SECURITY & PRIVACY
Password Manager
DITCH LastPass www.lastpass.com
LastPass is another once-great tool that now applies significant restrictions to its free version. Since this time last year, you’ve only been able to access your passwords on your computer or your mobile device. If you want to sync your login details across your PC, phone and tablet – as you previously could for free – you need to pay $54 a year for LastPass Premium. That plan helpfully alerts you when your passwords are involved in a data breach, but then so do Chrome and Edge, which sync your passwords across devices for free.
LastPass has also suffered several security scares – last December, many users received warning emails about unauthorised account access, and although LastPass denied any passwords had been compromised, and blamed errors in its alert system ( www. snipca.com/40993), you expect more peace of mind from a service that’s supposed to keep your data safe.
REPLACE WITH Bitwarden https://bitwarden.com
Bitwarden offers a choice of plans, for both business and personal use, but its basic free account gives you the core features you need to store and secure all your passwords, payment-card details and identity information. Most notably, this includes the ability to sync your data across unlimited devices using Bitwarden’s browser extensions, desktop and mobile apps ( www.snipca.com/40995), and web vault, without paying for the privilege.
Bitwarden’s interface looks similar to LastPass, so you won’t have much trouble getting used to it, and you can easily import data from that service and other password managers (including your browser’s built-in tool). Bitwarden also generates secure passwords and passphrases (see screenshot below left), and because it’s open source, any bugs and flaws are quickly spotted and fixed.
VPN
DITCH TunnelBear www.tunnelbear.com
There’s plenty to love about this free VPN, including its friendly design (with cute bear animations), plain-English privacy policy and useful features such as GhostBear, which disguises the fact that you’re using a VPN. The problem is that the free version of TunnelBear only encrypts 500MB of your data each month, which will be rapidly eaten up by streaming and downloading. Yes, the idea is to get you to subscribe, for US$4.99 a month, so you can enjoy unlimited data, but the free allowance hasn’t increased since TunnelBear launched 11 years ago. Also, its selection of free servers is rather meagre.
Unlike many free VPNs, Windscribe doesn’t log or sell your data
REPLACE WITH Windscribe www.snipca.com/41004
Like TunnelBear, Windscribe would prefer you to subscribe to its VPN, for $4.08 a month, but its free plan is so generous that you shouldn’t need to. It gives you 10GB of encrypted data per month – 20 times that offered by TunnelBear – and access to servers in 10 countries including the US, Canada and Australia.
Windscribe can be installed on desktop PCs and mobile devices, in Firefox and Chromium browsers, and on your router and Amazon Fire TV stick. Notable features include a built-in firewall (see screenshot below), support for peer-to-peer file sharing and ‘split tunnelling’, which lets you run specific programs in the VPN so you don’t bust your data limit. Unlike many free VPNs, Windscribe doesn’t log or sell your data, and upgraded its security last year after Ukrainian authorities seized its servers (unrelated to the Russian invasion).
Privacy Tool
DITCH DoNotSpy10 www.snipca.com/41005
When Windows 10 launched in 2015, it was swiftly followed by several programs that let you tweak its privacy settings to stop Microsoft spying on you. DoNotSpy10 was one of these tools, and although it’s been regularly updated over the years, it’s not worth installing now and should be uninstalled if you already have it. Not only does its interface look dated and ugly, but the free version doesn’t let you save your preferences as a profile – for that you need to pay at least US$5 for the Pro version – and there’s little guidance about what you should and shouldn’t disable. We doubt that the program’s claimed 1.6 million users are eagerly awaiting DoNotSpy11.
REPLACE WITH O&O Shutup10++ www.snipca.com/41006
Recently updated to support Windows 11 as well as 10, this excellent free program gives you total control over your PC’s privacy settings, so you can avoid sharing more data with Microsoft than you want or need to. It provides a comprehensive list of Windows settings you can click to disable specific features that collect your data, including options in Edge and Microsoft Store apps; block ads and ‘suggestions’ in Windows; turn off tools you never use, such as Cortana and ‘Meet now’; and decide which updates to install automatically. Unlike DoNotSpy10, it recommends which settings should and shouldn’t be changed, lets you apply all tweaks at once (see screenshot above) and creates a system restore point beforehand.
Video Downloader
DITCH Freemake Video Downloader www.snipca.com/40996
“Named #1 free YouTube downloader for 10 years,” boasts this old program’s website, “loved by 93 million users”. But Freemake fails to mention that many people dumped Video Downloader once it started installing unwanted junk, including the notorious adware OpenCandy. Although it’s since cleaned up its act, the software has found other ways to irritate users, such as adding a big watermark of its logo to videos and making downloads painfully slow unless you upgrade to its pid-for version. Pop-up adverts for the Freemake Mega Pack, which costs US$59.95, are now plastered across the program, making you wonder if Freemake should change its name.
REPLACE WITH 4K Video Downloader www.snipca.com/40998
Versatile, fast and easy to use, 4K Video Downloader is the best way to download videos from YouTube. Unlike similar free tools, it isn’t bundled with junk and doesn’t aggressively push its paid-for version, which lets you download unlimited videos (the free version limits you to 30 a day).
To download a video, simply copy the URL from YouTube and click the Paste Link button on 4K Video Downloader’s toolbar. Select the quality, up to the highest possible resolution of 8K Ultra High Definition at 60fps (frames per second), choose the format (MP4 or MKV) and specify whether to include subtitles (see screenshot above right), then click Download. You can also extract the audio as an MP3, M4A or OGG file.
Audio Editor
DITCH Audacity www.snipca.com/41021
This may be a controversial choice for dismissal, because Audacity is the best free audio editor available, packed with useful features and able to produce professional-sounding results. But since it was bought by MuseGroup last year, the program has faced controversy. First by collecting usage data to help improve its development (a plan that was abandoned following a huge backlash) and then with a new privacy policy that admitted it was collecting users’ IP addresses and basic system information. The Audacity team downplayed these changes, which were presumably implemented by the new owners, but they’ve made a once-reliable tool seem less trustworthy.
REPLACE WITH Ocenaudio www.ocenaudio.com
Until the privacy brouhaha mentioned above, the most common complaint about Audacity was that it contains many advanced options you’ll never use and others whose purpose isn’t obvious. Ocenaudio is a simpler alternative, with a streamlined interface, controls you can understand immediately and useful editing functions organised into logical menus.
As well as trimming tracks, Ocenaudio lets you copy and paste sections of sound, and apply effects and filters, including fade in and out, noise reduction and tempo and pitch adjustment. Additionally, the software makes frugal use of system resources so even large files won’t cause it to crash.
However, if you still prefer Audacity, there’s now a forked version called Tenacity ( www.snipca.com/41097),
which removes the privacy concerns, though this is still at the testing stage.
Video Editor
DITCH Adobe Premiere Elements www.snipca.com/41024
Adobe Premiere Elements is a fantastic program that’s packed with useful options for editing and perfecting your videos. Recent additions include Adobe’s Sensei AI technology, which automatically trims, reframes and adds music to your clips, while other automated features remove graininess, suggest edits and track specific objects.
The trouble is that it’s expensive – and that’s when you can even buy it, and that’s not always possible – so remains something of a luxury purchase in these belt-tightening times.
REPLACE WITH Kdenlive https://kdenlive.org
Kdenlive, incredibly, is completely free to use, with none of its many features locked behind Upgrade buttons, and is ideal if your video-editing needs stretch beyond basic editors such as Microsoft Photos.
It lets you import all your video and audio files and edit them on a sophisticated multi-track timeline (see screenshot above). You can apply several professional effects, insert transitions between clips and create your own soundtrack. Kdenlive is open source and frequently updated, and optimised to run on even lower-powered PCs. There is quite a steep learning curve to the software, but it provides an online user manual and help forum, and unlimited ‘undos’ so you can reverse any mistakes. If you find its interface overwhelming, try the simpler free video editor Shotcut ( https://shotcut.org).
Compression Tool
DITCH WinRAR www.win-rar.com
WinRAR has been around for 26 years and it’s definitely showing its age. Pioneer of nobody’s favourite compression format, RAR, it lets you create and ‘unpack’ file archives in many other formats. WinRAR is ‘trialware’, which means that after 40 days of using it for free, you’re prompted to pay $42.65 to keep doing so. However, this payment is never enforced, so you can continue to use it forever without registration. You shouldn’t, though, because the program is slow and prone to freezing, and has suffered at least two serious security scares in the past three years that could have allowed malware to run remotely. REPLACE WITH 7-Zip www.7-zip.org
Most compressed archives are in ZIP format, which means you can easily extract their contents using File Explorer’s built-in ZIP functionality, and create your own ZIP files by right-clicking items and choosing ‘Send to’ then ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’.
For all your other compression needs, you should install the speedy free tool 7-Zip (see screenshot below), which can handle all the main compression file formats (including ZIP, RAR, CAB, LZH and TAR). It’s open source, which means any bugs are quickly identified and fixed, and doesn’t have a paid-for upgrade to nag you about. 7-Zip also lets you create archives using its own 7z format, which offers enhanced encryption for your compressed files, to prevent unauthorised access.
Download Manager
DITCH JDownloader https://jdownloader.org
JDownloader used to be a great tool, but is now bundled with nasty junk and is flagged as malicious by eight antivirus engines on VirusTotal, including Avast, AVG and Microsoft (see www.snipca. com/41008). In fact, Windows blocked us from running it, without the usual option to bypass the warning. This is a shame because it’s still a good program, which makes it easy to download multiple files simultaneously and automatically resume downloads if you lose connection. However, the risk of downloading adware when you install or update JDownloader means it’s definitely one to avoid.
REPLACE WITH DownZemAll www.snipca.com/41009
Based on a popular, now defunct, Firefox add-on called DownThemAll, this free download manager lets you quickly download multiple files from websites, as well as YouTube videos and torrents. Simply click the download button on its toolbar (see screenshot above) and copy and paste the URL of the page you want to download from. DownZemAll will automatically detect all available files and let you choose which ones to download.
Alternatively, you can install its Down Right Now extension for Chromium browsers and Firefox ( www.snipca. com/41010) and either click the toolbar button and choose Download or right-click a download link and choose ‘Save link’. The program lets you queue downloads for later and limit their speed to prioritise more important files.
You’ll need to click ‘More info’ then ‘Run anyway’ to skip Microsoft Defender’s SmartScreen warning but, unlike
JDownloader, DownZemAll is safe to use.
Office Suite
DITCH Microsoft Office www.snipca.com/41022
Whether you pay $8.70 a month for Office 365 A5 or $52.20 a year for a Microsoft 365 subscription, using Word, Excel and PowerPoint is expensive, especially when so much office software is available for free. Office may offer all the features you need for working with documents, spreadsheets and presentations, but it’s also crammed with options you probably never touch, which are easy to trigger by accident and make its ‘ribbon’ interface more confusing.
Microsoft clearly realises this, because it now provides cut-down versions of Office apps, but the traditional Office suite now seems bloated and outdated. It’s also a frequent target for hackers, though the next version will finally fix the security threat posed by macros
(see www.snipca.com/41030).
REPLACE WITH OnlyOffice www.snipca.com/41023 Traditionally this is where we’d recommend LibreOffice ( www. libreoffice.org), but we’re actually more impressed by the latest version of OnlyOffice.
This open-source office suite consists of three Desktop Editors for working with documents, spreadsheets and presentations, which are combined in a single, tabbed interface that makes it easy to switch between them. OnlyOffice uses Microsoft Office file formats by default, so you can open and save files in DOCX, XLSX and PPTX format without the formatting problems you sometimes encounter in LibreOffice. Although its Desktop Editors don’t overwhelm you with unnecessary features, they support plug-ins (see screenshot above) that let you perform useful tasks such as inserting YouTube videos into documents. You can also set up an ‘OnlyOffice cloud’ to collaborate with others online.