For several years, it’s been difficult to escape the flood of marketing surrounding VPNs. To hear providers tell it, you’d be crazy to use the internet without one. Scare tactics aside, however, some situations make VPN use desirable. To cut through the marketing spin, here’s how to decide when you should use a VPN. We’ll also discuss your options when you need one.
What’s the Point of a VPN?
If you’re unfamiliar with the technology, understanding VPNs can be a bit challenging. There’s plenty of incorrect information and assertions about them floating around online. Worse still, some of those distortions of fact are intentional ploys meant to increase VPN subscription sales.
To start with, VPN stands for virtual private network. It’s a technology that wraps the connection between two internet endpoints in a layer of encryption. At first, VPNs were almost exclusively used by businesses and governments. The purpose was to provide traveling employees with a secure route into protected networks. In other words, VPNs offered safe, encrypted pathways through enterprise firewalls.
Today, however, private individuals use VPNs for a variety of purposes. One of them is to obfuscate the destination and content of their internet traffic. Commercial VPN services enable this by hosting VPN server endpoints in datacentres worldwide. When a user connects, their internet traffic gets wrapped in encryption and travels to its eventual destination via one of those endpoints. One purpose, purportedly, is to prevent ISPs from snooping on how their customers use their internet connections. Another is to alter the way internet servers detect user locations.
When Do You Actually Need a VPN?
Misinformation notwithstanding, there are some situations where using a VPN is beneficial. One is when you’re using an unfamiliar Wi-Fi network. That includes Wi-Fi hotspots in public spaces. Those are notoriously insecure and often used to steal data. Another situation when a VPN makes sense is when you’re trying to access geoblocked content. For example, imagine you’re trying to watch your favourite show on a paid streaming platform while you’re on vacation. You may find that the platform won’t work at all in the country you’re visiting. Or if it does work, the specific show you want to watch isn’t available due to licensing conflicts. By using a VPN with an endpoint in your home country, you can unlock the content you’ve paid for.
It is also a good idea to use a VPN whenever you’re accessing websites with financial, personal, or proprietary data. However, this is only necessary when you’re using a network you don’t control. For that reason, business travellers should always use a VPN, and preferably one provided by their employer. If that’s not available, a quality commercial provider will suffice.
Choosing the Right VPN Option
Choosing the right VPN solution depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. The following are some of the common use cases and how to select the right option for each.
Basic Security and Obfuscation
If you find yourself in a situation where you need some rudimentary protection, but not often enough to warrant a VPN subscription, there are multiple options. One is to use one of the myriad free VPN options offered by reputable providers. If you go this route, select a provider with a solid privacy and security track record. You should never use a VPN you’ve found in the Apple or Google app stores. Most of them are a bigger security risk than using nothing at all. Instead, go to a known provider’s site and sign up there. If you need a region-specific free VPN, you can search for options using Google. For example, a search for VPN gratuit pour la Canada should lead you to a reputable provider like NordVPN.
Regular Business Use
If you need a VPN for business use, the best option is to operate your own VPN endpoint within your business network. If yours is a medium-to-large business, the best option is a hardware-accelerated VPN appliance. There are multiple options available, which integrate into existing infrastructure quite easily. If yours is a small business, the most cost-effective option is a self-hosted open-source VPN server. There are multiple options for those, as well, most of which you can run on a disused desktop PC or a low-end server.
High-Performance Streaming and Place-Shifting
Finally, if you’re interested in using a VPN to unlock streaming content, you’ll need to do some research. The advice on picking a reputable provider still applies. However, you’ll find that most streaming services work hard to block VPN endpoints as quickly as they identify them. As a result, a VPN service that works today may stop working tomorrow. For that reason, you may need to use some advanced strategies for the best possible results.
One strategy is subscribing to multiple providers. That increases the odds that you’ll find at least one working endpoint in the location you need at any given time. To improve the odds further, you should choose a provider with a reputation for proactive endpoint relocation. Some providers spin up new endpoints quickly in response to streaming service bans. You may also want to keep a subscription to a lesser-known VPN service on standby. Lower-profile services typically don’t drive enough traffic for streaming sites to bother blocking them.
The Bottom Line on VPNs
At the end of the day, many VPN users do so without gaining anything from it. In the right circumstances, however, a quality VPN is a valuable tool to keep in your tech arsenal. And by selecting the option that best fits your use case, you can help make sure you aren’t wasting computing resources without clear benefits.