasional Netflix show in a different county, or browsing the internet in a café or airport.

CyberGhost has top notch security credentials with AES-256 encryption, an automatic kill switch that blocks the internet if connection to the VPN is lost, and really affordable pricing.

What We Like:

Great value.
Solid security and privacy.
Large list of servers.
Awesome customer support.

Things That Aren’t So Great:

Static IP addresses.
No multi-hop or split-tunneling.
More logging than other services.
Can be slow when used on desktop PCs.

Pricing Options

CyberGhost has 4 pricing tiers available: If you buy 3 years of service up front, the VPN works out at just $2.25 per month. This makes CyberGhost one of the cheapest VPN services for Android around. There’s also a 2 year, 1 year and monthly subscription, coming in at $83.76, $47.88 and $12.99 respectively.

A Paid VPN Service is Money Well Spent

With more and more of us connected to the internet 24/7, it’s becoming increasingly prudent to ensure that your cybersecurity is taken care of. Using one of the better VPN services for Android is a highly effective way to keep your online activities private and your data out of the hands off snoopers and thieves. Sign up to one of suggested services today, and stay safe out there!

Security

Can LLMs Ever Be Completely Safe From Prompt Injection?

Explore the complexities of prompt injection in large language models. Discover whether complete safety from this vulnerability is achievable in AI systems.

Published

2 months ago

September 18, 2024

ManageEngine

can llms ever be completely safe from prompt injection

The recent introduction of advanced large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini has made it possible to have natural, flowing, and dynamic conversations with AI tools, as opposed to the predetermined responses we received in the past.

These natural interactions are powered by the natural language processing (NLP) capabilities of these tools. Without NLP, LLM models would not be able to respond as dynamically and naturally as they do now.

As essential as NLP is to the functioning of an LLM, it has its weaknesses. NLP capabilities can themselves be weaponized to make an LLM susceptible to manipulation if the threat actor knows what prompts to use.

Exploiting The Core Attributes Of An LLM

LLMs can be tricked into bypassing their content filters using either simple or meticulously crafted prompts, depending on the complexity of the model, to say something inappropriate or offensive, or in particularly extreme cases, even reveal potentially sensitive data that was used to train them. This is known as prompt injection. LLMs are, at their core, designed to be helpful and respond to prompts as effectively as possible. Malicious actors carrying out prompt injection attacks seek to exploit the design of these models by disguising malicious requests as benign inputs.

You may have even come across real-world examples of prompt injection on, for example, social media. Think back to the infamous Remotelli.io bot on X (formerly known as Twitter), where users managed to trick the bot into saying outlandish things on social media using embarrassingly simple prompts. This was back in 2022, shortly after ChatGPT’s public release. Thankfully, this kind of simple, generic, and obviously malicious prompt injection no longer works with newer versions of ChatGPT.

But what about prompts that cleverly disguise their malicious intent? The DAN or Do Anything Now prompt was a popular jailbreak that used an incredibly convoluted and devious prompt. It tricked ChatGPT into assuming an alternate persona capable of providing controversial and even offensive responses, ignoring the safeguards put in place by OpenAI specifically to avoid such scenarios. OpenAI was quick to respond, and the DAN jailbreak no longer works. But this didn’t stop netizens from trying variations of this prompt. Several newer versions of the prompt have been created, with DAN 15 being the latest version we found on Reddit. However, this version has also since been addressed by OpenAI.

Despite OpenAI updating GPT-4’s response generation to make it more resistant to jailbreaks such as DAN, it’s still not 100% bulletproof. For example, this prompt that we found on Reddit can trick ChatGPT into providing instructions on how to create TNT. Yes, there’s an entire Reddit community dedicated to jailbreaking ChatGPT.

There’s no denying OpenAI has accomplished an admirable job combating prompt injection. The GPT model has gone from falling for simple prompts, like in the case of the Remotelli.io bot, to now flat-out refusing requests that force it to go against its safeguards, for the most part.

Strengthening Your LLM

While great strides have been made to combat prompt injection in the last two years, there is currently no universal solution to this risk. Some malicious inputs are incredibly well-designed and specific, like the prompt from Reddit we’ve linked above. To combat these inputs, AI providers should focus on adversarial training and fine-tuning for their LLMs.

Fine-tuning involves training an ML model for a specific task, which in this case, is to build resistance to increasingly complicated and ultra-specific prompts. Developers of these models can use well-known existing malicious prompts to train them to ignore or refuse such requests.

This approach should also be used in tandem with adversarial testing. This is when the developers of the model test it rigorously with increasingly complicated malicious inputs so it can learn to completely refuse any prompt that asks the model to go against its safeguards, regardless of the scenario.

Can LLMs Ever Truly Be Safe From Prompt Injection?

The unfortunate truth is that there is no foolproof way to guarantee that LLMs are completely resistant to prompt injection. This kind of exploit is designed to exploit the NLP capabilities that are central to the functioning of these models. And when it comes to combating these vulnerabilities, it is important for developers to also strike a balance between the quality of responses and the anti-prompt injection measures because too many restrictions can hinder the model’s response capabilities.

Securing an LLM against prompt injection is a continuous process. Developers need to be vigilant so they can act as soon as a new malicious prompt has been created. Remember, there are entire communities dedicated to combating deceptive prompts. Even though there’s no way to train an LLM to be completely resistant to prompt injection, at least, not yet, vigilance and continuous action can strengthen these models, enabling you to unlock their full potential.