What do free VPNs live for?

Question

VPN

Actually, free VPN services are charity, or do they provide some kind of paid services, or something else?
For example, I downloaded Opera VPN to my smartphone, and there is not a hint of extorting money from the user.

Answer 1

There are several ways to monetize:
In any case, it's better to find 2-3 friends and raise an instance for $5 per month, it will be safe and no more expensive than a cup of coffee.

Answer 2

Oh, does it work?

Answer 3

A relatively honest service will most likely have speed/traffic/country restrictions, let's call it demo access.
And so everything was said correctly above - starting from the drain of information, ending with attempts to mix in advertising / redirects.

Answer 4

With the money received from draining your traffic
xD

Answer 5

Maybe on sales of the main product? Suppose, on a free account, the speed is within 5Mbps, but what kind of money has it already 100Mbps? :)