(Emma Kumer/The Washington Post)

VPNs, or virtual private networks, are standard technology for many people in authoritarian countries to shield their online activity and sidestep government censorship online.

Now, more Americans are getting a crash course in VPNs — because of TikTok, an app from an authoritarian country.

After the Supreme Court on Friday declined to stop the law forcing a sale or ban of TikTok, the United States is on the precipice of a nationwide ban of the app as soon as Sunday. Ahead of that deadline, TikTok’s American fans have been trading tips on using VPNs to keep using the app if it goes dark.

If you are going to use a VPN, you need to make sure it’s one you can trust. And that ain’t easy. A search of mobile app stores and Google shows zillions of VPNs. It’s almost impossible to figure out which ones might be sketchy or snake oil.

Keep reading for advice on four VPNs that deserve your trust — and why they might be frustrating and imperfect.

Note: If you’re trying to protect yourself from surveillance by an intimate partner, law enforcement or government eavesdroppers, this VPN guide is not tailored for you. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a security and privacy advocacy group, has useful surveillance defense resources.

Stick with these 4 VPNs you can trust — but know they might not be foolproof

A VPN, which you can typically download as a smartphone app or use on a computer, bounces your web traffic through an encrypted route to computer networks around the world. As a result, it might look like your device is going online from Amsterdam when you’re really in Atlanta.

From our reporting, we believe that using a VPN will let people in the United States keep using the TikTok app that’s downloaded on your phone if a ban goes into effect as of this weekend. We’re not positive that VPNs will be effective workarounds, though, and we’ll test this option if TikTok flickers off.

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I consulted digital security and privacy experts, and past reporting from my colleague Geoffrey A. Fowler, to assemble this short list of four VPNs that you can trust.

I also put these VPNs through a test on an iPhone to judge how easy it was to sign up. And to simulate the experience we might have soon with a TikTok ban, I used each VPN to try to watch sports videos from the BBC website, which typically blocks streaming from users in the United States.

(In my test, I set each VPN to make it look like I was in the United Kingdom.)

A video on BBC.com was blocked from the U.S., but viewable with a VPN routing through Britain. (Washington Post illustration/TWP)

• Mullvad

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Cost: About $5.15 for one month.

Pros: Mullvad has a reputation among security pros as a gold standard. It was also the most pleasant to use of the four VPNs I tested.

Mullvad stresses that it collects very little information about users. It doesn’t even require an email address to sign up, and you can pay in cryptocurrency, if that’s your jam. (I used a credit card.) It was adorable that Mullvad assigned my iPhone a unique device name: “Cuddly Otter.”

• IVPN

Cost: The least expensive option was listed at $2.99 a week or $7.99 a month in the iPhone app.

Pros: IVPN also has a great reputation for security and privacy and offers anonymous options to sign up.

Hiccups: When I changed the IVPN settings to route my iPhone activity through computers in Britain, the BBC website still blocked me from streaming.

Some streaming services seek to identify people who are using VPNs to block them. Viktor Vecsei with IVPN said it can be a game of cat and mouse among websites (or authoritarian governments) to sleuth out the shifting computers used by VPN providers.

In other words: VPNs are not foolproof technology to access websites you otherwise can’t.

• Proton VPN

Cost: The paid options start at $9.99 a month, if you buy on the website. (Some companies charge less to make a digital purchase from their website versus their apps, but this information is usually a secret.)

Pros: While you should be wary of most free VPNs, Proton has a free option (with fewer features) and was recommended by digital security experts we consulted. Proton also says it has many thousands of computers globally, and that increases your chances of a good streaming experience.

Hiccups: The pricing tiers are a bit confusing.

• Mozilla VPN

Cost: $9.99 a month.

Pros: The VPN from Mozilla, which operates the privacy-focused Firefox web browser, uses the same computer network as Mullvad, which means it’s a secure choice.

Hiccups: The sign-up process offers lots of options for privacy, which is good, but that also made it cumbersome. I also still couldn’t watch BBC videos. Mozilla didn’t immediately comment.