Virtual Privacy Networks

[linuxuser3]

4. Re: Virtual Privacy Networks

It involves whether you value your privacy, or not. Modern computer tech offers companies, businesses, nefarious individuals with computer programming skills (aka 'hackers'), national security agency types, even just plain criminals the ability to track your activities on the Internet, usually with the aim of obtaining personal information at a minimum, what websites you visit, online banking, etc, and in the case of overseas criminals usually the goal is to just get your $$ from you. I did a search just now using a privacy minded search engine called 'ixquick' or Startpage (since even Google is a notorious privacy abuser online, tracking you just about everywhere you go online once you make the mistake of logging into a computer with a Google Gmail account): https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=marketing+tracking+national+security+vpns&lui=english Those search results give a lot of websites talking about the issues of tracking, privacy, anonymity, security, etc, and how VPNs go about giving you an excellent degree of invisibility in terms of personal information you leak while web browsing, what IP address your online presence originates from, etc.

If you have a smart-phone, Android or iPhone, there are a lot of online VPN services that offer free trial or test client apps you can download to try out their VPN services. I personally use them, I've seen how they work, how once I am connected into a VPN service where my IP address comes out of an IP address on the other side of the country the ability of trackers to determine my identity in an effort to either collect data on my web browsing, banking, etc with a goal toward eventually stealing my identity, bank account information, etc basically disintegrates on them as I vanish into inscrutability on them.

I would recommend a few test sites to check your online presence right now. Try these out just connected to your regular ISP and see what they say about how easy it is for you to be able to be identified/tracked online:

https://ipleak.net/
https://browserleaks.com/webrtc
https://panopticlick.eff.org/

The best way to test your vulnerability to online tracking/stalking/data collection is with & without a VPN service connected. Web browsers are not all created equal, as are a lot of apps available for Androids & iPhones. The Google Chrome web browser is one of the 'leakiest' at dripping IP addresses, browser ID information that makes it easy for marketers to track your browsing habits, etc. I avoid it like the plague. The Firefox browser is a *little* better, but not by much. For desktop users there are 'extensions' or 'plug-ins' available for both Chrome & FF to help secure them a lot by closing up a lot of their leaky flaws/holes. Unfortunately those plug-ins/extensions a lot of times aren't available for smart-phone browsers. One of the best browsers imo is the Opera browser. It has a lot of security built into it, the smart-phone version is decent, the desktop version even has a built-in VPN function built into it. You could just download the Opera version for a desktop system, try one of those leak/tracking testing sites with the Opera VPN disabled, run the tests, then enable the built-in VPN, run the tests again and see for yourself quickly the effects of a VPN.

For smart-phones I consider VPNs a must. There are decent VPN services that give long deals where the service costs about $5/mo for over 1 year of service https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=best+vpn+services+2018&lui=english There are also wireless router companies now building in the ability to run VPN services from the routers. I've used these kinds of services on my Linux router I built before. The effect is any machine connected to my Gigabit LAN behind the VPN in my Linux router would connect to the Internet and as long as I did not log into Google or any online services when I browsed the Internet or watched videos on YouTube Google had no clue who I was, or even what IP address I was coming from out of my ISP. That's kind of neat. I have a BluRay player which has online streaming service apps in it. A lot of times I would watch a video on Crackle and get commercials aimed at me coming from Texas or Santa Rosa, California, all over the place it seemed. So the shotgun nature of the ads being targeted at me via my Blu-Ray player behind the VPN while I was not logged into it let me know I was anonymous to those tracking my viewing habits. That's fine by me. Also when I logged onto Netflix and was tracked coming out of a VPN service I was still able to watch videos as my VPN exited in the U.S. So it's a personal choice, whether to use the VPN or not. In cases of smart-phones on the road, VPNs are a must imo. At home for viewing Netflix, not so much. If you're trying to avoid being tracked by Google/Amazon/etc online for desktop browsing, they're nice to have sometimes. If you're logged into Google and don't care how you're being tracked by them they're a waste of $. Also in order to get any decent privacy from Google after you've been logged in online in a browser for awhile it is necessary to completely clear your browser's search history, enable the VPN service, then restart the browser. At that point the cookie trackers are gone, your browser history starts fresh, any logins to Google you did before are gone, and you 'come out' into the Internet from the VPN's IP address, which makes you practically invisible to Google & the trackers/marketers/bad-guys, etc who were stalking you before, as they nearly always do, but that most people have no clue about.

Anyway, it's a personal decision for you, as I said to begin with it depends on whether you value your privacy or not.