Jay LeonardDid you know that the things you do online are recorded and become searchable? No matter if you are using the Internet to do your banking, store documents, archive your photos, or Google your health concerns, you leave a trail of valuable information behind. This information could be collected, made searchable (maybe even publicly), or stored for eternity without your knowledge or consent.
Many people have never thought about the Internet in this way because data collection is done behind the scenes, purposefully hidden from our watchful eyes. Corporations may tell us the reasons they collect our information is to provide us with better services, while governments claim they need our data to keep all of us safe. It doesn’t matter if you believe this or not, like or dislike it, if you can’t find a way to opt out of this rampant data collection, your personal information is out of your control and your privacy lost.
Knowing your privacy is at risk is one thing, defending it is unfortunately another. An easy solution is to use a VPN – a Virtual Private Network – that encrypts your data and hides your real IP address, hence the real you. Even if you have never heard of VPNs before, they are inexpensive and relatively easy to use.
What’s a VPN?
A VPN establishes a dedicated and secure channel to transport your data from your device to a VPN server somewhere on the net. The VPN server then becomes your identity to the rest of the Internet, shielding your real information and activity from others. For a detailed explanation of how a VPN works, read “Why use VPN“.
How do you choose the best VPN for your needs?
Faced with the plethora of choices, choosing a VPN can be daunting; however, there are only a few key considerations and once you understand those, selecting the VPN which fits your need becomes easy.
How secure is the service?
A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and stops hackers (hackers = everyone who wants to access your internet traffic without your explicit permission) from intercepting it. Good encryption keeps the connection between you and the VPN server secure. HideMyAss, a popular VPN provider located in the UK, uses 128 bits data encryption compared to Private Internet Access – a popular no log VPN provider, which use AES 256 bits encoding. As a rule of thumb, higher encryption equals better security.
VPN server location is particularly important when you want to stream region restricted content. Fortunately most VPN providers cover the major regions like: US, UK, Canada, etc… If you have very specific geographical needs, verify that the service has an IP address in that area.
How secure is the service?
A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and stops hackers (hackers = everyone who wants to access your internet traffic without your explicit permission) from intercepting it. Good encryption keeps the connection between you and the VPN server secure. HideMyAss, a popular VPN provider located in the UK, uses 128 bits data encoding compared to Private Internet Access – a popular no log VPN provider, which use AES 256 bits encoding. As a rule of thumb, higher encryption equals better security.
How anonymous is the VPN service?
Whenever you connect to a VPN, the VPN provider naturally has access to your Internet traffic and your real IP address and location, which may be a concern depending on your circumstances. If anonymity is a major concern then you need to pay attention to a VPN provider’s information logging policies.
You need to find out if the VPN company keeps records and in case it does, what exactly they record and the length of time those logs are kept. Some VPN providers will prominently display their logging policy on their home page, others hide it in the fine print. In either case it is a good idea to read a provider’s privacy policy, because “no logs” means different things to different folks.
Price
You shouldn’t be paying more than USD 10 a month for a good VPN service. Many providers of discounts and choosing longer subscription periods often significantly reduces the price. Check what devices you can install the VPN on and if you can use multiple devices concurrently. The ability to use a VPN on both your computer and your mobile device is desirable and many providers (such as: Hidemyass, Private Internet Access, PureVPN) accommodate this need.
Summary
If file sharing or streaming videos is the main reason for you buying a VPN, then a popular service like HideMyAss (HMA) is all you need, because it won’t matter much if the service logs or not. You can use Hidemyass on up to two computers or mobile devices concurrently without having to pay extra. Plus, it offers the biggest VPN network coverage of all VPN providers.
However, like many other providers, HideMyAss logs when subscribers connect to and disconnect from the service. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it may assist keeping “trouble makers” at bay, but it makes the service less anonymous. For those who want to ensure the highest level of anonymity, obviously a service that keeps logs is out of the question. Fortunately there are many non-logging VPN providers available to choose from.
Either way, using a VPN puts control over your information back where it belongs, into your hands. No matter if you choose to subscribe to a commercial VPN or set up your own, a VPN will provide you with two major benefits: online security and privacy.
Image Credit: Tom Thai
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Thank you for the great article. I agree that we must be very careful while selecting the wright vpn service provider. After HMA given out it’s clients IP addresses when FBI asked this case become more important. I believe we must only go with the NO LOG vpn service providers. I’m using boxpn at the moment (https://www.boxpn.com). They have NO LOG policy and I think it’s the only vpn service provider takes your privacy and security really serious that they even have firewalls on their networks.
Thank you for the comment. Unfortunately I noticed an error in the article
The article INCORRECTLY states that “Private Internet Access – a popular no log VPN provider, which use AES 256 bits encoding.”
It should say: “VPN4ALL – a popular no log VPN provider, which uses AES 256 bit encryption.”
I sincerely apologize for the confusion.
Any network admins responsible for running actual ‘exit nodes’ on a consumer-focused VPN network will have standard firewall applications running on the servers. For *nix machines (and one would certainly hope nobody is running VPN networks on Microsoft-based servers :-0 ), that’s iptables, basically – it’s built into the OS, and actually takes some work to disable if one were reckless enough to do so.
Whether the specific ruleset loaded into iptables on a specific server is clever and effective, or is poorly crafted and rarely updated, is an entirely different question. This comes down to the overall competence and/or experience of the network admins running the machines. Someone with only enough capability to boot a server and get some applications running on it is unlikely to produce a fancy, heuristics-based IDS framework that includes not only good iptables rules but also a suite of additional proven tools to filter out malicious traffic.
And, of course, there’s always the question of how much firewalling a VPN company should be doing when it comes to customer traffic. One person’s “junk packet” is another’s important communications – and the VPN company isn’t really in a good position to be making those judgements on the behalf of customers.
“No logging” has become a buzzword for VPN providers nowadays, quite a change from when the first no-logging policy was put in place by a certain company in 2007 (it was considered crazy at the time, ironically). However, actually not logging any network traffic takes competence, focus, and attention on the part of network administrators: logging happens not just via a given VPN framework, but also within the server OS, network appliances, IDS toolkits, firewall applications, billing systems, RADIUS or other authentication extensions, and so on. And some of those more or less have to log something, such as billing systems, so it’s not always black and white. Which is to say: it’s alot easier to CLAIM not to log anything than it is to actually have a viable, effective, well-considered, consistent policy on protecting customer privacy during network utilization.
Not quite as simple as sticking the “no logging” buzzphrase on a website, but alot more useful in terms of making good decisions if you’re a customer of VPN services.
Might also be good to remember that the vast majority of “VPN review” websites are actually just affiliate linkfarms, and that their “recommendations” are based entirely on what VPN company pays them the most for referrals. That’s why some companies, like Hide My Ass, that have been caught flat-out betraying their customers, continue to get “recommended” by so many review sites…
https://www.cryptocloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2769
Sometimes, the companies that have the least visible marketing presence are the ones doing the most actual work to provide reliable, robust, resilient protection for their customers. Sort of a different philosophy, the two ways of approaching the market, eh?
Vpn is necessary for everyone Internet Service Providers or ISPs track, monitor, and record activities of all their users, including your online browsing. That means you are tracked by and spied on at all times by your ISP. The downloads you make, the websites you visit and other activities you do online are always on their radar. I am using Hidemyass vpn service For Protect my identity very nice information share here i got Hidemyass service with the help of http://www.bestvpnservice.com and also vpnverge.com really helps me
I use a service from http://hidemyiponline.com/hmvpn which is HMA. I use it mainly to access content from my home country while traveling, such as my local television from the UK. I like that they offer IP addresses in a vast number of countries, and could care less about whether or not they log, as there is NO service currently which would fully protect you if carrying out illegal activities (which I do NOT do).
If all you want is access, from overseas, to UK TV, or Hulu, or Netflix, then this service is what you need, and is very affordable.
I also like that it has an option to use it on Android devices, iPads, PCs and Macs, so I can use it regardless of which OS I want to access the TV service from.