I prefer Nord, as trail says they often have some real great deals for 1 to 2 years subs. But yeah stay away from free ones if the intent is to keep your information "private", that said the majority of the premium offerings from larger companies don't offer FULL privacy in reality - but they're a different calibre than free ones where you become the consumer and the consumed. If you're just looking to access sites that are restricted, you can sometimes get away with using free ones - but they're of little use for any serious use when it comes to bypassing country protections. Nord quite often gets caught by the Netflix and iPlayer VPN protection and that's one of the dearer ones.