What is a VPN service and how to choose the best one?

A virtual private network, or VPN, establishes an encrypted connection between your device and a remote server owned by a VPN provider, creating a private point-to-point tunnel that encrypts your personal data, masks your IP address, and allows you to access or stream regional content from anywhere, provides greater privacy and anonymity online, bypasses censorship and surveillance, and prevents ISPs and third parties tracking. This ensures that your online experience is private, protected and more secure.

Now that you know what a VPN is, let's explore the many benefits of a VPN and why it can be beneficial to use one.

Why should I use a VPN service?

There are a lot of benefits to using a VPN. A VPN protects its users by encrypting their data and masking their IP address, leaving their browsing history and location untraceable. This greater anonymity provides greater privacy, as well as greater freedom for those who want to access blocked or region-locked content.

Secure your data

A lot of the sensitive information, such as emails, payment information, and location tags, is constantly being tracked and can be exploited, especially on a public network.

A VPN connection encrypts your data and makes it unreadable to anyone who doesn't have the encryption key. It hides your online activity so no one else can see it.

Access or stream regional content from anywhere

Some websites and services restrict their media content based on geographic location, which means you may not be able to access to certain kinds of content.

A VPN can hide your real location, allowing you to use otherwise blocked content.

Bypass censorship and surveillance

Some regions may not be able to access certain websites or services due to government restrictions, censorship or surveillance.

When a VPN hides your IP address, it also spoofs your real location as well. This is useful for bypassing content blocking and firewalls that initiate blocking based on your IP address.

Using a VPN gives you the ability to bypass firewalls and access blocked websites or services.

Prevent ISP and third-party tracking

Internet service providers (ISPs) may log and track your browsing history through your device's unique IP address. This information could then be sold to third-party advertisers, given to the government, or leak to hackers.

A VPN masks your IP address by routing your connection to a remote VPN server rather than your ISP's servers, thus, prevents ISP tracking, and keeps your personal data private.

When a user successfully connects devices to the VPN server, the VPN not only secures their data, but also assigns them a new IP address that conceals their real IP address.

IP masking has also proven effective against doxing, which is when your private identity is made public on the internet, as well as against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. If no one knows your real IP address, then no one can launch an attack against you.

Remote work

Today, remote work is more widespread than ever before.

With a VPN, remote workers can access company resources over a private connection from anywhere. This provides employees greater flexibility and also ensures that company data remains protected and secure, even on a public Wi-Fi network.

Protect against identity theft

Identity theft is a growing problem these days. This is when hackers steal your personal information to charge your credit cards, access your bank account, sign a lease, or use your insurance for their own purposes - all forms of fraud.

With the increasing frequency of corporate data breaches, where user information is stolen from a database, the problem of identity theft only seems to be getting more serious. And now, with nearly every cafe, business, and airport offering public Wi-Fi for working, banking, and shopping, our identities feel more vulnerable than ever.

While it may be impossible to prevent data leaks, you can protect yourself from online identity theft by using a VPN. Through tunneling, a VPN encrypts your data so that no one, including scammers, can see it, thereby protecting your information even if you are using an unsecured network. A VPN also masks your IP address so your identity and online location cannot be tracked, making it difficult for cyber thieves to identify you. Since your IP address is hidden, you are protected from cyberattacks.

Warning! No protection against viruses and unwanted cookies

Even with the most reliable protocols, a VPN does not protect against viruses. And while some VPNs can block ads, they don't prevent cookies themselves. Also VPN does not protect from bugs and other vulnerabilities in your software, which is why it's important to keep your software up to date.

What features of a VPN service should you check before buying?

Now that you know the advantages of using a VPN, let's explore what features you should be looking for in a VPN provider. There are plenty of VPN providers on the market, but you'll want to select a reputable company with clear expertise and trustworthy values. Here are best of the features you should look for in a good VPN provider:

Strong protocols and encryption

The most important feature of any VPN provider is security. It's essential to choose a service that uses an industry-standard protocol with 256-bit encryption, the same kind of encryption used by banks and military.

Also, while providers may support multiple protocols, the best protocols you should choose are WireGuard, OpenVPN, SSTP, IKEv2/IPSec.

It’s better to avoid older protocols like L2TP/IPSec, or obsolete protocols like PPTP.

IP address protection

The next important VPN feature is IP address protection, which grants a greater anonymity.

A VPN replaces your actual IP address to make it look like you’ve connected to the internet from a different location: the physical location of the VPN server, rather than your real location.

A shared IP address groups multiple users together under one IP, protecting you from within the crowd, while VPN server switching allows you to choose your location from wherever your provider's servers are located.

Speed and Servers

You want to make sure the VPN offers sufficient speed, as many providers struggle to stay fast enough for streaming Netflix or downloading.

When it comes to performance, more servers equals better browsing, because each server will be less crowded. Also, the closer you are to a server, the faster and more reliable your VPN connection may be.

Each VPN provider has a defined number of servers around the world. And the more servers VPN provider has, the more spread out the users, the faster the performance.

Zero-log policy

It's important to choose VPN provider, that practices transparency around their logging policy. A zero-log, or no-log VPN provider only keeps your email address, payment information, and VPN server you use.

A VPN should not keep usage logs, connection logs, session data, or your IP address.

However, less reputable VPN providers may log your online activity and use the data to sell advertising to you.

Kill switch

If your secure VPN connection gets interrupted, your device reverts to your real IP address, in turn compromising your identity. A kill switch prevents this from happening by cutting off your Internet connection as soon as your VPN connection disrupts.

However, it is not recommended to rely on the kill switch when torrenting. You always need to bind your BitTorrent client to the VPN interface.

Reputation

To get a good sense of how the VPN performs, read both consumer and professional reviews.

Recommended websites are Trustpilot, Reddit: VPN, Reddit: vpnreviews, Reddit: vpnrecommendations, Reddit: VPNTorrents, etc.

Customer support

Any VPN provider should have a reliable support team that you can contact for any questions you may have. This support team should be knowledgeable, helpful, and easy to get in touch with.

Pricing

It's usually best to avoid free VPNs altogether.

When you choose a paid VPN provider, you are choosing a genuine and reliable company backed by quality technology and infrastructure. A paid provider is also less likely to log your activities and sell that information to advertisers.

But a free VPN is also useful. So, some paid VPN providers also have a free subscription. Typically, a free VPN is limited in speed and number of available servers, but allows the user to test VPN services before purchasing.