Virtual private networks ( VPN ) a tool to consider.
This age has become the age of privacy concerns with countless user information leaks and companies relying on selling user data to make profit off of them, there is a great push towards secure connections and privacy policies protecting the daily civilian internet user.
Outside tor (the onion routing) there are not many ways to protect ourselves online, but luckily here is where a vpn will come in handy ( quick caveat vpns were not initially built as a security tool) initially vpns were built to hide your IP address from your ISP and other third parties, but vpns have grown more mature and provide many more useful services.
There are many vpns on the market and it is a very tedious task to find a proper one that will not do the same shady practices people are trying to run away from when using a vpn, one of the best places to go for security advice for now are ( https://freedom.press/training/choosing-a-vpn/ ) and michael bazzell one of the ways of finding him is through the the security weekly channel,link below :
https://www.youtube.com/c/SecurityWeekly
A great comprehensive video on this topic can be found here:
Another use case for vpns is that some vpns will provide a more secure port forwarding for p2p applications or for torrenting as well as tcp tunneling which improves torrenting speeds and seeding.
For port forwarding effectively a vpn will make an encrypted tunnel between your device ( pc , phone, tabel…) and the vpn provider’s server/servers allowing packets to go through the built in router firewall and use the firewall settings of the vpn provider which allows port forwarding without needing a real public ip which costs over 10$’s to lease and considering ipv4 has run out it will only increase in price as time goes by, usually vpn services provide much more security and in many cases a way to bypass geographic blocks for example you can unlock disney plus and netflix with certain vpn providers) which is really helpful even if your goal is just playing games or watching movies, also some platforms that allow online gaming for old titles that people could only play on lan will use port forwarding to allow online multiplayer lan gaming.
Now of course we can’t end the article without giving at least a suggestion as you have noticed above freedom.press helps us with finding good vpns that meet their security standards, and the proton vpn is one of the best vpns because it’s based in switzerland that has some of the best privacy laws and it is illegal for the government to ask vpn providers to log someone’s ip address which is an added layer of security. You can download protonvpn at
The free version has almost everything you need with unlimited bandwidth not like other vpns that only work till you use a specific amount of packets, which on it’s own will put it leaps and bounds above other vpns, while having a paid upgradable plan that fits most needs and unlocks port forwarding Netflix and Disney plus and other.
Hopefully, this article was informative and will help you make your choice whether or not a vpn is something you would want and remember to browse safely.
