Most people go about their business online without thinking about how much personal information is being shared. If you take a step back and really look at your activity β the sites you visit, what you post on social media, the files you download, the information you provide through forms β it gives you an idea of ββhow much you’re exposing yourself. online. Discover the ultimate beginners guide to vpn
Ultimate Beginners Guide to VPN
And that might not be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that most of that data and activity is sent over unencrypted, unsecured connections. Anyone with the means to do so could intercept your data.
In some cases, people experience censorship where their data is intercepted and content is blocked.
Fortunately, there is a solution. A VPN allows you to secure that data and protect your online activity from prying eyes. In this ultimate beginners guide to vpnwe’ll help you understand the purpose of VPNs, how they work, the benefits, choosing the right VPN provider, and red flags to help you identify VPNs to avoid.
What is a VPN?
A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a form of technology that allows you to access the Internet privately, away from the prying eyes of your Internet Service Provider, the government, and would-be hackers. It does this by acting as a tunnel that routes your connection directly to the web, meaning no one else can steal your private or sensitive data.
A VPN adds an essential extra layer of privacy to your online activity by encrypting your data (turning the information into a special code) so that other people cannot read your private searches, passwords, and other sensitive material.
A VPN also allows its users to pretend they are in a different country, meaning you can access content that may not have been available otherwise. Find out much more in this ultimate beginners guide to vpn
How do VPNs work?
While there is a lot of complex software and hardware behind the scenes, the way a VPN works for the user (you) is quite simple:
- Normally, when you connect to the Internet, your traffic is routed directly to a host, such as the server that hosts a website. When you connect to the Internet with an activated VPN service, your traffic makes its first stop at the VPN service’s servers.
- Once connected to the VPN servers, your IP address (a unique block of numbers that identifies your device) is changed and the VPN provides its own IP address attached to your traffic.
- From then on, all traffic going through the VPN server is encrypted. This process converts all data into a code that prevents unauthorized access. Even if someone were to intercept your traffic, they wouldn’t be able to decrypt it.
Understand a VPN in a simple way
An easier way to understand how a VPN works is to imagine that you are driving down the highway in a convertible with the top down. Above you is a satellite capable of seeing everything you do: that satellite represents not only your internet service provider, but also the websites and servers you connect to and anyone else who wants to monitor your unencrypted traffic .
The best way to prevent them from seeing what you are doing in your car and where you are going is to enter a tunnel. When you use a VPN, they have no idea where the tunnel exit is.
Every time you type a web address (the domain name), there is a resolution step that happens almost instantly. DNS (Domain Name System) is like a phone book, matching text-based website addresses to the IP address linked to a website’s server. If someone wanted to track your activity, they could monitor DNS requests to see what you’re doing online.
But a VPN thwarts that. Most VPN services also include their own DNS resolver, so the DNS request (when you type in a website address) appears to come from the VPN service rather than from you.
It’s not just hackers who can steal your private information. Big corporations also take your private data and sell it to advertising companies so they can use your information without your knowledge.
Basically, your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can access everything you do online and the only way to stop it is to use a secure and encrypted connection through a VPN.
Why use a VPN: the real benefits
We could not fail to mention in this ultimate beginners guide to vpn, find out why we should use a VPN. The first VPN was established by Microsoft in the 1990s to allow employees to remotely connect to office systems with a secure connection. The ability to work remotely quickly caught on and led to widespread business adoption.
And while VPNs are now commonly used in businesses to connect remote offices and employees working from home to headquarters, VPN applications go far beyond business.
Here are some other common uses for a VPN:
Bypass regional restrictions with a VPN
Do you have a favorite show that you love to watch on Netflix, Hulu, or another platform? You may be surprised to learn that the same program may not be available in another country. Due to licensing agreements, content is often region-locked.
If Netflix licenses a show in the US and wants to stream that content in Europe as well, but Amazon already has a licensing agreement for the European region, then that show would not be available to Netflix users in Europe.
For example, Netflix is ββlicensed to stream Star Trek: Discovery in other countries, but in the US you’d have to pay for CBS’s All Access service to watch the show.
By using a VPN, you can connect to a VPN server in the same region as the available content. So for the content service, it looks like you live in the region where the content is allowed. In the example above, a Netflix customer in Germany could use a VPN to give the appearance of connecting from the US to watch a specific series that is not available locally.
Access blocked sites with a VPN
It is common for network administrators and organizations to block specific websites when they do not want users on their network to access certain types of content. This is commonly seen with schools, hotels, and corporations blocking sites involving gaming, streaming media, adult content, and even social networking sites.
A VPN is a simple solution to bypass these site blocks. Since it encrypts your connection and hides the domain name request, network filters cannot catch the request and block it before the connection is made.
Access censored sites and content with a VPN
Going a step beyond blocking individual websites, some parts of the world (and some companies) take an extreme approach to censorship where the content available is extremely limited.
Dozens of countries around the world censor online content in some form, with some stricter than others. North Korea, for example, has built its own intranet. Citizens are prohibited and cannot access the Internet as we know it.
But even the strictest content blocking and censorship can’t stop a good VPN service from helping you get out and access content freely. With some countries blocking social media, educational sites, and even news sites, a VPN is sometimes the only way people around the world can stay connected like the rest of us.
Public Wi-Fi is becoming more widely available, which is a welcome change from a few years ago, where a free, open, public internet connection was like a rare oasis in a sprawling wasteland.
People often use these connections without giving much thought to privacy or security, and that puts you and your data at risk.
Anyone can freely access those public wireless networks, and all of your online activity is unprotected and unencrypted when using the public wireless network. That means anyone with access and the means to do so could see what he’s doing, view his data, swipe personal information, steal financial information, etc.
VPN changes that and encrypts everything you do, even on public Wi-Fi networks.
Prevent price discrimination
Dynamic pricing is a practice that companies have been using for years, and while it’s not illegal, it’s certainly shady.
When you shop online, retailers often collect a variety of information from you (as well as your IP address). This includes the type of browser and device you are using, where you are connecting from, and even other more private data. .
Some brands use that information to change prices.
For example, if your location is in a more affluent area where statistics show a higher than average income, the store might increase the price of the product you are looking at.
Some airlines and hotels even adjust airfares and fees using this method.
A VPN service gives you the ability to choose different locations when making a purchase. Therefore, you can test to see if dynamic pricing is being applied, and then choose to connect through a location that offers the lowest price.
Peer-to-peer file sharing
Users who share files and participate in torrents often want to do so anonymously while ensuring that their activity is encrypted and protected. Those who use torrent files and use peer-to-peer file sharing services frequently use VPN services to keep their activity private.
Is the VPN really private and totally secure?
Ideally, we could say that a VPN is the safest way to protect your anonymity and privacy while keeping your data encrypted and secure.
But privacy and security are tied directly to the individual VPN service. With the right business VPN, you can get the security and privacy you expect.
Keep an eye out for these items as you review VPN services:
encryption
The best VPN services use 256-bit AES encryption. This is the same level of encryption used to protect government and military data.
Shared IP addresses
A shared IP means that the VPN service has multiple users who share the same IP address, making it impossible to pinpoint…
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