VPN is a service that more and more people are getting to know, or at least hear about. So what is it? VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, which for most people still doesn’t mean much, so lets drill down further into what it actually does and why it is important.
We have all heard stories about people going into a coffee shop or other public Wi-Fi and their bank information or other personal data being compromised. It sounds like some major spy stuff, and to the non-technical person sounds like something that only an expert could do. The reality is that there are very simple instructions online to create a device that acts as an open wireless access point that lets your phone or laptop join automatically when it starts looking for a wireless internet connection. So without you even doing anything, you have joined a wireless connection and are sending all of your info through this fake access point which is logging the data that you send through it. It isn’t that hard to do.
Where VPN comes in, is that it creates a private tunnel inside any network connection that shields your data from being seen at any point between your mobile device and the VPN host. Think of it this way… Last spring my family went down to visit the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta (and it was awesome). They have a massive aquarium with sharks, lionfish, stingrays, all kinds of harmless fish and plenty of fish that would love to sink their teeth into something. Think of the aquarium as the internet. if you go in there, you will probably be okay, but there is also a decent chance that you may drown, get bit, stung or step on a poisonous fish. But, they have built this tunnel that runs right through the middle of the aquarium for you to walk through, and that keeps you safe and keeps the predators at bay on the other side of the glass. That is what a VPN does, it is the tunnel through the shark aquarium. Make sense?
So what should you look for in a VPN provider?
One major thing that I look at is, what are they offering? Sometimes it sounds just too good to be true. There are many providers that will offer lifetime service for a fixed , one time payment. That sounds great, until you realize that everyone that they sell that service to has a connection coming in to their servers and then all of those connections must go out through their internet connection. How many “lifetime” plans can you pile on the connection before it starts to degrade the service, since all of you are essentially sharing the same internet connection? At some point they will run out of internet capacity with no incentive to fix it because everyone is already paid up for life. So I steer clear of the “lifetime” subscriptions.
Along the same lines, I look at their throughput, and reviews about speed. As I said above, essentially everyone on a VPN connection is sharing an internet service provider at the VPN server side, so do they have the capacity to handle all of those connections? I can tell you for certain, you will not get your full speed across a VPN connection that you are getting without it on your home connection. But that’s okay, as long as there is enough speed to do what you need to do. If you can get at least 10-15mbps, on the low side, you should be good for most anything like streaming, web surfing. Check the reviews online to see what people are saying about the speed, and like most reviews, you can throw out the top and bottom 2-3% as being fake or written by idiots (sorry to be so blunt, but it is true).
Also, do they have good support? Most companies will have a great online support, but if you have a phone number to call, that can be very helpful for people who aren’t so comfortable with tech.
Finally, is it easy to manage? Can you turn it off an on easily? Can you tell some traffic not to use the VPN? Netflix and some other streaming services do not allow you to use a VPN connection, so it is important that you can carve out those services while still protecting yourself. Also, if everything goes through the VPN, you won’t be able to print to your network printer, because it is on your home network, not inside the VPN, so you will need to carve that out if you use the VPN at home (which probably isn’t necessary anyway).
There are many VPN providers out there vying for your business, and I’ll dive into several of them in the coming weeks. One that I would Like to highlight today is Ivacy VPN. They are offering a 90% discount for new service if you use the links on this page, and are very highly rated.
So Check it out and get up to speed.
