If you work online, doesn't matter from your home or office, you must invest in keeping your online activities private. Trust me, you don't want any third-person prying eyes on your online activities. To protect your cyberspace from threats and prying eyes, a VPN is a great tool. While using public Wifi, you should especially be careful. Attackers can fool you into exposing your credentials via phishing, and various other techniques.
If you use a VPN, your online traffic will be encrypted, hence preventing information breaches. Besides that, some websites constantly spy on you, such as Google and Facebook, keep their users' location and behavioral patterns for targeted advertisement. A VPN service also saves you from all this, thereby enforcing strict measures to safeguard your privacy.
There are plenty of websites that send trackers to log user information. To avoid surveillance from such web apps, you should consider using a Virtual Private Network. Whether you need a VPN or not, it boils down to personal choice and how aware you are of cyberspace. However, this article will discuss more on VPNs and real-life scenarios for why you need a VPN.
What Does a VPN Provide?
Before proceeding to why you might want a VPN, it would be best if you have a keen understanding of what a VPN is. Well, in short, a VPN is a service that routes your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel that connects to a remote server provided by the VPN service provider.
During the process, the VPN masks your IP address with the IP address of the remote server. Thus, making your device anonymous to the websites, a VPN will trick the websites into thinking that you are the user using the server and will get no information on what device you are using.
Even if you are connected to an insecure public Wi-Fi network, a VPN will encrypt your online traffic, hence blocking any prying eyes that intend to extract information. Despite the perks of a VPN, there are certain things that a VPN can't do.
What VPNs do not Provide?
If you are thinking that you can gain complete anonymity online while using a VPN. I suppose you might be wrong here, though VPN masks your real IP, preventing it from recognizing your device. However, many VPN services do keep logs of the user's online activities.
If your VPN service provider doesn't record the user activities, websites can still recognize a user via Browser information, cookie, cache, login, etc. VPN does manage to prevent trackers from getting your real identity. However, persistent adware and spyware can pop up ads and collect information on you. Thus, a VPN doesn't block ads and snoops. Hence we recommend you to use browser extensions such as Privacy Badger or an Ad Blocker to prevent ads.
A VPN is mainly used for protecting Internet privacy and online security. It doesn't prevent viruses and other malicious files and websites. So, don't expect a VPN to keep you protected from a harmful website or a malicious file. It would be best if you use an antivirus tool for such issues.
VPN Usage
By now, you must be aware of the primary usage of a VPN to secure your online privacy. However, there is one more crucial usage of a VPN. Most of the VPN service provider provides numerous servers located in various countries to connect.
Anyone can use such a VPN feature to access content that generally can't be accessed from your regular internet from other regions of the world. For example, if you are in India using Netflix and want to access TV shows and Movies from UK Netflix, you have to connect to a VPN server located in the UK to stream TV shows and Movies that Netflix provides for the UK.
Depending on your VPN service provider, you can connect to any geographical location and access the content of that region, not only for Netflix and other streaming services like HULU, and HBO but almost for anything. Thus, making VPN the perfect tool for accessing restricted regional content online.
What Type of VPN should you choose?
By default, every VPN service will secure your Internet traffic and prevent your service provider from spying on you. However, your needs might be different; if you want a VN for streaming purposes, you want a VPN with fast internet speed. If you wish to access content from a particular region, you should select a VPN service that provides a server for that specific region.
If you want a no-logs policy, there are even VPN services like AstrillVPN. Ultimately, it boils down to your requirements. If you want a VPN to keep your home or office network secure, you can even go with free VPN services such as VPN Book.
However, if you want more features from the VPN service provider such as split-tunneling, multiple servers, tor compatibility, high-grade encryption, fast internet speed, and unlimited data usage. Then you should avoid free VPN services. It would be best to consider a paid VPN service that is very flexible in terms of costs and features.
Such features from a VPN service is essential if you have several use cases of a VPN. For example, it won't work if you connect your device to a VPN and use Chromecast to cast a stream onto your TV.
However, features such as split-tunneling enable users to connect to a VPN server and cast the stream onto their TV using the wifi network locally; if you are thinking of getting a VPN service, then we would recommend you get either ArtrillVPN, ProtonVPN, Mullvad VPN or NordVPN. All of these VPN services have plans for multiple devices from a single account. You can check here on How to get a VPN.
Conclusion
Well, it boils down to one thing, if you are aware of digital privacy and security and want to maintain your internet traffic private and protected from online threats, spyware, trackers, and adware, a VPN is an option. Moreover, if you're going to stream content from another country, VPN is also very helpful.
