Ways a VPN Can Improve Your Online Security
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If you have spent any time on the internet, you have very likely heard of VPNs before, and that you should probably use them. Once an obscure network tool for computer whizzes, they are now big business and used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, with content creators advocating for them everywhere, from YouTube videos to podcasts, all advising people to use VPNs, as they protect your privacy, tighten your online security, or let you access streaming services from wherever you are in the world. Is all this true, and if so, how can VPNs be advantageous to you, and why should you consider using one? Good questions, and they will be answered right away.
What Is It?
First of all, what is a VPN exactly? VPN stands for “virtual private network”, and nowadays when we talk about them we refer to the commercial VPN type that sells a service to consumers. With that said, they also feature much broader applications and have been utilized for decades. When you switch on, for example, a USA VPN, you create an encrypted connection on your device that is often called a “tunnel”, and all your activity on the internet will be routed through it. It disguises your traffic as coming from somewhere completely different, which makes it much harder, albeit not impossible, for observers to identify you and track your activity.
Bypass Censorship?
Can a VPN help you bypass censorship? As a matter of fact, yes, it can; you simply have to connect to a server in another country, and you can browse the internet to your heart’s content, as if you were actually, physically located where said server is. Local content restrictions and censorship of any kind become almost non-issues for you with a quality VPN, and this is certainly the noblest reason to use one; you will see many VPN providers playing up their role in fighting censorship and protecting the freedom of the internet. This is important, as one of the purposes of the internet was the freedom to share and receive knowledge and information that should be accessible to all, and not only what the government or companies want you to know and think.
Avoid Bandwidth Throttling
Bandwidth throttling is a problem for some people and happens when someone’s internet speed is intentionally slowed down by their ISP or internet provider, who controls how someone’s Wi-Fi network functions. If you are faced with this issue, it may be when you browse certain websites or the like. But if you use a VPN, you can encrypt the traffic coming from your device, and then others cannot see which websites you are frequenting. You should keep in mind, however, that the websites you visit or internet activity you do are only one reason behind bandwidth throttling, and although a VPN removes this reason, it may still be throttled for other reasons, during certain times of the day for example, to free up bandwidth for other users of the internet provider.
Network Scalability
If you just started a business, a private network is great for helping you get it off the ground, but once you want to expand and grow the network, you may face serious costs you cannot meet just yet. But a VPN server will allow you to provide access to many employees and remote workers all at the same time, as well as run any applications and processes in a cloud environment and use the VPN’s secure tunnel to allow them access. This can range from something as small and simple as email to whole applications that are normally run on a PC, but now any employees that connect to your VPN can access another computer remotely to run the application they do not have on their own PC. It can be incredibly convenient especially if you are still starting and are not sure about how much you can afford to commit.
Avoid ISP Tracking
This is basically part of the privacy part, but your internet provider can track and log your browsing activity using the IP address of your device, and although that part is legal, it is unsavory, made all the more so when all that data is not secured properly. In that case, it can be accessed by shady individuals and organizations, and all your data is available to the highest bidder, sold to everyone who wants it, and can result in something as mildly annoying as you getting bombarded by advertisements and spam based on your browsing history, or as serious as identity theft or someone accessing your bank account or similar nightmares. But when you use a VPN, you use its remote server instead of your own, masking your own IP address and preventing your internet provider, and anyone else, from tracking you.
Malware?
Does using a VPN protect you against malware and viruses? Well, it can, but does not have to. Some VPN services, especially high-quality and reputable ones, do include some kind of protection against malicious data and files, as well as antivirus tools and additional safety nets for you. However, a VPN itself is not a protection application, all it does is mask your activity through the internet and otherwise does not intervene at all, which means you do not technically have any more protection from malware than you would if you were not using a VPN. It can be safer and does help dissuade some viruses from entering your system, as they may need your actual location to infiltrate it, but still, you should not blindly rely on a VPN to protect you and just download any movie or game from a torrenting website, no matter how suspect it may seem. Just stay vigilant on which websites you visit and especially what you download, and use a good VPN provider for some actual malware protection.
VPNs are touted everywhere as almost a necessity to access the internet, and in truth, this is not wrong. They can help you stay hidden from observers, tighten your online security, and bypass censorship, to name just a few benefits.
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