Nathan Jordan Jersey says; VPN’s originally started as a way for business users to ‘dial home’ when outside the office and access their corporate network. Nowadays the TV and Internet are full of adverts boasting how a VPN subscription can protect your credit card details, stop identity thieves from harvesting your data and take you by the arm and escort you home after a night of consuming indecent amounts of alcohol no doubt.
The reality is a little more nuanced: using a VPN does establish an encrypted connection between you and your provider’s services. If these are located in a different country, you’ll appear to be connecting from there. This is very useful if you want to access country-specific services such as Netflix. If you’re using Public WiFi like in cafes, VPN’s do make it harder for hackers to steal your data if you’re concealed to the same network, although if you’re ordering by credit card the vendor will almost certainly be using SSC/TLS to secure your payment details anyway. Using a VPN also makes it much more difficult for your ISP to log which sites you visit-all they can see is that you’re connected to your VPN provider, not what date you share. This does mean however that if anyone hacks your provider’s servers or subject them to a court order, your data may be at risk.
When choosing your VPN provider, first make sure that their headquarters and servers are physically located in a country doesn’t require them to log your data (most providers advertise themselves as ‘No Logs’). If you still don’t trust your provider, consider one which accepts anonymous payment such as Bitcoin, so you can’t be tracked via credit card. Stay connected to your VPN at all times so adversaries can’t analyse your traffic and browsing habits.
Nathan Jordan.
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