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Have you ever connected to a public Wi-Fi network and wondered if someone, somewhere might be able to see of your online activity? That’s entirely reasonable, considering all you might have heard about privacy online. With a virtual private network (VPN), you can protect your information from prying eyes and regain some privacy online.

What Is a VPN and How Does It Work?
When you turn it on, a VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between you and a remote server operated by a VPN service. All your internet traffic is routed through this tunnel, so your data is secure from prying eyes along the way. Because your traffic is exiting the VPN server, your computer appears to have the IP address and location of that server, masking your identity and location.

What Is the Value of Using a VPN for Me?
Privacy and access to content you might not have in your country. E.g. in some coutries, services like Netflix are blocked, and by mimicking your location to a country where the service is available you can get access to Netflix – this also might be the case while you’re traveling to another country and you want to watch Netflix on the go – VPN might be your only solution to access your Netflix account.
To understand the value of a VPN better, let’s think of some other specific scenarios in which a VPN might be used. Consider the public Wi-Fi network, perhaps at a coffee shop or airport. Normally, you might connect without a second thought. But do you know who might be watching the traffic on that network? Can you even be sure the Wi-Fi network is legit, or might it operated by a thief who’s after your personal data? Think about the passwords, banking data, credit card numbers, and just plain private information that you transmit every time you go online.
If you connect to that same public Wi-Fi network using a VPN you can rest assured that no one on that network will be able to intercept your data—not other users snooping around for would-be victims, nor even the operators of the network itself. This last point is particularly important, and everyone should keep in mind that it’s very difficult to tell whether a Wi-Fi network is what it appears to be. Just because it’s called Starbucks_WiFi doesn’t mean it’s really owned by the well-known coffee shop.
When at home, you don’t have to worry as much about someone spying on the Wi-Fi network because you own the network. But a VPN can help here, too. Your internet service provider (ISP) has enormous insight into what you do online, and your ISP can sell anonymized data about its customers. That means the company you pay for internet access is making money off your data.
“ISPs are in a position to see a lot of what you do online. They kind of have to be, since they have to carry all of your traffic,” explains Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff technologist Jeremy Gillula. “Unfortunately, this means that preventing ISP tracking online is a lot harder than preventing other third-party tracking—you can’t just install [the EFF’s privacy-minded browser add-on] Privacy Badger or browse in incognito or private mode.”
While it is true that companies like Google and Facebook make money off your online behavior, you are not necessarily forced to use those services. If you suddenly decided to stop using Facebook, you might miss out on cute pet pictures and political rants from your friends and family, but you could still live a decent, perhaps better, life. You don’t always have that choice when it comes to your ISP, which controls your home’s gateway to the entirety of the internet.
While there are alternatives to Google and Facebook, a lot of people have limited home ISP alternatives. Some areas have only one ISP offering wired internet access. That makes recent changes that allow ISPs to sell data from their customers all the more troubling. It’s one thing to opt into a shady system, it’s quite another to have no choice in the matter.
With a VPN, you can connect to a server in a different country and “spoof” your location. If you’re outside the US, you can VPN back to a familiar location and access the internet (mostly) as usual. You can also do it in reverse: from the comfort of your home, you can pop over to a far-away VPN server, perhaps to access streaming video unavailable in the US. VPNs can also grant access to blocked websites. Some governments have decided that it is in their best interest to block certain websites from access by all members of the population. With a VPN, it’s possible to tunnel to a different country with more progressive policies, and access sites that would otherwise be blocked. And again, because VPNs encrypt web traffic, they help protect the identity of people who connect to the open internet in this way. That said, governments are wise to this, which is why we’re seeing VPN use being blocked in Russia and China.
What’s the Price?
NordVPN has several pricing options: $59 for one year, $89 for 2 years and $11.95 if paid monthly.
The company accepts credit cards, various anonymous cryptocurrencies, and PayPal, as well as other online payment methods.
Worth the price if you ask me.