Several surveillance laws were brought, each one harsher than the previous one, and the constant privacy breaches have made people start looking for the best VPN for France.
You might be wondering how did this happen, and what brought it up. Many have heard of the troubles of France, especially those connected to multiple terrorist attacks that happened over the last couple of years.
Simply keep reading, and we’ll explain how did these attacks brought anti-privacy bills, and also what’s the best France VPN for you to use in order to protect yourself.
France Anti-Privacy Bills And Legislations
Several years ago, in December 2014, France, or rather the French government, has decided to quietly pass a new law. This was a surveillance law, and it allowed them to collect any documents and info from the internet, especially phone call data, including the location, duration of the conversation, and even phone numbers.
Then next year, in 2015, another surveillance bill was brought, but this one was even more intrusive than the last. It even earned a critic from the Human Rights Watch. They commented on it and stated that it only served to extend the power of the prime minister and that its only purpose is to allow the government to spy on anyone if they think that there’s a suspicious pattern in their behavior.
The goal of bringing bills like this is to put the surveillance under the law that’ll say what can and can’t be done. However, in this case, as well as in many other countries since, the law was only used to hide the power that surveillance has already brought.
The general fear is that France is slowly but surely becoming a secretive and overreaching country that’s putting all of its hopes in strong surveillance.
Then came the terrorist attacks, and there were many of them. Suicide bombings, mass shootings, and even mass murder by a truck that went through the crowds during the celebration of Bastille Day. Something had to be done, and fast.
To deal with this, the French Socialist Party secretly created an illegal database with biometric data concerning over 60 million of their citizens. This was an illegal act, but it was still deemed necessary, and the only way they knew how to respond to the state of emergency that numerous terrorist attacks have left the country in.
This database was named Secure Electronic Titles, and it contains some amount of data of almost every person living in France. The data includes a photo, eye color, fingerprints, weight, geographical address, and even an IP address. As you can see, this is clearly a violation of the use of biometric data and indicates mass surveillance of the citizens.
This is a great problem for everyone in France who values their privacy. And with all that in mind, just add the fact that many streaming services aren’t available to the French internet users, including Hulu, Netflix, BBC One, and more.
With so much surveillance issues from one side and geo-restrictions from the other, it’s obvious that what the French need is a good, strong VPN.
What Is A VPN And What Can It Do?
VPN is short for Virtual Private Network, which is pretty much just what the name suggests. They are private networks, connected by their own private servers, which are being used to provide their users with safety, security, and anonymity.
All of the big VPN providers have their servers located in dozens of countries around the world, with the very best ones covering over 150 of them.
It’s important to have a lot of servers because more servers mean bigger network, as well as faster connections. Having many servers in a lot of countries is important for another reason.
When you connect to a VPN server, it gives you an IP address that’s considered local in the place where the server is located. And since IP addresses are used for several things, including for locating their user, having an IP address from somewhere else can trick the internet into thinking that you yourself are located there right now.
That’s why you sometimes get the error and a message that the website you’re trying to access isn’t available in your country. The website has already scanned your IP address, saw that you’re not in the area that it’s covering, and denied your request for access.
So, if you wanted to access Hulu from France, you wouldn’t be able to. However, if you used a VPN to connect to the server located in the US, you’d be able to unblock Hulu at any time, as well as anything else that the US region has to offer.
Still, no matter how great accessing restricted content can be, it’s still just a side-effect. The main purpose of changing your IP address is your security. And when it comes to security, no other service is capable of keeping you as safe as a VPN can. The main feature provided by VPNs outside of the IP masking is encryption.
VPNs are masters of encryption, and they use it to cover your entire data flow. They use the best protocols to create a secure tunnel through which your data flows through. With a security measure like this, nobody will be able to spy on your online actions, and this includes your ISP and even your government. Finally, your privacy would be truly private.
Other Features That VPNs Offer
The ability to encrypt your content and change your IP address is something that any VPN can do. It’s something that defines them as a service.
However, they do offer many other features, and when it comes to which ones, it depends on your choice. Most VPNs worth using don’t log your activities, which is one of the most important things.
Many of them also offer a money back guarantee, which allows you to get your money back if you decide that you’re not satisfied with the service. There are also:
- DNS leak protections
- Killswitches
- Different protocols for you to choose from
- P2P supporting
- Great customer support
- Unlimited bandwidth, and others.
Which VPN To Choose?
This is one of the most important decisions that you’ll have to make when it comes to VPNs. If you don’t have experience in dealing with them, they might all seem the same to you. However, the safety of your devices and your privacy largely depend on making the right choice here.
There are two types of VPNs – the ones you pay for, and the free ones. We advise you to never choose a free one. There are countless reasons why free VPNs aren’t good for you, but we’re only going to mention some of them.
For example, free VPNs almost always have a very poor security, and they aren’t reliable. If you put your trust into them, and they start leaking your data, you might get a lot of problems coming your way, depending on what you were doing, and on the laws of your country.
Next, free VPNs need to make money as well in order to keep working. And if you’re not the one that’s paying them, that means that they’re getting their money from someplace else.
Most of the time, they’re either recording your data and selling it to advertisers, or pretty much anyone else who wants it, or they’re bombarding you with third-party ads. In worst cases, they’re likely doing both of those things. So, this time it’s not just your safety, but also your privacy that’s on the line.
What About The Paid VPN?
If you think about it, paid VPN is just another service, just like anything else that you pay for. If they want to keep making money, they need to have quality, otherwise, they wouldn’t have customers.
That’s why you can always count on them to be at their best. There are many VPN providers out there, and many of those are brand new, only a few months old, and still underdeveloped.
There are also older ones, that are too well known, and they don’t work since websites blocked their IPs. That’s why you should be careful when choosing a VPN if you don’t want to waste your money.
We recommend five of them, and those are:
So let’s see what they have to offer.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN is preferred by many in the world and has thousands upon thousands of users around the globe. If you need it for accessing restricted content from France, you can be sure that it’ll do its part.
It has servers in over 78 world countries, which puts its network among the biggest ones, and their servers are on all of the right places. That makes this VPN very reliable.
It has several package plans for you to choose from, and the prices are very affordable as well. It will also provide you with 256bit encryption, which is among the top ones, and it also supports four best protocols, which are:
- OpenVPN
- PPTP
- SSTP
- L2TP/IPSec
ExpressVPN is available on multiple devices, and that includes:
- Mac
- PC
- Android
- iOS devices
- Linux
Its software is easy to use and very practical. And if you ever have any kind of problems, you can always contact customer support, that’s available at any time.
30-Days Money Back Guarantee
IPVanish
IPVanish is the next on our list, and this is also one of the best VPNs for France. It offers over 180 servers in more than 60 countries, and it’s also among the fastest ones out there, due to the fact that it owns the network it uses. This provides them with top speeds and makes this VPN the best one for streaming, online gaming, safe downloads and alike.
Other than that, this VPN also has multiple tunneling protocols for you to choose from, and it’ll allow you complete anonymity. The encryptions are strong, the bandwidth is unlimited, and the customer service is amazing and always reachable.
Also, there are many tutorials for you to check out in order to learn how to use all that this VPN has to offer. It also has a no logging policy, and the money return guarantee.
NordVPN
NordVPN is also one of the best choices for keeping your privacy private and yourself anonymous. It offers over 980 servers in more than 58 countries. Its connections are fast, and prices are very affordable. Other than that, they offer strong double encryptions which is unique for this provider, as well as multiple protocols. Speeds are great as well, and they offer both no logging, as well as money return guarantees.
There are also features like DNS leak protections, kill switch, unlimited bandwidth and others that are demonstrating just how much NordVPN cares about their customers’ privacy, security, as well as their comfort.
Nord also offers a software that’s easy to use, and even easier to set up, as well as a constantly present customer support in case you ever have any questions about anything related to their service.
HideMyAss
The fourth one is HideMyAss, which is a VPN with a big and obvious sense of humor. However, their network is among the largest ones in the VPN world, and they offer over 860 servers in more than 190 countries around the globe. Over 110,000 IP addresses are at your disposal at any time, which makes for some pretty impressive numbers.
All in all, if you want the ultimate access, HideMyAss is just the right VPN to make you a local pretty much anywhere in the world.
It offers many features that we’ve already seen in our previous entries, including:
- Money back guarantee
- No logging policy
- Very low prices
- Great speeds
- Strong encryption
- Simple-to-use software
They also offer a very well organized FAQ on their website, and the customer support is available at any time and can be reached by phone, email, or live chat. This is definitely a VPN worth using, and your money won’t be wasted if you decide to go with HideMyAss.
30-Days Money Back Guarantee
LeVPN
Finally, we have LeVPN as our final entry. It’s a very reliable and trustworthy provider with servers in 114 countries. It serves thousands of clients around the world, and there’s not much left to be desired.
Speeds are great, just like its network, an encryption. Multiple protocols are used here as well, and you have an option to switch between them at any time.
This makes for some amazing security, which isn’t surprising considering that this VPN was created by a team of information security specialists.
Along with this VPN come many awesome features, which include:
- Great software
- Unlimited bandwidth
- High speeds
- SmartDNS
- Combo of VPN and SmartDNS called HybridVPN
LeVPN is available on multiple platforms and devices, and its customer support is as good as everything else that this provider has to offer.
In short, LeVPN has everything that a VPN should have, and it does its job better than most, which is more than enough to put it on our list.
Can VPNs Be Used For Torrenting
The answer to this once again depends on your choice of VPN. Many of them are perfectly fine and capable of supporting torrenting and P2P file sharing in general.
However, there are also some of them that don’t cover that part of your connection, and if you try to use torrent client while one of those VPNs are protecting you, you will be vulnerable. It’s a good idea to research a VPN of your choice, and thoroughly at that.
All of the ones that we’ve recommended earlier work perfectly with BitTorrent clients, so you shouldn’t worry if one of those is what you’re going to use.
Conclusion On The Best French VPN
The situation in France isn’t very good at the moment, especially when it comes to online privacy.
The problems that the country is facing now, as well as the ones from the recent past, are helping us understand these measures to a point, but the fact is that its citizens don’t feel safe.
This is true for both real and virtual world, and the only way for them to keep at least some control is to get a VPN and decide for themselves what they can and can’t access. And while they’re at it, they might as well increase their online safety.
VPNs will help with this, and we’ve already discussed what their abilities are. The most important thing is stopping privacy breaches, and controlling your own privacy, and there’s no better way to achieve that then to protect yourself with strong, reliable VPN provider.
