What is a VPN (virtual private network)? It’s a secure tunnelled connection to the outside world and effectively locks down the data you send and receive to the internet.
There are many reasons why we’d recommend a VPN. The first and most obvious solution is it adds an additional layer of security to make sure you cannot be traced, people can’t snoop on the data you transfer and they can’t see your location or point of origin. What a VPN does is re-route your internet connection and gives it a different IP address. No-one can tell who you are, where you are coming from or even your rough location.
Best of all, this data is wrapped up in an uncrackable layer of additional security, meaning no-one can stumble across your data and this is essential for when you access a wifi network. Wifi data can be intercepted and, worse, most of us look for the first free wifi network when we get to a train station, airport or even our hotel. It’s so easy to create a rogue wifi network which hotel guests think is the official network and connect without thinking. A VPN would stop any data sent to a rogue wifi network from being intercepted.
Lastly, a VPN also can locate you in another part of the world. If you need to access a website as if you were located in the United States, a VPN enables you to choose this location and suddenly you’re browsing the internet as if you were a native American. There are options to re-located you across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and other locations. These options are ideal if you need to stream content designed for an American, want to look at website prices in the local currency (USD for example) and many similar advantages.
Problem is, most security suites ship with a limited VPN with a small amount of data (often 200MB/day). Often the servers provided are slow, too.
Why not add a commercial VPN to a future order? We’ve added a few to the stores recently and can recommend Avast SecureLine VPN, AVG Secure VPN and Norton Secure VPN, which is a multi-device product, meaning you can install your VPN across your Windows PC, Mac computer, Android and iOS devices.
Our choice? Possibly AVG Secure VPN (which is the same as Avast’s SecureLine VPN, as Avast own AVG) which we use across our Windows and Mac computers.