Why Is Everyone Talking About VPNs?

But what the heck are they?

Before we start, its worth catching up on politics at play here.

Yesterday, the House followed suit, and theres no reason to expect the President to do any different.

Regardless of all that, chances are you dont have the luxury of choice for your home ISP.

Every city Ive ever lived in has one or two ISP options at the most.

Its a middleman between you and the internet.

So your ISP can only see a bunch of encrypted traffic that looks like random characters.

To your ISP, using a VPN all the time looks like you only visit one web site.

Then they couldnt sell your data because theyd have no idea what youre looking at on the internet.

VPNs are subscription services that range from free to $10/month.

Historically, VPNs are most popular for security.

That same security goes for the rest of us too, especiallywhen were using public Wi-Fi.

Ive used a VPN while traveling at hotels or working from coffee shops for a very long time.

VPNs are also a popular means to get around geo-restricted content or government blackouts.

If youre in North Korea, you’re able to circumvent thatcountrys censorship.

VPNs are all the rage today, but theyre no magic bullet.

The hotter these things get, the shadier the business practices will be, and nobody can stop them.

A VPN knows as much about your web traffic as your ISP would.

Because they dont have to.

They can do whatever they want.

Encryption is only one piece of that puzzle.

Security is important, but so is privacy.

That means youll need to host it on a web server.

Popular options for doing so includeStreisand,Sovereign,OpenVPN, andAutoVPN.

Also, while the software itself is free, the web server isnt.

You will at least get the peace of mind that your VPN is fully under your control though.

VPNs andprivacy-focused surfing app extensionsare a temporary workaround, but we cant and shouldnt have to sustain that forever.

Its a statement, but there still needs to be a long-term plan.

This isnt easy by any means.

Last year,Wired detailed their processand they ran into a lot of problems.

Finally, to state the obvious, your ISP isnt the only one tracking you.

This will all happen regardless of whether youre on a VPN.

Tons of other places collect data about you.