Over the past few decades, what used to require tedious sleuthing has become automated, and users have become to freely give their information away. Nowadays, nobody reads the terms and conditions, we just want to start using the app/social media platform as soon as possible.
What’s wrong with this approach?
A lot of people are complaining that “my phone might be listening to me, otherwise, why do I see ads on my IG about a product that I discussed with a friend of mine the other day?”. This is all happening to the fact that all social media platforms have access to your personal data, where you go, what you google, who you meet. This sounds scary, and the scariest part is that even if you delete your account in any of the social media or apps that you used before, there is no chance that your data will be erased as well – it will stay out there.
If nothing can be done with your data that is already “out there”, how can you protect yourself in the future?
One of the solutions that will help to facilitate the privacy of your data is Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPN gives you an opportunity to establish a protected network connection when using public networks. VPNs encrypt your internet traffic in real time and disguise your online identity, which makes it more difficult for third parties to track your activities online and steal data. Therefore, VPN hides your IP address by letting the network redirect it through a specially configured remote server run by a VPN host. In this way, when you surf online with a VPN, the VPN server becomes the source of your data.
Pros and Cons
As any other digital tool VPN has its benefits and flaws. The main advantages are increased levels of privacy and security, no ISP bandwidth throttling, and access to the geo-blocked content. On the other hand, disadvantages include slower internet and shared IPs that can be blacklisted because they overload the DNS.
Overall, VPN can be a very powerful tool in your own data protection and in our age when everything is shared it has become a necessity rather than an accessory.
Hi Valeriia! Interesting blog. I think it is also worth mentioning that is is very important to use a good and trustworthy VPN as a lot of the freely available ones have poor security and are easily hacked, which would go against one of the purposes of having a VPN in the first place. Nevertheless, definitely think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages you mentioned as long as one spends some time to find a trustworthy VPN provider.