What is a VPN and why do you need one?

Generally speaking, a VPN connects your PC, smartphone, or another type of device to another computer (a server) somewhere on the internet, and allows you to browse the internet using that computer’s internet connection. It obfuscates your connection from your PC, tablet, or smartphone to the internet and hides your identity when communicating with other websites and applications and encrypt your communications. VPNs can also be used to mimic your country location. In other words, using a VPN you can access some web content that has been restricted in your country region.

So how is this useful? You can use a VPN to:

• Bypass geographic restrictions on specific websites or streaming audio and video.
• Watch streaming media like Netflix
• Protect yourself from snooping on untrustworthy Wi-Fi hotspots. It’s relatively easy for someone on the same network to intercept your traffic, meaning that they can see the contents of your emails, your social media traffic, your chats
• Gain a degree of anonymity by hiding your true location.
• Protect yourself from being logged while torrenting.

You can think of a VPN as a tunnel where your data flows and no one can see or use your data when its travelling from one location to another inside the invisible tunnel. VPN encrypts the data before sending it to the destination and once it reaches its destination it automatically decrypts the data. This prevents attacks like Man-in-the-middle (MITM).

So how do you go about choosing a VPN?

The first task is to figure out what you need a VPN for. Then look at each VPN's qualities, check which devices are compatible, find a VPN with a user-friendly interface, ensure your important locations are covered, decide what payment plan you prefer, look for a VPN with decent customer service, and make sure it includes a money-back guarantee

Remember that A free VPN—whether it’s an app you download or a service you pay for and set up on your devices manually—is not always a good idea, because if a company isn’t charging you a penny for server investments or upkeep, it’s certainly making its money by tracking everything you do and use that information for digital marketing purposes.

Examples of VPNs in the market

1. PureVPN.
2. Surfshark.
3. CyberGhost.
4. StrongVPN.
5. NordVPN.
6. Symantec.
7. Private Internet Access.
8. ExpressVPN.

At The Techforce Cyber, we recommend VPNs such as Surfshark. Budget VPNs can have loads of features, like Surfshark does. The company offers a wealth of advanced functionality, yet it manages to sell for less than half the price of its competitors (£1.49 per month in a 27 month contract). It works in over 60 countries with very fast streaming.

Using VPN is always a good option for privacy and data integrity which helps to protect the user data whilst it is in transit. We at TechForce always recommend to use VPNs specially connecting to open or public WiFi networks