I'm having awful trouble getting a mod for Ghost Recon called Heroes Unleashed to work in multiplayer, where despite port forwarding seemingly everything and following instructions, it refuses to let us connect to each other, and a friend mentioned these 2 options, which I did some research on and saw it was all VPN related and stuff, which I have heard can be used for nefarious activities and has apparently caused trouble with certain steam accounts before. I am extremely protective of my account, so I just figured I'd ask the community, how dangerous is using these tools exactly? Am I putting my account at risk by using them for online gaming in any way?

If they are safe, is there a "best" option to go with?

Thank you.