What is a VPN?
A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is a piece of software that changes your IP address and encrypts all of your internet traffic. This helps to improve your online privacy and security, as well as allowing you to bypass online censorship imposed by the government, ISPs or any other organization or person trying to restrict access to the internet.
Benefits of using a VPN
Signing up to a VPN service will give you several benefits. These include:
It prevents your internet provider (ISP) from seeing what you get up to online
This also makes it very good at preventing blanket government surveillance of the kind carried out by America’s NSA.
In addition to this, websites cannot see your real IP address or who your ISP is. All they can see is the IP address of the VPN server, which is usually shared among many VPN users to further protect each individual user.
Unlike ISPs, reputable VPN services do not keep logs of your information for later retrieval. Indeed, a good deal of privacy-focused VPN services go further, and make of point of deleting all metadata connection logs. This ensures they have nothing that can directly or indirectly link customers to their activity on the internet.
It prevents websites from seeing your IP address
Your Internet Protocol Address or IP Address is how you can be identified online. When you use a VPN, your real IP address is replaced with the IP address of the VPN server you’re connected to, making it more difficult for websites to identify you.
This goes a long way towards protecting your privacy when surfing the web. And it also makes it more difficult for advertisers to target you with adverts.
It helps you defeat censorship
A VPN lets you bypass censorship, be it by a repressive regime, or your college or office network admins. Using a VPN allows you to access restricted websites by connecting to a VPN server located somewhere where the content is freely available.
It allows you to access different streaming service libraries
A VPN lets you access foreign streaming services that are blocked or geo-restricted in your country, no matter where you are really located. Just connect to a VPN server in the country, and as far as the internet is concerned, you’re there!
For example, by connecting to a VPN server in the United States you can unblock a wide range of US-only Netflix content. The American version of the service has more TV shows and movies than any other country’s Netflix catalog. This is why it has become popular for people to use a VPN with Netflix.
As well as streaming Netflix content not available in your location, you can use a VPN to unblock YouTube videos and much more. This works by enabling you to get around regional restrictions by pretending to be in a country where the video you want to watch is not blocked.
Or, if you use a VPN server in the UK, you can watch BBC iPlayer abroad for free.
Protects you from hackers
How do you know the Wi-Fi at your local coffee shop is secure? Answer… you don’t. This goes for free public Wi-Fi no matter where you use it. Using insecure Wi-Fi is an open invitation for criminal hackers to try and steal your data.
A VPN will protect you when using all forms of public Wi-Fi because your data is securely encrypted.
How to use a VPN
The mechanics of using a VPN are simple, and no matter which platform you use should go something like this:
It helps you defeat censorship
Sign-up for a VPN plan through the provider’s website.
Download and install the software on your device. VPN software on desktop computers is often referred to as a VPN client, while software for mobile devices is called a VPN app. In reality, they are the same thing and we treat the terms interchangeably.
Run the app or client and sign in with the login details you used when you purchased the subscription.
Many VPN apps feature a big friendly “Connect” button. Simply click on or tap it to connect to a nearby VPN server selected by your VPN provider. This will almost certainly provide the fastest VPN connection available.
Need more control?
If you want to use a server in a different country, some VPNs have a map so you can simply click the country to want to connect to on the map. If your VPN doesn’t have this, click the menu button and this will show you the list of VPN servers the VPN has.