A VPN is an abbreviation for Virtual Private Network that establishes a secure connection between the internet and your system. A good VPN will hide your IP address, encrypt web traffic, and provide you perfect online security and privacy. Due to the more data theft, more and more people are using VPN for online security and privacy that offers you to hide online surveillance, privacy from public WI-FI network, and restricted website access.
However, all VPN are not equally effective, you have to make sure of no leak of your IP address, log your data, and any other risk. We have composed this guide for you to know more about VPNs like What is VPN, How it works, Why do you need it. You will get to know all the information in the following session.
Contents
What is a VPN?
As mentioned earlier, VPN stands for Virtual Private Network simply means a sort of privacy and security tool used for the establishment of a secure online connection. The VPN technology was invented and developed by a Microsoft engineer Gurdeep Singh Pal in 1996.
He created the first VPN protocol that was Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) that allows people effective security and privacy. VPN performs two main functions:
1. VPN Establishes A Secure Path
VPN service establishes a secure path between your devices such as a mobile phone or laptop and a remote VPN server with the help of encryption. Data is traveled by this path and reaches your requested destination websites.
Also, this encrypted path restricted internet service providers (ISPs), hackers, spies, on your online functionality. Any unauthorized party will not allow us to view your online data and they will see only unintelligible numbers sequence.
2. Hide Your IP Address
Every internet connection has its unique identifying number known as Internet Protocol Address (IP address) that is linked with your physical location and other information. An effective VPN will hide your IP address from an unauthorized website where they can’t identify the original IP address of the user.
VPN physical location can be kept private easily without any targeting as well as tracking. VPN offers you servers around the world so you can misguide unauthorized websites by streaming, browsing, and torrenting from a particular location through the server-based location and help you to bypass internet censorship. However, it does not provide you the ultimate online protection, so you might be considered to alter your recent browser or use the Tor network.
Why Do You Need A VPN?
A VPN allows you to establish a secure connection with effective privacy and security on public Wi-Fi, access blocked or unauthorized websites, disguise from hackers. Here we have listed some reasons that show the need for VPN:
1. Keep Away from Global Mass Surveillance
Internet Service Providers can see all the websites you go through and can access the related information without a VPN service. Even Some authorities can also save and record this data for a long duration.
However, with a secure VPN connection internet traffic is encrypted and it makes complex for authorities, suspicious agencies, and also internet service providers to track and save the online data. For this issue, you can visit EFT and Privacy International where you find the global surveillance disclosure list.
2. Internet Censorship Bypass
Government and some national agencies censor online activity worldwide by restricting user access to certain websites. Consequently, a VPN service offers users to evade censorship to access global media and get the freedom of speech through the encryption of your web traffic and cover your original IP address.
3. Protection in Public WiFi
Public network exploitation is easier as well as cheaper to unencrypt by hackers to get banking details such as debit cards, credit cards, photos, and other private data. With the increasing numbers of threats, hackers are continuously targeting the hotels to gather mass information benefits. A VPN will help you to encrypt your web traffic from stealing your online data.
How Does A VPN Work?
A VPN establishes an encrypted connection between your device and service provider and save your data from third parties. They might know that data is transferred but what data is transferred might not be detected.
VPN service sends your request to the desired websites and masks your location with the unknown VPN server location. The service performs in the following fashion:
- The VPN software et the IP address of your selected VPN server and starts a secure connection.
- For a secure connection, your device and server exchange data like login credentials email, and password and create encrypted web information with security.
- Your web traffic is transferred by the encrypted path to the VPN server.
- The VPN server creates an encrypted connection and sends the request to the desired website.
- When the information is sent back to the device, it is transferred through a VPN tunnel and then decrypted by the system software.
The two main features are VPN encryption protocols and encryption ciphers. VPN protocols are a set of rules that simply determines how secure your VPN path is and cipher is an algorithm that encrypts and decrypts data through the tunnel.
How to Choose the Right VPN?
Here we presented some of the points that are important when selecting the best VPN:
- Cost of the VPN.
- Legal to use.
- Safety extent.
- Supporting devices.
- Working speed.
- Implementation process.
- Work with streaming and torrenting devices.
- Work against censorship.
How to Set Up A VPN?
There are several ways to set up your VPN service on your device depending upon the type of device. The easiest possible method is to download the custom app from the service provider for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. You can use the following guidelines to install a VPN:
Step 1: Firstly, from your service provider buy a VPN subscription through email verification. Here we are considering NordVPN as an example.
Step 2: After that, you have to download the VPN software from the VPN provider website. Also, you can get through the Google play store for Android and iOS devices. Go through the installation process and accept the terms and services.
Step 3: Now, log in to your account with your email and password credentials.
Step 4: Further, access the settings menu and enable the kill switching and leak blocking option if presently available there and select the VPN protocol option of your choice. However, OpenVPN is recommended.
Step 5: Furthermore, get back to the main screen of the app and from the given list choose a VPN server location.
Step 6: Finally, press the connect button there, then you will be connected to the VPN server of your selected location.
However, every VPN service does not include custom apps and if it supports manual configuration VPN can still be used through another device.
Conclusion
In the above session, we have introduced certain aspects of VPN network service that are important. We hope this article will enhance your knowledge related to VPN service and operation. Though, you can also set up your VPN at home. However, it is a complex process and VPN servers do not deal with restricted content because internet service protocol can still log your online activity.
