Our Story
It’s pretty simple — we started The How To Guide back in 2014 as a way to help people protect their online privacy.
As governments and companies around the world increasingly track and limit our online movements, it’s a no-brainer why many people want to maintain ownership of their online presence.
We Are
A team of 265 cybersecurity researchers, writers, and editors, all dedicated to helping you take back your online freedom.
Based In
Over 20 countries across the globe
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Our Mission
It’s important to us that we not only provide expert reviews, but ones that are very much based on an average user’s experience. We perform ongoing tests to ensure we’re providing the most detailed and up-to-date VPN reviews and guides — and translate them into 29 languages.
As part of our mission to promote internet freedom to people around the world, we’ve also created free tools to help verify your online security. Overall, we want to be your trusted source when it comes to finding the best VPNs, so you can browse the web protected, and on your own terms.
The Team
Ben Lawson
Head Content Manager
Favorite VPN: CyberGhost VPN
Anneke van Aswegen
Content Manager
Favorite VPN: ExpressVPN
Ryan Jones
Content Manager
Favorite VPN: ExpressVPN
Kristina Joshevska
Content Manager
Favorite VPN: ExpressVPN
Denys Horbenko
Technical Manager
Favorite VPN: ExpressVPN
Our Values
Everything we do at The How To Guide is centered around providing value through honesty, transparency, and dedication. The way we test and review our VPNs is no exception, as we base all of our findings on real testing. Our main goal is to write in a way that’s not only honest, but easy to understand and relate to.
We pay full price for all the VPNs we test and use them the same way any consumer would, so we can provide reviews that are true and accurate to a real user’s experience. Our readers always come first, so we don’t accept payments to write positive reviews or ignore obvious flaws.
We do make money through affiliate commissions to pay the bills. If you click a link and purchase a VPN through that link, we may receive a commission from the sale — at no extra cost to you. We are in the same ownership group as some of the products reviewed on this site: CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, Intego, and Private Internet Access. However, this does not affect how we review products — we present the results of our tests transparently and do not accept payments to tweak these results. We recommend VPNs that we ourselves would (and do) use on a regular basis.
Our team of researchers is constantly testing top VPNs for speed, security, and reliability to shortlist the best all-round VPNs. This list takes into account the level of satisfaction reported by each reader following a purchase, as well as our commercial relationships with service providers. Our writers rely on these rankings when creating listicle pages, but they have the freedom (and responsibility) to make changes where appropriate. Following research into specific use cases, they come up with unique recommendations for different user needs.
Ultimately, our top priority is to help you achieve the level of privacy, security, and freedom you want online.
Review Methodology
As a leading authority on VPNs, we aim to build and maintain trust between consumers and the industry. Our expert team has published thousands of real user reviews that are backed by diligent testing and research. Find out more about our testing process here.
The Research Lab
The The How To Guide Research Lab works with data privacy agencies and computer emergency response teams (CERTs) to identify cyber threats and help protect businesses’ and organizations’ user data. We established our pro bono cybersecurity analysis team in 2019 with world-renowned analysts Noah Rotem and Ran Locar leading the charge. Since then, we’ve discovered and reported on serious security threats around the world. With this work, we’ve secured the data of over 100 million people already. To find out more about the work our research lab does, please visit our press page.93+
Cybersecurity Reports Published
70+
Company Breaches Discovered
BILLIONS
of Leaks Found