If you’re not a tech person, the term VPN may have intimidated you. You might have vague ideas of it being some very complicated tool that is used by IT professionals.
Now let’s clear the mist, first of all a VPN is a service that can easily be used just like you use other applications on your mobile phone or computer. The term VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, the full form is self-explanatory.
A VPN service basically provides you online security by encrypting your data and replacing your IP address. This makes it impossible for anyone to track what you’re doing on the internet, while replacing your IP address makes it impossible for anyone to find your real location as the IP addresses determine your location.
With a VPN connected no one can snoop on your online activities and neither can they figure out where you’re operating from. All this is great, but you must be thinking that you don’t need such strong security, after all you spend most of your time on Facebook and watching Netflix or YouTube.
Well, first of all, in this age of digitalization everything is connected to the internet, be it your smart watch or the refrigerator. Just imagine you click on one malicious link and all your financial data is gained by a hacker, who probably now has access to a lot of your other personal data and might even lock your device and imply a ransomware that’ll lock your computer until you pay the hacker. What could get even worse is that these hackers usually put up an embarrassing photo of you so that you can’t even get professional help.
So yes, even if you think you don’t need a VPN for security, trust me you do! And the best part is the benefits of a VPN service are not limited to security only! There are tons of things a VPN can help you with!
Here are Some Examples of the Uses of a VPN Service
Prevent ISP Throttling – Ever noticed you’re browsing the internet and suddenly when you shift to video streaming sites like YouTube or Netflix, suddenly the speed drops? Your ISP automatically slows down your internet speed so that less data is consumed, this results in poor video streaming experience. But when you have a VPN connected your ISP has no clue what you’re doing, so it cannot throttle your internet speed. Many ISPs have a list of high data consuming websites, so when a user visits any of those websites the systems automatically throttle the speed of your internet. But with a VPN connected you won’t fall into this trap! I purposely chose to mention this first because most of us face this issue every now and then.
Prevent ISP From Data Throttling – When your ISP notices that you have used a certain amount of data during the month, it puts on data caps which slow down your internet speed to prevent you from using high bandwidth platforms and websites. Again, with the use of a VPN you ISP has no power over you and your internet freedom!
Stream Region Restricted Websites – Some countries are not very democratic in the case of internet usage and may restrict you from accessing certain websites. For example if you’re in China you can’t use WhatsApp, Facebook or Google, but if you’re connected to the internet with a VPN accessing all these sites is no big deal.
Similarly some websites are geo-restricted and have the rights to operate in specific regions, for example many streaming platforms root from the U.S and are limited to it only. For example Hulu is only available in the U.S only but with a VPN you can access it anywhere!
Access Different Netflix Regional Libraries – Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would know that the Netflix libraries vary greatly from region to region. American Netflix has around a staggering collection of more than 5500 titles, while the French Southern Territories have only 286 titles. With a VPN you can easily change regions and access different unique content titles available on other regional libraries.
Ditch Intranet and Use a VPN – Businesses spend a lot of money on setting up an intranet system for official use, but what’s bad about it is that it can’t be accessed remotely. Imagine a top executive is out of the country for a business meeting and they want to communicate or update some information on their systems. The executive won’t be able to do that until he is back from the visit and in the office building. Using a VPN would do the job just as well and in fraction of the cost. The best part is it doesn’t matter where you are, you can truly and freely use the internet the way it was intended to!
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