A VPN doesn’t make you anonymous What the hell is a VPN? I already wrote an article explaining VPNs using simple concepts, even comparing VPNs to movie car..
People are (rightfully) freaking out about their privacy as both Senate and Congress voted to let internet providers share your private data with advertisers. While it’s important to protect your privacy, it doesn’t mean that you should sign up to a VPN service and tunnel all your internet traffic through VPN servers.
What the hell is a VPN? I already wrote an article explaining VPNs using simple concepts, even comparing VPNs to movie car chases.
But if you want a brief recap, when you connect your computer or phone to a VPN server, you establish an encrypted tunnel between your device and that server. Nobody can see what’s happening in the middle of this tunnel, not even your ISP.
And yet, it doesn’t make you magically anonymous. You’re just moving the risk down the VPN tunnel as the VPN company can see all your internet traffic. In fact, many of them sell your data to scammers and advertisers already.
That’s why I don’t recommend signing up to a VPN service. You can’t trust them.
As a side note, many sites now rely on HTTPS to establish a secure connection between your browser and the website you’re using, even TechCrunch. You should install the HTTPS everywhere extension to make sure that you use HTTPS as much as possible.
But VPNs can be useful from time to time. Sometimes you can’t access a website from a public network because it’s blocked. Or you could be traveling to China and you want to be able to access your Gmail account. In those cases, it’s all about minimizing the risk while you use a VPN.
As Woz commented on my previous VPN article before the Senate and Congress debacle, you could be running your own VPN server:
But if you can’t trust your home connection or you have a slow upload speed on your home connection, it’s not really practical.
