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VPN's, A sham?


A lot of people have probably seen the ads for VPN'S, and not know what they are. Many of the ads are flashy, forceful explaining ads, urging you to pay for a VPN service. "If you don't do this your going to get viruses, and bad stuff." Then they'll explain in confusing terms, what a VPN is. I've seen people using VPN'S on their phone, and sometimes I'll question why they are using it. Many times they're answer will be something like this:

"I had a whole bunch of viruses on my phone, and now I don't have any more viruses and my phone runs faster."

Or 

"I want to use Snapchat on school wifi."
(More on that later)

Yeah.....No.... 

It doesn't make your phone run faster, or stop viruses.

(However it does, sometimes, allow you to use Snapchat on school WiFi.)

I mostly ask people this because I don't want them to get ripped off. I feel like VPN advertising is very misleading and dances around what a VPN actually does. 


This picture is kinda how it works. But really only for a good VPN. 
If you didn't know VPN stands for virtual private network.

How It works

When you use the internet normally your website "request" is first sent through local servers from your internet service provider. Then it travels through other servers that are linked to the end server. It's complicated, but I'm trying to simplify as best I can. Without a VPN websites can see your information and data and so can the servers along the way. When you use a VPN your data goes through an encrypted tunnel unharmed. If that sentence sounds like something a company would use as a tagline, you're right. They like to pride themselves in their "encrypted tunnels." But here is what's really happening. When you access a website through a VPN, you are using the internet to access the VPN servers. Once your data goes through the servers it comes out the other side to the website. When you access the website it looks as if you are the VPN'S computers, and all of your data is hidden from the website. However if you're not trying to do sketchy things, then you'll be fine most of the time.



 While this sounds good, in my opinion for many purposes it's pointless on your secure home WiFi. The VPN company can see all of your data, so you are really trading who sees your data. Do you trust the company? Free VPN's are even worse. They take advantage of full access to your web "preferences" and openly sell your data. Shady free VPN's can even exploit your data to malicious places. At the end of the day, it's not really that VPN's are a bad thing it's just that people don't understand how they really work and therefore can be taken advantage of. But if you do want to stop companies selling your data, pay for a trusted service. If you use public "free" WiFi a lot, then I actually would recommend using a trusted VPN, as public wifi is not secure and data can easily be accessed by other users. For those looking to do their important banking (on shady WiFi) NOT RECOMMENDED, then I recommend a good VPN. As for viruses, just use common sense, VPN's can't really stop them.

Tidbit: 

 

Mystery smell overwhelms Pennsylvania county again, investigators baffled

There is a foul stench "overwhelming" the residents of Delaware county. 
Hmmmm.....did taco bell run another buy one get one event?

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