Why use a VPN service?
There are a number of reasons both businesses and home users would want or need to use a VPN service. In this article, we will focus on the home user only.
Firstly, if you are not aware of the meaning of the acronym VPN – it stands for Virtual Private Network. A VPN creates a private network with encrypted data over a public network such as the internet. Say for instance you had a small home network of computers that were not connected to the internet. For your purpose, this would be private since no one outside of your home would have access to it.
The moment you connect to the internet, your connection is no longer private. You might be surprised to know but your internet provider and even Google can know your browsing habits and log every page you visit or every file you download.
A VPN creates a ‘tunnel’ which changes your ip address (this is how you are identified) and also encrypts your data, making it near impossible for anyone outside of you to know what you are doing on the internet. Most good VPN services also keep no or minimal logs so even if they were asked to reveal information about one of their users, they would be unable to do so. In short, a VPN service provides excellent anonymity on the internet.
Now we’ll explain the two primary reasons a home user would likely be considering a VPN. There are more reasons, but these are the main ones.
Privacy
Most of us have heard or read about people being sued by the music or movie industry for downloading copyrighted material. There was a case in the US where a woman was sued for $1.9 million dollars for downloading 24 songs. If she had used a VPN service, they would not have been able to know it was her that was downloading and she would have been safe. Instead she’ll have to work the rest of her life to pay off this fine. Wow.
As I mentioned above, a VPN creates an encrypted tunnel that is virtually impossible for outsiders to know what you are downloading. If you are downloading copyrighted music, movies or TV shows and not using a VPN service, there is a high likelihood that you will get caught!
P.S. – Using a free VPN service (there are a few of them around) is not a great idea at all. There is little to no privacy and you might as well just download using your normal internet connection. Don’t bother with free services, trust me.
Geoblocking
Tens of millions of people around the world subscribe to Netflix. It is a popular streaming service and for good reason. They have some pretty good programs. But every country Netflix operates in has different shows available. This is due to licensing agreements with studios and networks. Canada for instance has far less programs to choose from than their US neighbors. With a VPN service, you can simply connect to a US server and login to Netflix and you’re done. You are logged into the US site and get all the benefits of shows that aren’t available where you live.
The same goes for Hulu, Amazon and all other streaming services that have geographic blocking (which is pretty much all of them).
If you travel out of country a lot, having VPN software on your laptop or ipad means that no matter where you are you can login to your account in your home country and watch your shows.
Here’s a funny little note: There are an estimated 200,000 Netflix subscribers in Australia according to one article. At the time of this writing, Netflix does not even have service in Australia! So now you know how those 200,000 people are enjoying their Netflix.
I hope this article has been of some use to you. While a VPN can do a lot of things and can be complicated, for the average home user like you and me, the services that we list on this website are all very easy to understand and setup. If they weren’t simple, people would just give up and move on.
If you’ve come here for one or both of the reasons I’ve written about above, then you might want to check out our selection of VPN services that we have listed. I personally use and recommend Torguard, but have tested all of the services listed and they all work great and simple to setup. So choose the one that works best for you. Remember, all of the services we list on this site have a coupon, sale, or promo code so you never pay full price if you use services referred here.
