How safe is your data? When you browse the web, is it easy for your Internet Service Provider (ISP), public wifi hackers, and governments to view your web traffic? The truth is that people are out there after your information.
Whether you're trying to protect your credit card data from being stolen over the net or trying to protect your private browsing, here are a few Virtual Private Network details to help you understand why private browsing matters.
What Is A Virtual Private Network (VPN)?
A VPN is a secure tunnel that hides your network activity from the general public and many other prying eyes. Think of it as a sleeve or a cover for your network activity. During normal internet use, your internet connection travels through a series of mid-points call hops. The path is called a route, and you're putting a lot of trust in systems you don't know. A VPN works by hiding that route. Most people involved in network routing will continue not to care about your traffic, and those that care to dig through your internet use will run into hard to understand, hard to trace virtual private network details.
Benefits Of Using A VPN
The main benefits of VPNs are security and obscurity. Your information is harder to see, and your data becomes so generic that it's not worth anyone's time unless they're both skilled in network investigation and after you specifically.
That said, someone being "after you" isn't the biggest deal on the internet these days. So many things are automated, and businesses exist to scrape as much information from as many random users as they can.
Businesses use automatically-gathered data to make decisions about how people use the internet. It could be for marketing purposes, scientific purpose, law enforcement purposes, or anything that seeks patterns in human internet use. A VPN makes your data meaningless to such scanners and filters. Your information is just another set of streaming bits on the river of data that flows across the internet.
What if you do have a highly-technically, highly-skilled, or government-backed adversary? What if you're being investigated by law enforcement, but want to protect your privacy rights? If privacy and protection from internet bad actors and governments is your goal, be sure that your VPN agrees. Not all VPNs are in countries where government seizure isn't allowed, so know the location and terms of use of your future VPN.
Cyber security and hiding from hackers isn't the only benefit. If you leave the United States and want to watch US-only Netflix, Hulu, Amazon FireTV or other streaming services, you can hide your connection inside a US-based VPN server and get access. The same can be done if you're in the US and wanting to play a Korea-only online game, or want to watch new anime in Japan that's limited to Japanese IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.
Best VPN Service Providers
Here are some of the best VPN services on the market. Many VPNs excel at different services, such as VPNs with big server numbers being better for hiding your tracks versus VPNs with support on multiple devices. Figure out your biggest internet browsing needs to find the VPN that fits the best for you.
Surfshark
- British Virgin Islands-based VPN.
- Over 800 servers in 50 countries.
- Support on several apps including Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Amazon's FireTV, and routing devices.
- Clean web anti-ad and cookie service.
- No-logging policy.
NordVPN
- Panama City-based VPN
- Over 5000 servers in 62 countries.
- No-logging policy.
- Connect to up to 6 devices simultaneously.
- Dedicated IP option.
Express VPN
- British Virgin Islands-based VPN.
- Access to over 2000 servers in 94 countries.
- Log-free policy.
- Bitcoin payment support.
- Killswitch to disable traffic if VPN is lost.
PureVPN
- Hong Kong-based VPN.
- Over 2000 servers in 180 countries.
- Kodi and Chromebook support.
- Bitcoin payment support.
- Fully-implemented GDPR compliance.
As you look through the best VPNs on the market, feel free to contact a VPN security expert to talk about your unique networking needs.
