For many years, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have been used as a security measure to protect networks, devices, and data. However, their usefulness goes further than that, and millions of internet users have realized how useful a VPN can be.
It is a great utility tool for streamers, travelers, torrenters, shoppers, and lots of people looking to make the internet free, private, anonymous, and secure. What to do with a vpn? today, we’ll show you 5 exciting things that you can do with a VPN.
Awesome things you can do with a VPN
Unlock international libraries of streaming services
Geo-restrictions have become very popular today, with content distributors curating different content for different consumers based on their region. Some of the most notorious culprits at these are streaming services such as Netflix. The streaming giant offers different catalogs for all 190 countries where it operates.
To give you a glimpse of how serious this is, according to Finder.com, Netflix has a total of 13,500+ titles. Out of these, only about 40% are available in the US. The UK has about 22%, and some countries have just about 6%! Fortunately, you can play around with these catalogs as much as you like through a VPN. However, you’ll need a VPN that is compatible with the streaming service.
Bypass Government Censorship
Governments today are actively determining the type of content that their citizens can access. These censorships range from mild ones such as blocking Call of Duty in Germany to severe ones such as the Great Firewall of China (GFW) and other censorships in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea.
VPNs help people in any censored country evade government censorship by connecting to the internet through servers in different countries. This way, one can access blocked content, download banned apps, and browse the internet freely.
However, some of these countries use Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to block VPN traffic. For such countries, you will need to use a VPN with obfuscation capabilities such as NordVPN. This will help disguise VPN traffic as normal HTTPS traffic and avoid blocking.
Prevent ISP tracking
ISPs actively monitor your online activities, and they always keep logs of this information. This means that they have a complete profile of you, showing what you like to access and when. They can then share this information with the government and other authorized agencies
If you wish to avoid their prying eyes, all you need to do is connect to a VPN server. The encryption provided will make your traffic meaningless to them as it will appear as some garbled mess. This way, you can browse privately and securely.
Get better prices while shopping online
Online goods and services are often sold to people in different regions at different prices. This technique is known as geographical segmentation, and online marketers use it as a means of making more profit in some regions to compensate others.
Using a VPN, you can change your virtual location and get better prices for airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, general shopping, and online goods, among others. To make sure you get the best prices, combine this with clearing your cookies or using incognito mode to avoid price steering.
Stay safe on public hotspots
Public Wi-Fi hotspots pose a lot of danger to users as they are often unsecured. Once you connect to such networks, a hacker can easily snoop on your traffic to steal data. Even worse, some of these hotspots may be evil twins set up by hackers. Once you connect to them, hackers can easily infect your device with malware to gain more access.
Whenever you decide to connect to a public hotspot, always use a VPN. It will encrypt your activities such that no third-party can analyze your traffic or even connect to your device.
Wrap up
Gone are the days when VPNs were only associated with large corporations and paranoid internet users. Today, there are so many ways you can benefit from having a VPN, and the above are just a few of them. You can acquire one and enjoy more internet freedom!