I’m not really sure what they do? I think they hide my ISP, but why would I need to do that? Please, help, because I know a lot of people use these, I just can’t figure out why even after reading about them at ExpessVPN, the world’s premiere VPN service.
Don’t use whichever one WoW YouTubers are payed to shill for.
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No you dont need to use a vpn.
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Express vpn is wonderful, Arr me mateys
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It depends on how concerned you are about privacy. Does the idea of a company knowing if you are married or no, have children, where you live, what your tendencies in naught materials are, your hobbies, average income and spending patterns are worry you?
Its is not the end all be all of security but it can provide a measure of protection from companies wanting to sell everything they can gather about you.
People who need VPNs include competitive players who are at risk of DDoS attack and people who deal with sensitive information. Normal credit card use etc. are more than well-enough protected by major site’s encryption.
And if you didn’t know, even with a VPN, your ISP can know every detail of what you do down to the coordinates of the mouse clicks and at what time*.
*If they have a reason to look. Such as you being investigated for a pattern of illegal behavior
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No, they are not required unless you wanna hide what your doing on the internet. You basically pay some $$ a month to do what you do every month except websites cannot collect your data and you can see blocked content not available to USA. It can also get you banned because jumping from USA to Japan is going to be suspicious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9bhbEm7JAk
Just a normal tech guy who explains the advantages.
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Just don’t use a free one. Those are shady
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If you’re of the peg-legged persuasion, probably. If not, no.
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No this is bad advise VPN’s do not protect you when pirating content.
With the recent spate of big tech censorship, maybe…
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You really don’t need a VPN unless you do something which you want to hide your IP/Location or are doing shady stuff on the internet…
If you’re not doing anything illegal (i.e. downloading tons of illegal movies and music, using the darkweb, or other shady things) and/or aren’t someone who people would try to find out where you live (i.e. if you’re a high profile streamer) then there really isn’t any point to having a VPN to hide your internet activity and real IP address.
Also keep in mind, that VPNs do add latency (lag) to your connection, good ones with many servers, and nearby may only just add as little as 5-20 ms of lag, but if the nearest server isn’t close, it can add a lot more. Also besides lag, they may make your overall connection a bit slower… for example with my connection, i have a solid 500up/500down fiber connection, but if i use my vpn, it causes my download speeds to be around 400 and upload speed around 200.
Also there are some websites that do not like VPNs or have their known ip addresses blacklisted/banned. So you’ll notice that sometimes you’ll visit some websites and you can’t access it or log in.
The only other purpose of a VPN is to spoof your location, for example if you connect to a server located in a different country in order to access content that’s blocked in your country (i.e. country restricted youtube content or certain content on some streaming services)
Do you:
- Need to bypass country locks / restrictions?
- Believe that Google / Amazon / Facebook / Microsoft don’t already know more about you than you do?
- Need to mask your IP to websites to prevent them from automatically knowing your general location (city)?
If so, then maybe you could use a VPN.
If you just think you might need a VPN because a streamer told you to sign up for one, you don’t need one. Streamers make a small amount of money when you sign up - that is the only reason they recommend them.
Your ISP will still know everything you do on the internet. All the VPN does is routes your traffic through them before it gets to the destination. To get to the VPN, you still have to go through the ISP connection first.
As for free VPN services - you can bet they are selling every bit of information about you that they can.
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Privacy usually isn’t the concern. It’s more that you want to do certain activities that aren’t allowed, could be something simple as watching something not allowed in your country.
As a streamer, multiplayer etc it could be very useful to hide your IP so certain people can’t do things directly at you.
What I’m saying is it could be practical but for average Joe it won’t make much sense.
Edit: If you’re really on the darker side you should be aware that the VPN might expose who you are if asked. Even if they say they “won’t”. There are laws after all.
You could potentially take a small performance hit because the traffic is encrypted.
Also, I remember some Oceanic players using vpns because they had better routing tables to Blizzard servers. That was before they got their own servers in Australia.
Ok so there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about what VPN’s do and who use them.
First what they don’t do.
- Provide security while doing illegal behavior online. Your ISP still tracks everything you do. Furthermore VPN’s can and have been pressured by courts to release the data they collect and many in fact willingly cooperate in any cases of illegal behavior. For this you are more likely to use TOR’s.
- Prevent cookies from tracking data after you’ve left sites. For this you need to use other programs to clear cookies constantly.
What it can do.
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Prevent your ISP from throttling your network when you connect to certain networks. Many ISP’s throttle when connected to streaming services.
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Allow you to see more movies when using streaming services by changing your region. This is due to different regions having different content available to them because of licensing agreements. Not all VPN’s engage in the cat and mouse game with netflix however so you have to research which ones do.
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Provide more security while on mobile networks. This is probably the biggest current use as there are many obvious threats to connecting to public networks that allow others to see your information.
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It provides an encrypted tunnel for transferring data to and from your device and the host site. This removes most chances of spying and snooping on your data. Even your own internet service provider ISP can’t access your data. Though they can still track were it going to and coming from.
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Your location as well as identity remain anonymous even to the host site. This anonymity can also help protect you from targeted cyber-attacks as no one can trace your information using your personal details.
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This is pure, unadulterated nonsense, I’d love to see even a shred of evidence for this claim. HTTPS alone hides this kind of information from any man-in-the-middle snooping.
Unless you’re foolish enough to install something from your ISP that, essentially, takes over your computer. But if you’re that ignorant then that’s completely on you.
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i mean it can have uses.
do you realize there is a cable running to your house from your ISP, a physical piece of hardware