Privacy is paramount
A Virtual Private Network (or VPN, for short) is a technique for increasing the security and privacy of internet connections to public websites. It’s particularly beneficial to safeguard oneself while connecting to the internet through an insecure network, such as the free WiFi at your local Starbucks or the internet offered by a hotel when traveling. VPNs are widely used across the world and are often used by large companies to help secure their sensitive data from unauthorized access. While VPNs are often used by businesses, they are rapidly becoming popular for personal usage as well.
Nuts and bolts
When you connect to the internet via a desktop computer, a mobile phone, a laptop, an iPad, or a Playstation or Xbox, your device is given an IP address, which is a collection of digits that uniquely identifies your device online. While connected, this IP address is unique to you and may be used to identify you on any website. You may shield yourself from prying eyes by using a VPN. Once enabled, a VPN will replace your IP address with that of your VPN provider (for example, NordVPN), masking your online actions and linking them with the VPN’s IP address. Indeed, you may connect to VPN servers situated around the world, so even if you are physically located in Canada, you can seem to be in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, or any of more than 40 other countries. This independence enables you to travel anywhere online and feel secure knowing that no one is monitoring your activities.
Ultimate security
When you use a VPN, you are enhancing your security. This alone explains why nearly all of the world’s most privacy-conscious businesses have been using VPNs for decades. Every lawyer, politician, law enforcement officer, CEO, and banker, among others, uses a VPN daily to secure the data they depend on from prying eyes. Almost every day, it appears as if the press is reporting another successful breach or exposing private information. As hackers and governments continue to enhance their ways of capturing your communications via tactics such as WiFi spoofing, man-in-the-middle attacks, phishing, and Firesheep, it is now up to you to take the required precautions to protect your data. VPNs use cutting-edge encryption technology and safe tunneling to encrypt your data as it travels from your network to the network you’re trying to access. Like with firewalls and virus scanners, VPNs are a critical component in keeping you secure online.
To pay or not to pay
Thus far, we’ve discussed all of the reasons why you should use a VPN daily. Once you’ve decided, the next issue is whether to utilize a free service or one that requires a monthly subscription. Free services, in our experience, are just not worth it. You often get slower connection speeds, and it’s very difficult to ascertain the real motives of the service provider. How can they remain afloat if they are not earning money from subscriptions? Most likely, via the sale of data on their clients and the websites they frequent. Paid providers such as NordVPN are far more driven to offer you a high-performance and genuinely secure experience. Generally, these kinds of services are provided at a very affordable monthly cost and work as a partner with you to guarantee that your data is instantly secured upon signing up.