Okay, let's take a look at some of the common Myth About VPN among its users. You need to understand this. There are good reasons to use a Virtual Private Network or VPN, and I'll share what those are in a moment. But judging by all the content you'll read or watch online, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this piece of software is the ultimate solution to every hacking and security problem we have in the world today.
Welcome to another Digital Wares article. As you may have already known, my name is Francis, and my goal here is to clearly explain three ideas first, the security you already have without a VPN, the legitimate reasons to use a VPN, and finally, the things that a VPN cannot do, because let's face it, there's a lot of confusing information about virtual private networks. And if you read through the end of this article, not only will you have a better understanding of what a VPN can do, for you, I'll also share with you the number one threat to your security and privacy that no VPN can protect you. So to help us sift through the truth versus fiction, let me share with you five things that are true about your internet connection right now, even if you're not using a VPN.
One is your ISP, or internet service provider can broadly see which websites you access, so while they may not know exactly which YouTube video you're watching right now, they can know that you access YouTube
Two, HTTPS secures most websites connections. All this military-grade encryption you hear about, marketed by tech companies is present in more than 85% of the websites you visit. If you see the padlock on your web browser, your internet traffic is already being encrypted.
Three. Despite this encryption, our browsing activity is being tracked by more companies than you might realize using tools like cookies, the Facebook pixel, the Chrome browser, etc.
Four, your device is assigned an IP address wherever you get online. This IP address provides information about your geographic location, which is how online streaming services can restrict content in specific countries or locations.
Five, our security and privacy are a product of trust. Sure we can encrypt our data in transit, but what about your login information that gets stored on target servers or our credit information? That's with Experian when we give them our data, and sometimes we don't even have a choice. We're trusting they'll keep it secure. And that's usually not under our control. You have to trust somebody, you're either trusting your ISP, the owner of the Wi-Fi you're using, the Tor nodes or if you're using a VPN, the VPN company, it's virtually impossible to be 100% Private so how does the VPN help in any of these situations?
Well, let's lay the groundwork here by discussing what a VPN does well, one of the legitimate reasons you might want to use a virtual private network. Well, the most common use of a VPN around the world is to combat censorship. In China where the government blocks everything from Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Wikipedia, the New York Times, and there I say even YouTube. A VPN is the perfect tool to bypass this kind of state censorship to access the free internet. Along the same lines, a VPN is a good tool for location spoofing, which basically allows you to hide your location and make the internet think you're located somewhere else. The most common use case here is streaming blackout content from major networks or geo-restricted content on platforms like Netflix, Disney plus, Hulu, Pandora, and others. For example, in Thailand that Disney hasn't yet been launched for some odd reason. By connecting to a VPN server in the United States, and paying for the Disney subscription fee, people living in Thailand, can access this geo-restricted content as if they were in the US.
Ironically, the last legitimate reason to use a VPN is actually what it was initially developed. For, for encrypting data. As I said earlier, Internet Security has already become more than acceptable. And when you're accessing something like your bank via HTTPS, which all of them do now, a VPN doesn't make that connection stronger. It just acts as a safety net. The only exception worth mentioning here is that a VPN does encrypt your DNS requests.
Remember what I told you that your internet service provider can see what websites you're accessing, even if they don't know what you're doing on those websites? Well, a VPN will hide that information so that your ISP, your university, or whatever network you're on, doesn't know anything about your connection. So really, all that talk about a VPN protecting you from hackers, offering military-grade encryption, I mean, it's a half-truth. I think there is value in having that backup security for those who are at a higher risk of attack. But for most people, it's just redundant. Security.
And before I forget, let me be clear about what a VPN does not do. You may hear what I'm about to say and think it was completely unnecessary. But trust me, these are questions that I get every single day in my email inbox.
First. A VPN isn't an internet connection you have to connect to the internet whether that's on your cellular network, your home network, or public Wi-Fi, and then you connect to a VPN. Second, a VPN isn't a cloak of invisibility that will let you do whatever illegal thing you want to do while you're connected. Every commercial VPN company claims they don't keep activity logs on their users. But they have no accountability for that claim. So don't do it. Finally, a VPN doesn't protect you from viruses and malware. I mean, some providers have that as an additional service, but it's not an inherent feature of a VPN.
A VPN is a tunnel that can encrypt every kind of data including viruses and malware being delivered to your device. And that's the perfect segue to my final point here that I'm glad you stuck around to read. The biggest single threat to your online security and privacy is not hackers. It's not malware. It's not viruses for tracking software. It's you. If you're not aware of the common scams today. If you're skeptical of every email you receive and every link in every email, I can guarantee that no VPN and no antivirus software is going to be of much help to you.
Before you succumb to the fear-marketing and some myths about VPN, that might lead you to purchase this kind of software know, you can avoid more than 80% of the problems people face with their online security and privacy by just using common sense. I mean things like using better passwords, turning on two-factor authentication, monitoring your credit and identity, and especially being skeptical of every inbound email and phone call that you receive.
If you want me to recommend a VPN for, then I would say TorGuard VPN, which is what I am using currently. After using TorGuard for several months, before deciding to promote it, I thought it best to research what other people experience with them is first, whether am the only one who believes them to be one of the best VPNs out there, or they too think in the same line with me. So I visited Trust Pilot, a review site for all businesses that have an online presence. At Trust Pilot, out of 1,732 reviews on Torguard as at the time of this writing, a huge 77% voted it to be excellent, 10% said the VPN is great, 5% said it is average, 2% rated the tool as being poor, and 6% rated it as bad. Though no software system or tool is perfect, from the overall views of the users of TorGuard, we can see that most people's experience with it is positive; so it is worth giving a trial.
If you've made it this far, please take a moment to read this article which I elaborated on the statistics surrounding many essential topics of VPN. Leave a comment on this article, if you're interested in more honest and clear explanations of online security topics like this. I hope it's been helpful. Thanks!
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