VPNs
By now I'm sure we've all seen commercials on TV for VPN's. NordVPN and Norton360 offered through LifeLock seem to be the most common.
So what is a VPN and do you need one?
VPN's disguise or obfuscate your Internet usage from nosey entities. When you connect to the Internet your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can see every page you visit. They cannot see everything you do on every page like when you're checking your bank statements or medical test results but they do know that you are on your banks or healthcare providers website. Generally any website you have to log into is invisible to outside watchers the moment you log in.
If you were using a VPN your ISP would not know what websites you are on.
To justify any security concerns here we would have to assume that your ISP is not to be trusted and yet assume that the VPN provider you are using is to be trusted. Neither of these should be accepted as wholly true or untrue.
The reality is only three entities care at all what websites you visit:
1) Internet advertisement servers. They want to see the websites you visit so they can better target you with specific ads. If you search for hearing aids don't be surprised if you start seeing ads for hearing aids. While annoying and a little creepy this is essentially harmless. If you were using a VPN you would still see advertisements they just wouldn't be so personal or specific.
2) Law enforcement. I don't have to explain this one to you. You watch and read the news. Unfortunately some people use the Internet for some very bad purposes and during investigations law enforcement may request user activity from an Internet Service Provider.
3) Scammers and thieves. Speaking of using the Internet for bad things. The threat here is on public WIFI connections. Think your local library or coffee shop. There are several ways you can be attacked connected to public WIFI which I won't go into here but a VPN while on public WIFI would keep you safe from these attacks. Think of it as a being inside a tank on a battlefield full of archers. You can roll on through no problem while their arrows bounce right off.
Modern public WIFI can be made secure from scammers and thieves but that all depends on how it was set up. Maybe the person setting it up was competent and did it in a secure way, maybe they weren't. At my library it is set up correctly and securely an no users can be attacked by any other users.
Tips for staying safe on public WIFI:
-Be absolutely certain you are connected to the right network. As staff if you are unsure.
-Be sure that any website you visit has a secure connection. At the beginning of the address bat there may be a little icon of a lock or a setting gadget that looks like this:
