Everytime you go surf internet, someone is tracking you and your work. That's, unfortunately, how the internet works. When we communicate with websites we exchange information that include some personal data. One example is our location. In fact, through our ip address, which is visible to the websites that we navigate, it's very easy to get our specific location.
Maybe you're ok with it, but if you consider that two-thirds of the world's internet users live under government censorship than maybe you can see that for most of the people in the world this might be an issue. One of the best ways to keep our privacy online is through a VPN.
In this post we'll get a better understanding on how a VPN works and we'll see a bunch of few situation where it's extremely useful. VPN stans for virtual private network. When you navigate a website you generally connect directly to the servers hosting that website. With a VPN, your device will first go through the VPN server, and then to the website. if your public IP address is 1.1.1.1, and you're not using the VPN, the website will be able to get your address, and from that get your current location.
If you're not familiar with IP addresses think of them as a sort of a fingerprint that every device that is online has. (and by the way, I have a video where I explain how they work, you can find the link in the description below). From an IP address is easy to get general information about the user, such as his location.
If you are using a VPN instead, and the VPN server has an IP address of 2.2.2.2 then only this IP address and the related location will be visible to the website you're communicating with. This guarantees your privacy and it can be used against censorship too. So let's see in which scenarios a VPN can help us with out privacy. The first one is to protect us from censorship. Imagine if a certain website is censored in your country.
When you normally connect to the internet your IP address is visible, and as we've mentioned, your location too. If your VPN server is in another country, then it will appear that your connection is coming from there. So even if a government firewall is preventing all the connections from your country to access certain contents, because of your new public ip address, you'll be able to access them.
The second scenario in which a VPN can help us is with tracking. On the internet is so easy to track our behaviours. Based on our IP address, websites can track our navigation and have some information about our behaviour. Imagine you connecting multiple times in a day to a single website. IP addresses are not persistent, but they are generally the same throughout a single day.
Because of this the website can guess that it's the same person that is navigating since the location is unchanged. And Thanks to this they can send personalized ads based on your location and take advantage of the information they have about you. But since several people connect through a VPN server simultaneously, for the websites it's impossible to understand whether this is a single user, or multiple ones navigating through it.
In our example, the website will only see that 2.2.2.2, which is based in the US, is navigating the website, but has no idea whether this is a single person, two or a lot more. The last important reason to use a VPN comes up for when you are using non secure connections. This generally happens through public wifi or when you access a websites that does not use a secure connection.
In these scenarios, the content you're exchanging with the website can be seen by a potential hacker that is sniffing your connection. This is called an eavesdropping attack, and it involves another person monitoring your connection and reading the content you're exchanging with the website. This can be very problematic if during that period of time you make a payment, and thus, you reveal your payment information. Or if you log into a social media or your email account. All those information will be revealed to the hacker. The VPN encrypts the connection between the device and the VPN server, and makes it impossible for someone else to see what you're sending and receiving.
There are several vendors for VPN with different prices and options. Another alternative I'd suggest, if you're a bit into programming, is to try to build your own one. This was everything for today, if you enjoy the post please subscribe to the page, and if you have any questions feel free to add them to the comment section.
