How you will assess the need of personal Virtual Proxy Network, abbreviated as VPN? If you search on Google, you will see that many of the people are using VPN to bypass the restrictions made by the countries, for example, in China and Middle East. However, a VPN can do supersede the imposed restrictions.
VPN encrypts all your internet data and redirect it through a VPN server, generally located in USA which makes 2 instant effects;
- You information is obscured from people who are online trying to track others’ information, even if your ISP or any other company will not have any idea about your actual data.
- Your actual IP address will also be hidden from all the sites that you visit, thus, it offers you anonymity when you are online.
Therefore, even if you are in a wireless hotspot or a place where hackers usually scout to find new victims, you will have protection through VPN. Firesheep is a Firefox plugin which is a preferred tool and is extremely simple to use by even an amateur hacker and other script kiddies who are called underground society. The VPN will keep you safe from Firesheep attacks.
The negative side is that VPN connection is not free, and sometimes it is costly. Two main problems are mentioned here;
- While using VPN, you will observe a decrease in your internet’s speed. This is because of the encryption and the routing of the traffic. If you live in France and using VPN, your traffic is first encrypted and then sent from France through a VPN server in United State and then from VPN server in US and it is redirected to the targeted destination. From there again the traffic will flow through the same route all the way back to you. This is comparatively a long trip.
- Most of the best VPN services are costly. Although there are few free ones, people have bad reviews about free services such as harsh bandwidth limits, connection drops and poor speed. The paid ones usually are better in terms of performance and range from $10 to $20 per month.
In my opinion if you are concerned about your privacy and your data security, you must get the best VPN service and always use that service in the networks that you feel unsecured such as restaurants, coffee shops, airports and other public places.
