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You don’t know what is a VPN or wondering should you use one? Well, I’m here to help you find out, and answer your questions.
Nowadays, you may hear people talk about VPN a lot. For example, who are the best VPN provider, which is the best VPN service that will protect your identity, or which is good to avoid DNS leaks, and much more.
So, what exact a VPN is? And how does a VPN work?
Here is a quick roundup of everything you should know before getting started using a VPN.
What Is A VPN?
Image credit: smartserver.me
VPN stands for virtual private network, is a network of one(*) or multiple computers that securely connected to each other through the Internet.
This network will allow users to connect to it and reroute all of your data, including incoming and outgoing data. Your data will go through this network instead of going the Internet directly.
Benefits of using VPN is to protect your data from prying eyes of hackers or any monitoring activities from the government. Besides, VPNs are also very handy for bypassing region-locked content, or access blocked websites, such as watching U.S Netflix or Hulu.
* Note: You can easily create your own VPN with only one VPS (virtual private server). Read this article to find out how to do.
How Does A VPN Work?
As I said above, a VPN is a network of one or more computers that securely connected to each other through a secure and encrypted connection.
How exactly does a VPN work?
When you connect to the Internet directly, all of your requests will be going to the Internet directly, as well as all return data from the Internet will be going to your computer directly.
By that, your data can easily be exploited or monitored by anyone who have access to right types of equipment. That could be a hacker or the government.
However, when you connect to the Internet through a VPN, it will create a tunnel between your computer (or mobile device, depending on what you are using) and the VPN server. All of your outgoing data will be encrypted before sending to the VPN server, and vice versa.
Through the VPN connection, your data will be safe because they are encrypted when transmitting. Hackers or the government can’t monitor what you are reading or accessing.
Besides, instead of revealing your real IP address, websites or online services will recognize the IP address of the VPN server is your real IP address. By that, you can easily bypass geo restrictions and access restricted contents, such as U.S Netflix – or access blocked websites.
In short, a VPN works like this:
- Your computer will encrypt all data (requests, upload data) and send to the VPN server through a secure connection.
- The VPN server will decrypt the data and send to the Internet.
- The VPN server will grab the returned data from the Internet, encrypt all of them and send it back to your computer
- Your computer will decrypt the data and display on your browser or whatever program you are using.
When Should You Use A VPN?
There are many purposes of using a VPN, from protecting your data, being anonymous or accessing blocked contents. No matter whatever purpose it is, using a VPN is always good than harm.
So, you can use the VPN whenever you need, such as:
- Protect your data when you are connecting to an insecure Wi-Fi
- Protect your data from being monitored.
- Doing online activities without being traced.
- Being anonymous (hide your real IP, location)
- Access blocked websites
- View region-restricted content.
Image credit: vpngate.net
Where Can I Get A VPN From?
It depends on what type of VPN you want to use: FREE or PAID.
If you want to use a FREE VPN, just search for “free VPN” or “free VPN download” on Google and it will bring up lots of results. There would also be many deals from premium VPN providers that offer you 6-month or 1-year account for FREE.
If you want to use premium VPNs, read the list of 5 best VPN service providers that I wrote two months ago.
Is A Premium VPN Better Than A Free VPN?
You may wonder which one you should use – FREE or PREMIUM?
As I said above, you can easily grab a premium VPN account for FREE from many deals in case you don’t have money to spend. So instead of finding free VPN providers, why not go for the premium VPNs, but FREE.
A premium VPN offers a lot of security features, multiple servers and locations to choose from, and a promise that will never sell your information.
Also, you will see that your Internet connection runs faster than when to use the free VPN.
So, which one you choose? FREE or PAID-FOR?