Privacy has become in the last two years a priority for many users Due to the different security and privacy scandals that have made the news and that demonstrate, once again, how the internet is not as anonymous as many users think it is.
Facebook and Google, to name a few of the biggest, they know all the movements we make while sailing (as long as we do not log out of the browser we use). But he's not the only one. Our ISP (internet provider) stores a record of all our internet activity. Using a VPN is the only way to avoid it.
What is a VPN
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. As its name indicates, it is a private network that we establish with a service of this type and where all the communication we make is located end-to-end encryption, so no one can access it, not even our ISP.
By using a VPN, our ISP is the way we access this service, it is not the one who will return the requests we make to the internet from our computer. We are going to put a example to be clear. To find this article, you have done a Google search or you read us regularly. Be that as it may, if you do not use a VPN, your ISP has stored a record of both the search you have made and the page you are reading at the moment.
What does a VPN offer us
Beyond the advantages that a VPN service offers us to maintain our privacy when browsing the internet, this type of network offer us a series of advantages which we cannot access in any other way.
Bypass ISP restrictions
In some countries, block the download of leather content type, being the P2P networks the ones that are usually most affected in this sense. Making use of a VPN, our internet provider will not know at any time where we are connecting, so it cannot block access.
Bypass geographic limitations
In addition to allowing us to skip the geographical limits of internet providers, it also allows us to access content that is geo-blocked, such as Netflix or YouTube. But not only does it allow us to access streaming content available in other countries, but it also allows us to access web pages that are not available in a country due to the restrictions of the government in power.
VPN services are legal in most democratic countries of the world. However, in countries such as Russia and China, this type of service is prohibited because it allows you to bypass the restrictions that it has imposed in your country and access sensitive information to citizens, and as we all know, information is power.
Disadvantages of using a VPN
VPNs are not the panacea, and just as it has very good things, we also find Bad points.
No VPN is free
VPN services allow us to access the internet safely without leaving a trace on our internet provider, a trace that It is also not stored on the servers of the service we use. Enjoying a VPN service has a price, a price that ensures anonymity and that our browsing data is not stored on any server.
While it is true that we can find free VPN services, each and every one of them, they store all the data related to the activity we do on the internet, data that they later sell to third parties. In addition, this type of service offers us a limited number of GB when browsing, so in the end all are problems, both privacy and limit of use and browsing speed.
Connection speed is reduced
Connection speed It is not the same as the one we have contracted, since we connect to the internet through a server that is in another country, so the speed is considerably reduced if we compare it.
Leave traces in our browser
Do not confuse browsing anonymously through the internet using a VPN with the traces that we can leave on our device using a browser. In this case, the only browser that allows us to browse anonymously is Tor.
How to use VPN on Mac
A few years ago, set up a team to be able to using a VPN was a very complicated process and that it required extensive knowledge of the operating system where we wanted to use it, regardless of whether it was Windows, OS X or Linux. Fortunately, currently if we want to use a VPN on Mac we just have to install the application we want to use directly from the Mac App Store.
Every time we want to browse through our VPN, we just have to open the application and select through which country we want to navigate. In this case, everything will depend on whether we want to access content available in other countries via streaming (we must select the country where it is available) or if we simply want to skip the limitation of our ISP.
Once the reason that forced us to use the VPN has ended, we just have to disconnect and close the application. Keep in mind that there are many VPNs that They offer us a limit of GB of navigation, so it is not recommended to navigate regularly if we have some kind of limit.
What are the best VPNs?
There are many VPN services on the market. If we intend to hire any of them, we must take into account a series of factors such as if it is compatible with any device, both mobile phones and computers. Another factor that we must take into account is the number of servers that it makes available to us, that is, the number of countries that we can use to connect.
The more options you offer us, the more expensive the service will be, but in the long run, it is always It is advisable to have as complete a service as possible, since you never know when we can make use of the different options that it offers us.
Nachete, you haven't said anything, tell us the best ones to try them ...