Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Friday, 08 October 2021

Many of us are constantly sending personal, private and confidential information over the internet without giving it a second thought.

Over time this has evolved and has now become for most of us part of our everyday lives for example; online banking, online booking, online chat, online shopping, social networking etc.

Also when we connect our mobile devices to public WIFI networks for many of us getting a connection is the priority and the security implications of doing this are given no thought at all.

A virtual private network (VPN) improves your privacy when using the internet. It connects your devices to a VPN server via an encrypted tunnel that protects your data from prying eyes and keeps your private activity really private. It also prevents your ISP from seeing the content of your data, including destination data that can tell it which websites and other resources you visit on the internet.

Other VPN benefits include;

Prevent your internet service provider (ISP) from seeing your activity online. Mass surveillance systems rely on ISPs logging their users' browsing histories and making these logs available to government agencies.
Prevent websites you visit from knowing your real IP address and location.
Prevent public WiFi hosts from logging and selling your browsing habits to advertisers.
Protection from WiFi hackers when using insecure public WiFi connections.
Defeat website blocking and censorship, be it government censorship on political, social, or religious grounds, or website blocking by location.
Access streaming services that are usually only available to people in a specific country. For example BBC iPlayer is available for free to anyone who appears to be in the UK. For those who appear to be in the USA have a much larger selection on Netflix than customers in other countries, despite most paying a similar monthly subscription cost regardless of where they are located.
Safely use P2P file sharing (BitTorrent).
Get lower prices when making online purchases and booking a flight or hotel, many websites display different prices to shoppers from different countries, for example a product which may seem very expensive if you're accessing a site from Europe or the USA and could be considerably cheaper ny accessing the same site through a server in India.
Get anonymous and safe access to the Tor network, some like to use the Tor network for extra privacy and anonymity, or maybe to access the dark web.

A VPN will provide you with more freedom on the internet, more security and greater anonymity, there are many VPN providers but beware not all VPN's are the same.

We recommend using a VPN which includes the following features;

A kill switch which prevents internet traffic should the VPN connection be lost.
Multiple device support including apps for your mobile devices and support for your router if using one that supports VPN.
A no logs VPN whereby no logs of users' activities are kept that could compromise their privacy.
DNS leak prevention, encrypt your DNS queries from leaks that could expose your activity.

We recommend using ProtonVPN which ticks all of the boxes, based in Switzerland with Swiss privacy laws, some of the strongest in the world.

The free ProtonVPN service enables you to use 23 servers in 3 countries with 1 Medium speed VPN connection, a Kill switch, a strict no-logs policy and Multi-platform support is good. All major operating systems with apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, Android, Android TV, and iOS/iPadOS.

The paid plans are good value also but you should get the free version first and make sure you're happy with it and install the mobile App, upgrading is simple.

Visit the ProtonVPN website for details.

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