How to Keep Your Data Safe When on the Internet?

Staying safe when browsing the internet is a concern that most of us share. Whether you are worried about your private banking information being intercepted by nefarious individuals or would simply prefer not to have your browsing history tracked by online advertisers, there are plenty of reasons to want privacy when browsing the internet.

Thankfully, there is an easy way to make sure that you and your personal information are safe when you are browsing the web. That solution uses a VPN to protect all of the data sent from your computer to servers all over the internet. While VPNs were once the preserve of geeks, they have become much more accessible in recent years. Setting up a VPN connection used to require a relatively advanced level of technical know-how and could take several hours. Now, it is a simple matter of downloading an app provided by your chosen VPN provider and entering a username and password.

How Using a VPN Protects Your Activity

Whenever a user browses the internet, it is easy to leave traces of their activity that can be picked up by other people and organizations. This includes the websites that a user visits, the web searches they make, how long they spend on a particular website, and what they do there. Advertisers can then use this information to build a picture of a user’s activity and target them with specific ads and content. It can also be used by governments, ISPs, and others to track you. Even if they have nothing to hide, many users may want to avoid this type of tracking.

Using a VPN puts the control back in the hands of the user. When they enable their VPN, they can introduce a wall of anonymity between them and anyone who is trying to track them. This makes it impossible for companies to use IP addresses as a means of tracking user activity since the IP address that a particular user is identified by will change on a very regular basis.

When a VPN is Most Useful

Using a VPN to protect your personal information is especially important if you are browsing the internet using a public wi-fi hotspot. Most of these hotspots offer no encryption to protect your data from interception by other people on the same wi-fi network. If you’re on a plane or in a coffee shop where you have no choice but to use the shared wi-fi connection, this can be a huge problem.

Using a VPN avoids this issue by encrypting all of the data that is sent from your computer to the wi-fi network. This means that even if someone did manage to intercept your information, it would be protected by military-grade encryption. As a consequence, they would not be able to read the information that you are sending.

Using a VPN in situations such as this is now mandated by many companies who send their workers on the road. It is only individual users who are now left without the protection of a VPN when they are browsing the internet in these types of situations. Unfortunately, this makes them an easy target for those who want to steal their information. This makes striking back by using a VPN at all times even more important.

Making the Most of a VPN

As well as protecting a user’s security and personal information, several other advantages can come from using a VPN service. The biggest of these is the ability to make it look as though your computer is located in a different country from the one that you are actually in. This also comes with some security benefits as it introduces another layer of anonymity and routing between a user and anyone who is trying to track them. A side benefit of this approach is that it allows users to access content that would generally be unavailable in their country. This makes VPN services particularly popular with ex-pats who want to enjoy TV programs and films from the country where they were born.

Most VPN providers also make it possible for their services to be used on a wide range of devices. This means that with one subscription, it will be possible to protect all the browsing activity that takes place on a phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and many other devices. Some VPN companies even offer easy tools that make it possible to use their services on connected TVs and other devices that do not allow the user to directly install VPN software on them.

All of these points show that a VPN is an excellent way of staying safe and secure when browsing the internet. Now that setting up a VPN is a simple matter of setting up an account and downloading some software, there is no barrier to most internet users protecting themselves online.

How to choose the
best VPN

Many VPNs limit you to connecting a specific number of devices at the same time. If you have multiple mobile devices, laptops, smart TVs or other hardware to protect.