Blew $50 on that 'privacy VPN' from the gas station - total junk

Last weekend I was in Tulsa and saw a VPN prepaid card next to the register. Figured it would be a quick fix for hotel Wi-Fi. The thing barely connected and their "no logs" policy was just a paragraph of legal nonsense. I couldn't even get a refund because the card was already activated. Has anyone else fallen for those sketchy store-bought VPNs?

3 comments

3 Comments

claire_young761mo ago

The cashier at that gas station must have seen you coming from a mile away. I bought one of those "Wild West VPN" cards once and the fine print basically said they could sell my browsing history to whoever paid them first. The connection speed was so slow I could have just shouted my credit card number across the hotel parking lot faster than it took the VPN to load a single page. I'm pretty sure the "no logs" policy was written by someone who just learned English from a cereal box. At least you only lost fifty bucks instead of dealing with an actual data breach from using that thing. Consider it a cheap lesson in sticking to well known VPNs instead of gambling on gas station tech.

susan_adams1mo ago

I tried one of those gas station VPN cards a few years back on a trip and it was a total joke. The "24/7 support" number just rang until it disconnected, and the app kept crashing every time I tried to switch servers. What finally worked for me was just using my phone as a hotspot with a free trial of a big name VPN I already knew from a friend. Lost forty bucks on that card but it pushed me to actually research what I was buying instead of grabbing something shiny off a rack. Sometimes you gotta get burned once to figure out the real deal.

the_leo1mo ago

Ha! You know what, I actually used to think those gas station VPN cards were a smart hack for when you're in a pinch. Like oh cool, easy privacy for cheap. But reading this totally changed my mind, yikes. Sounds like you basically paid fifty bucks for a fancy wrapper and nothing else lol.