Cheerleading for VPNs: Gimme a V, Gimmie an S, Gimmie an N!
June 20, 2018
VPNs Protect Your Data Away From Home
The received wisdom is that a VPN or virtual private network can be used to protect your Internet data from hackers and other bad actors. ZDNet wrote up a piece about VPNs in “Take Home Along: Six Ways A VPN Can Help Travelers Connect Wherever They Go.” Typically remote access from a different country or area than your normal IP area will be flagged as a bad actor, but it can also protect you.
In theory, you can use a VPN to prevent your debit or credit card from being blocked, do home online shopping, watch your streaming services, and use VOIP services. While these are apparent application for a VPN, the article also shares some other that are “naughtier.”
If you are visiting a country, like China, that has restricted access to social media then a VPN in theory will allow you to circumnavigate it. Even more helpful is that it can hide your online tracks from spies:
“Some companies provide VPN access to their employees while traveling. Employees are given software or configurations that allow them to create encrypted tunnels between their laptops and home servers. These enterprise VPN clients do a great job of hiding the content, but they fail in one critical way: They often let a spying nation state know the IP address of those VPN end-points.
The hope is that by using a VPN service provider, you can obfuscate the path back to work, as well as the data you’re transmitting. This is a very good idea to make it just a little harder for nation-state spies and the organized crime hackers that often work with them to find your company’s servers.”
The problem is that not every VPN is fully secure. Why? In some countries, those who use and operate VPNs are either expected to cooperate with the authorities or just want to stay in business and maybe out of jail.
Whitney Grace, June 20, 2018
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