And there should be several safeguards to further protect that traffic.įor example, you need to use a NAT firewall and/or kill switch feature to make sure no traffic is accidentally sent through your normal (unprotected) internet connection.Ī working VPN connection should allow you to spoof your location and bypass online censorship. Your online traffic needs to be encrypted and use a secure tunneling protocol to make sure it remains private. However, there are a lot of other steps involved. This changes your IP address, which can also mask your real location.

Instead of connecting directly to a website from your device, you first connect to a server. In basic terms, a VPN is simply a network forwarding service. In the meantime, users are reliant on often dodgy VPN review sites to navigate the available options. Unfortunately, there’s no current industry regulation standard to keep users safe, though organizations like the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI) are working to change that. However, following a 2017 decision by the Trump administration to give ISPs the power to sell user data without explicit consent, fake and otherwise less-than-reputable VPN providers have given the industry a major boom.

While VPN technology has essentially been around since shortly after the birth of the internet, it’s still a relatively young industry in terms of commercial availability. The world of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) is getting bigger and bigger.

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