One account for the whole household

Take an ordinary evening. Your phone is in your hand, your partner's laptop is on the kitchen table, the tablet is on the sofa and the TV is on in the corner. All of them can be signed in to the same WrapVPN account at once, because no plan has a device limit, the free plan included.

What they can't do is share one connection. A VPN protects the device it runs on, so each needs its own copy of the app: the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, Google Play for Android phones and Android TV, and the Microsoft Store for Windows. A laptop using your phone's hotspot isn't covered by the phone's VPN.

The TV is the one people forget. An Android TV installs WrapVPN from Google Play just as a phone does, and signs in to the same account.

The plan, on the other hand, belongs to the account rather than to a device. Buy it once, and every device signed in to that account has it.

WrapVPN has no passwords of its own. You sign in with Apple or Google, and that sign-in decides which WrapVPN account you reach. Sign the TV in with a different Apple or Google account from the one you used on your phone, and the TV lands in a different WrapVPN account, without your plan.

Two cases catch households out. An Apple sign-in that hides your email address can create a separate account from a later Google sign-in, even for the same person. And on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, Sign in with Apple uses the Apple account that device is signed in to, so on your partner's iPhone it signs in as them, not as you.

The fix is to decide, before you start, which Apple or Google account the household will use, and choose it on every device. Google is often the simpler choice for devices that belong to different people, because you pick the account as you sign in.

Our Terms let you use the account within your household and don't allow sharing it beyond. Put simply, the people you live with are in. Your friend across town, your sister's family and your parents in their own home are not.

That's less of a loss than it sounds. Anyone outside your home can have their own account, on the free plan or a plan of their own, with their own weekly hours and their own sign-in. Nobody needs to borrow yours, and nobody's usage eats into anyone else's.

If you're the one who sorts out everyone's technology, the guide to setting your parents up with a VPN walks through doing exactly that in a single visit.

On the free plan, the account gets three one-hour sessions a week, shared by every device signed in to it. Every server location is included, and the allowance resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC.

Here's how that plays out. You connect your phone on Tuesday evening, which starts an hour, and it runs for the full hour from that moment, even if you disconnect after ten minutes. If the laptop connects twenty minutes later, it joins the same hour rather than starting a second one. Connect again on Wednesday and Thursday, and the household has used the week.

That's plenty for the odd café or hotel, and not much for a family. Once more than one person wants protection most days, a plan is the honest answer: weekly at $1.99 or monthly at $3.99, covering every device in the house.

Plans are bought in the App Store or Google Play, from whichever phone or tablet you like. Both renew until you cancel in that store's subscription settings, and there's no annual plan. The monthly plan may include a seven-day free trial for eligible new subscribers, and the app shows the offer before you confirm.

The family PC is the exception. The Windows app doesn't sell plans, so buy on a phone first, then sign in on the PC with the same account, and the plan is already there. Installing needs one administrator approval after the first sign-in, so have whoever looks after the PC to hand.

One more thing about the PC. While WrapVPN is connected, Windows blocks traffic that would bypass the VPN, so nothing slips out unprotected, and that can put the printer on the landing out of reach. Pause WrapVPN to print, and it resumes by itself.

Pick the household's sign-in, install WrapVPN on each device and sign in with it every time, then buy the plan once on a phone if the free hours aren't enough. Start with the phone in your hand, and work round the room from there.