VPN stands for Virtual Private Networks, services that help you stay anonymous online by masking your identity and origin with a web of secure servers. They also allow you greater freedom on the Internet by helping you bypass geo-locked content and stopping people from tracking what you do.
I've used a lot of VPNs, so I decided to put together this guide for beginners to VPNs. This VPN guide for beginners covers some of the most important questions you may have about VPNs. If you’ve ever wanted to get a VPN, but felt like they're too technical, then today is your lucky day.
For those who are concerned about security, privacy, and anonymity, the term Virtual Private Network, or VPN, will have shown up on your radar at some point or other. A VPN offers users the unique chance to stay safe on the Internet through the combination of encryption and a network of servers.
Thanks to the state of cybersecurity today, we as end-users find ourselves besieged from all sides on the Internet. Governments are spying on their own people while companies are harvesting data to sell more advertisements and cybercriminals are trying to steal whatever they can.
Yet a VPN just like any other service costs money, so how do you know if you really need it, or even how much to expect it to cost? This Comprehensive VPN Guide aims to address this and more. In fact, we will explore everything from all the technologies involved to choosing the right VPN service.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for “Virtual Private Network.” VPN technology has traditionally been used to allow secure connections through a series of remote servers. Using a combination of encryption and connection protocols, your data is secured and the source kept hidden. When using a VPN, your original IP address is masked by the connection since you are being routed through the VPN servers.
Consumer VPN connections today are sold as individual services. This helps everyone have the chance to protect their privacy and increase their online security at a small cost. Depending on where the VPN service provider has its servers, your IP address can be changed to that of one virtually anywhere around the world.
What Does a VPN Do?
In theory, VPNs offer a very simplistic service. They economy connections from your computer to the VPN server and then routes any information through those servers. The results have the potential to be much more interesting than the theory.
For example;
Staying Anonymous: Since you are taking on the IP address of the VPN server your real IP won’t be shown no matter what sites you connect to. This means that anyone accessing that kind of data won’t be able to find your point of origin. Essentially, the VPN will change your IP Address.
Mask Your Activities: Normally, all your data requests and the like go through your Internet Service Provider (ISP) before being routed to where they need to go. By using a VPN, you are routing that information through the VPN’s secure servers instead. This way even your ISP will have no idea what you are accessing on the Internet.
Be Safe on Public WiFi: because of the encryption used by VPN services you are adding an additional layer of security to any of your connections. This can be especially important if you access the web on public WiFi, which is usually unencrypted and open to man-in-the-middle attacks.
Bypass Geo-Blocks: Some websites or online services restrict accessibility or certain content based on where the visitor is coming from. As a case example, some video streaming providers like Netflix have different content for different regions. Using a VPN can allow you to bypass such geo-blocks and access any content you like. VPNs also open access to multiple sports live streams.
Bypass Internet Censorship: Many governments impose some level of Internet censorship on their people. For example, India carries out Internet censorship and using a VPN is one way to work around this.
P2P or File Sharing: Some ISPs frown on file sharing since it takes up a lot of bandwidth. By using a VPN to torrent, your ISP won’t know that you are using P2P programs and won’t throttle or cut your connection when it occurs.
Why Do I Need a VPN?
Normally I would say that considering increased government surveillance and the low cost of VPN services today, everyone should be using VPNs. However, when it comes to spending money this statement alone might not be enough of a motivating factor.
Security experts around the globe have long tried to warn us about the dangers of using insecure connections for our devices. The recent deluge of data breaches and leaks have obviously shown this to be accurate.
The recent WeWork data leak is a prime example of how serious the situation has become. If we cannot rely of companies we interact with to keep our data safe – we can at least increase security on our own sides and be more cautious about who we share what with.
According to Tony Jarvis, Chief Technology Officer, APAC, Check Point Software Technologies, “Insecure wifi networks present a significant security concern: they can reveal the data flowing from a user's mobile device to others. This creates not only a privacy risk but also the very real danger that others may misuse this information to commit offenses such as identity fraud or siphoning funds out of individuals' bank accounts”.
This and other reasons are solid motivating factors for individuals to invest small monthly fees to keep their data transfers secure and encrypted. If you would like to learn the true value of a VPN service to you then it might help if you first understand the way you use the Internet daily.
For example, do you only use it rarely to do some research or check your email, or are you glued to the net and use it for everything from work to entertainment?
Understanding how you use the Internet can lend a great deal more weight to helping you decide as to whether you need to use a VPN or not. Let’s consider a few cases;
The Occasional User – Will often find the Internet more of something he/she merely tolerates and uses it only when there is no other choice. Access to email and quick research may be the only things this profile of person does. In this scenario, a VPN would be less suitable for their needs.
The Student – Younger people are generally heavy Internet users and tend to play games as well. They thrive off everything ranging from social media to online gaming and use a wide variety of devices to do so. VPN can not only help them stay safe online, but also bypass geo-restricted games and can be installed on a wide variety of devices.
The Frequent Traveller – Whether moving from place to place for work or otherwise, frequent travellers will often find themselves using public Internet connections which are insecure. There is a high risk of communications interceptions which may result in login credentials being stolen, including even for access to online banking portals. VPN are vital in this case.
These are just some of the use cases where a VPON might or might not be necessary. As you can see, the key differentiating factor is mainly is how much you use the Internet. The more you use it, the more likely your needs for a VPN service increase.
What Can a VPN Hide?
Many of us surf the web taking for granted that the devices and machinery involved offer us the same degree of privacy as our real-life interactions with things. Unfortunately, by design, web-based activities are usually designed to capture as much information as possible.
This means that every device you use shares a lot of information you might not be aware about, and many websites will collect as much of it as they can. If the information isn't readily available, some sites will even ask you for it.
VPNs can help us hide a lot of this information and keep us safer – as long as we do not voluntarily share that data with any sites. For example, a VPN can help;
Browsing History
We are tracked every place we visit on the Internet. Everywhere we go and everything we do is often kept track of and associated with the IP address of the device we are using. Take for example if you search for birth control.
Without a way of hiding your browsing history, the next time you surf the web, you might find websites serving you ads for condoms or birth control pills. You've inadvertently shared information that advertisers can use to target you specifically.
Your IP Address
IP addresses are much more important than we may think. In fact, many of us take them for granted and have no idea what they are and how they are used. IP addresses are like your own home address – information that you wouldn't normally share with strangers.
VPNs help us hide our own IP addresses by letting us connect to their secure servers. From there, we are routed to wherever we want to go. If we visit a site while connected to a VPN server, the website will only see the IP address associated with the VPN server.
Location
Another way IP addresses can be used is to restrict your media streaming activities. Media sites like Netflix or Hulu restrict content based on your IP address – which tells them where your physical location is. This helps them organize their content to follow licensing agreements with movie publishers.
Unfortunately, this also means that if you were to travel, you might lose access to your favorite movies. By using a VPN, you can connect to a server that will allow you to stream content from any geo-location in the world.
Your Devices
Since VPNs work with secure servers, encryption, and secure connection protocols, our data is safer from prying eyes. Cybercrime is on the rise and hackers are always on the lookout for insecure connections. Using a VPN can help you safeguard your devices from snoops.
Give You Freedom on the Net
Many governments around the world today are trying to censor the Internet for their own reasons. Some instruct ISPs to block access to certain information and sites. VPNs help return your net freedom to you, allowing you to visit any sites you want at any time.
Understanding VPN Logging Policies
Many VPN service providers will tell you that they do not keep logs. Logs are information files that contain information about your connection and activities. It is important to note that there are various types of logs which might be kept.
Connection logs might contain things such as your IP address, time stamps of when you started or disconnected to the service, and how much information was transferred during the connection.
Usage Logs contain other information like what sites you may have visited during a connection, what you've downloaded, what protocols the various applications you use are engaging in, and more.
As you can see from the information contained in these logs, they can ultimately be used to not just identify you, but also everything you've done and everywhere you've gone on the Internet.
Most good VPN service providers will therefore do their best to assure customers that they do not keep this information. unfortunately, there is no way you can normally know if they are telling the truth.
ExpressVPN though recently went to the expense and effort of getting audited by a third party which managed to verify that the company's no-logging policy was legit.
How VPN Affects Your Internet Speed
When you connect to VPN, and your online traffic is routed through a secure encrypted tunnel, you may experience slight changes in the Internet speed, and this is absolutely normal.
There are many moving parts involved in how fast your connection can be when using a VPN. Let’s take a closer look at what determines Internet performance when you access the web privately and securely instead of a regular, unprotected way.
Note: There have been misconceptions that using a VPN can increase your Internet speed but this is untrue. Your speed will always be equal to or less than the subscribed speed you have with your Internet Service Provider.
Distance to a server
The distance between your physical location and a VPN server is one of the key factors determining the Internet speed. For example, if you’re in the UK and you’re connecting to a VPN server in Australia, your data needs to be moved that actual distance. The nearer a server is located, the faster your Internet speed will be.
Unless you need to connect to a server in a specific location, it is better to choose VPN servers located in nearby countries, including where you are. To squeeze out the maximum, search for a high-speed VPN service provider with broad country coverage and a large number of servers, such as NordVPN which has more than 5,000 servers in over 60 countries.
To see how Internet speed differs when connected to servers in different locations, run a speed test (Speedtest.net is a good choice) and take a look at the ping time. It shows how long is a delay in the connection between your device and the server it’s communicating with.
If you'd like to try this for yourself you can do a comparison easily. For instance, when connecting from the UK, choose an Australian server and run a speed test, then run it once again when connected to a server in France.
Compare the ping times and you will likely find that the delay is shorter when you're connected to the French server as it’s way closer than the Australian one. So, shorter ping times are what you should always look for.
However, to determine the actual speed, interlinking between different ISPs must be taken into account. That means that the same speed test server must be used in both cases: when connected and when disconnected from the VPN.
Let’s say you live in the UK and you want to test the speed of your VPN when connected to a server in Germany. All you need to do is to connect to a German server and run a speed test. However, after you disconnect from VPN to run another speed test, you must choose the same speed test server in Germany you used in a test before.
Server load
When there are many users connected to one server, the connection speed drops. Such overload is a typical problem with free and slow VPN service providers that offer a poor number of servers and have many users lured by the option of using VPN at no cost.
Users of advanced VPNs with extensive servers lists shouldn’t face this issue. In NordVPN, the Quick Connect functionality comes in handy – it automatically picks one of our dedicated servers for the best speed VPN performance.
Quality of encryption
Encryption is the key feature of virtual private networks. It makes your online traffic inaccessible to hackers and snoopers so that you can browse in ultimate privacy. However, the way encryption is handled depends on a VPN service provider. It can vary in terms of quality and reliability.
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is the block cipher algorithm used as the current encryption standard. It may come in different levels of strength, such as 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit encryption. The higher the encryption level, the more reliable the protection of your data is.
Before becoming the most frequently used algorithm in ciphering data, AES with 256-bit keys was used by the U.S. government to secure classified information and by the NSA to protect national security data. Even a supercomputer can’t crack 256-bit encryption, so the strongest type of AES is what you should be looking for in a VPN service.
However, there is a small tradeoff you have to make: security and privacy supported by the strongest available encryption come with a slight loss in the Internet speed. So it’s a matter of your preferences: whether you need maximum speed or your sensitive data being protected against snoopers of any kind.
Speaking of NordVPN, military-grade AES-256 encryption implemented into the IKEv2/IPsec and OpenVPN security protocols is used to provide users with the ultimate data protection.
Internet speed offered by ISP
If your Internet speed is low to begin with the VPN shouldn’t be the only factor to blame for your online traffic running slow. Sometimes, Internet service providers (ISPs) throttle bandwidth on purpose.
Users might experience this by their Internet speed slowing down for specific websites or at certain times. For you as a user it usually means that you won’t be able to stream videos or download content as fast as you normally could.
In this situation, VPN comes as a true lifesaver – by routing your Internet traffic through a virtual private network, you can bypass the speed limitations imposed by your ISP.
Note: There have been instances of information floating around that claim using a VPN can increase your Internet speed. This is not true and you should not subscribe to a VPN service if that is what you're hoping for!
Are VPNs Legal?
It’s perfectly legal to use a VPN in most countries, including the U.S. This comes with a few important caveats, however:
- You can use VPNs in the U.S. – Running a VPN in the U.S. is legal, but anything that’s illegal without a VPN remains illegal when using one (eg torrenting copyrighted material)
- VPNs are banned by a few countries – Some countries, including China, Russia, Iraq and North Korea, restrict or ban the use of VPNs
- VPNs use can breach terms of service – It isn’t illegal to access services such as Netflix over a VPN, though it does breach their terms of use
- Law enforcement can demand information – Though most VPNs promise to keep no logs, there is precedent for VPN providers sharing user information with the authorities when requested
There are currently no laws prohibiting or restricting the use of VPNs in the U.S. and Canada. It’s also legal to use VPNs in many other countries around the world, including the UK, Australia and Europe.
Although VPNs have suffered from a poor reputation in the past due to being used for dubious activities, there are a host of valid reasons why people would choose to use a VPN, from accessing content on streaming services not available in their region, to protecting themselves when using public Wi-Fi.
It’s worth remembering that VPNs aren’t legal everywhere. They’re being banned in certain countries, particularly those with a more restrictive reputation.
What Devices Can You Run a VPN on?
The exact devices that VPNs can run on depend on the individual service providers. Most top-of-the-line VPN service providers can run on almost any device and in fact, usually allow you to use your service on multiple devices simultaneously.
Take for example if you were to subscribe to Surfshark (They are currently offering a great deal – only $1.99 per month for a two-year subscription!). They allow you to connect an unlimited number of devices at the same time.
In any case, aside from the usual devices such as your PC, Mac, smartphone, or tablet, there are many more platforms you can install most VPNs on. These include FireTV, many popular routers, or even your normal smart TVs.
Choosing the Right VPN
Editor's Tip: Although there are general guidelines when choosing a VPN, the important thing is to remember that each of us prioritizes needs in different ways. For example, Person A might use a VPN focused on his privacy, while Person B may prefer one that places greater emphasis on speed.
Getting to know if a VPN provider is right for you cna be as simple as answering a few questions and then seeing if the provider you are looking at can address those issues for you. For example;
Does the VPN provider places emphasis on your privacy?
Many top-notch VPN service providers will have a clearly spelled out No Logging policy. If it doesn't have this publicly available that is a major source of concern. Some VPN providers have been known to hand over logs to authorities on demand.
Are Their Protocols Up to Date?
While most VPN providers will provide OpenVPN, some will try to get away with using older or more obscure protocols. This isn't generally a good sign, no matter how they try to justify it. Some protocols such as Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) have been known to be cracked by some government agencies.
Is Your Usage Restricted?
Most commercial VPNs offer unlimited bandwidth, but there are a couple that set caps on how much you can use. If you intend to keep your VPN service ‘always on' or use it for bandwidth-intensive activities like torrenting / P2P then it might be something you need to know. This is especially true of free VPN service providers.
Can You Access a Good Network of Servers?
Server location is important because it affects two key characteristics of VPN services. The first is speed. Being able to access a VPN server near your location will mean high speeds and low latency – both desirable in any Internet connection. The second is the ability to overcome geo-blocked services such as the streaming of Netflix.
Good VPN service providers will often have multiple servers in many countries around the world. A good case in point is NordVPN, which has over 5,000 servers in 58 countries around the world.
What Devices and How Many Does the VPN Support?
Many households today will have multiple people with a few devices each. For example, my home has two people with – two PCs, one laptop, three mobile phones, and two tablets. That's not even taking into account other possibilities like Smart TVs and other devices.
Most VPN services will set limits on how many simultaneous connections you can have active at any given time. If you need to connect more devices at a god, consider a provider like Surfshark which doesn't limit how many devices you can use.
How Much Does the VPN Cost?
The VPN market is very competitive but not all VPNs are cheap. Unfortunately, much like the army, it isn't always recommended to go with the cheapest. In fact, free VPN services are often dangerous to use and may result in more harm than protection.
As a general guideline, most top-tier VPN service providers will charge around $10-12 for monthly subscriptions, but this price can drop drmatically if you're willing to sign on for extended periods.
One example of this is ExpressVPN, certainly not one of the cheapest around at $12.95 per month. However, if you sign on for a year, the price drops to $6.67 per month. Alternatively, there are also other decent VPNs like FastestVPN that go for as little as $0.83 per month.
Conclusion: Do You Need a VPN?
VPN services are simply one of those things that you might never think you need until one day you do – and then it's too late. At point of purchase, some may balk at paying prices ranging between $50 to $100+ but in all honesty, those are for subscriptions of between one to three years.
That works out to a few dollars a month. How much do you value your safety and privacy?
Take a look at three of the best VPN services on the market;
