Cloudflare Adds a Free VPN to its 1.1.1.1 App

April 1 is usually a day for terrible jokes masquerading as the truth, but Cloudflare says its latest announcement is the real deal. The company has fittingly chosen this hallowed day to announce that its 1.1.1.1 DNS service is getting a new feature: a free VPN. Again, it says this is not a joke.

Traditionally, Cloudflare has not been a very consumer-facing company. It’s a content delivery network (CDN) that offers hosting, DDoS protection, and other internet services to websites. It recently launched the 1.1.1.1 DNS app for everyone, allowing mobile internet users to get faster access to websites than they can with the default DNS.

A DNS (or domain name server) takes the web address you enter and connects you to the IP address of that website. It’s a vital but often overlooked part of loading your favorite site. Cloudflare has already become the number two mobile DNS behind Google, which it claims has twice as much latency.

Starting today, the 1.1.1.1 app has been updated with Warp, a free and optional VPN. Cloudflare’s pitch for Warp is that it’s for people who don’t know what a VPN is. That’s a roundabout way to say that it’s supposed to make the entire internet experience better rather than coming with trade-offs like increased latency or slower speeds. Warp routes all your traffic through an encrypted connection like other VPNs, but the company promises it’s going to be faster thanks to its massive CDN network.

You should be skeptical of any offer of free VPN services — the internet is overflowing with shady free VPNs that claim to preserve your privacy from websites and ISPs, but they’re just harvesting your data to make money. Cloudflare addresses this by explaining in detail why it’s launching Warp.

Cloudflare says that just like 1.1.1.1 itself, Warp won’t retain any user-identifiable data, and it will use outside auditors to ensure this is the case. On the business side, there will be a premium version of the service called Warp+ that costs money for even faster connections. It also hopes to develop Warp into an enterprise-level VPN offering in time. Lastly, Cloudflare’s core business is making its customers’ content easier to access, and Warp helps with that mission.

While Warp is available in the app starting today, there’s a waitlist to get access. You can join it from the 1.1.1.1 app.

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