What’s VPN And Why Should You Care?
I’ve heard about VPN for many years but guess what, I never knew what it was until quite recently.
When friends told me I should get a VPN installed on my computer, I had no idea what they were talking about. I didn’t know what VPN even did, or why it’s important. Now I do and I recently put a VPN on all my family’s devices including my daughter’s. But I bet you’re still not convinced.
What does VPN stand for?
Virtual Private Network:
“A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network, and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. Applications running across the VPN may therefore benefit from the functionality, security, and management of the private network.” -Wikipedia
You’re probably mentally checking out about now. Why is a Virtual Private Network even necessary?
Guess what, I’ve got bad news for you.
If you live in the United States, the Trump administration just put your personal browsing history and associated data up for sale to the highest bidders. At no time in the history of the USA has this been legal for companies to do…….until now. So, this means if a company in the past tried to collect and sell your browsing history, they’d go to jail. This is really bad news for people.
“If President Trump clicks his pen and signs this bill, consumers will be stripped of critical privacy protections in a New York minute,” he said.
But Trump signed the bill.” - — CBS New York
President Donald Trump signed legislation Monday killing privacy rules that would have required internet service providers to get your explicit consent before they share or sell your web browsing history and other sensitive information. — NBC News
THIS IS A SHOCKING NEW REALITY FOR AMERICANS.
The only good news about this is that we, the people, have good tools to protect our online privacy and prevent companies from selling our personal data: VPN.
In order to make this information as simple as possible, I’m only going to talk about one VPN company, Tunnelbear. I don’t work for Tunnelbear nor do I receive any sort of commission. I am only a user of Tunnelbear. The reason I suggest using Tunnelbear is because children can easily understand how Tunnelbear works and the experience of using it is both fun and exciting. And most importantly, it protects your privacy and additionally, protects you from hackers gaining access to your online data information. (The specifics of to what extent you’re protected are still not completely understood, but using a VPN is better than not using one.)
Here’s what Tunnelbear does:
TunnelBear VPN shields your personal information from prying third-parties and hackers on public WiFi, ISPs and other local networks. Your connection is secured with bear-grade (that’s strong) AES 256-bit encryption. We do NOT log your network activity. -Tunnelbear website
Besides protecting your privacy, there’s another amazing aspect of VPNs that I didn’t understand until recently: if you’re living in a country that blocks certain websites, you can access these websites using a VPN.
So, what’s involved with getting Tunnelbear?
You simply go to their website: https://www.tunnelbear.com/ and create an account, then download the application to your computer or smartphone. It’s for iPhones, Androids and computers. You get to try out Tunnelbear for free, with 500MB given to you. If you run out of MB, then you can purchase the VPN and use it on 5 different devices. Here are the pricing models:
Another really cool thing about Tunnelbear is that they accept Bitcoin for payment. I purchased the Grizzly package and then installed the Tunnelbear VPN on 4 devices, including my mom’s iPhone, my daughter’s computer, my computer and smartphone. I always like to try out a service before paying for it, so this model was perfect for me.
I have never felt so good about purchasing anything in my life.
Trump may sign away our privacy rights, but if we rely on each other, sharing information about how to best protect ourselves and families, we can become more empowered through knowledge.
I think the best part of using Tunnelbear is that my daughter is now educated about her privacy rights through the use of a cute, animated bear cartoon. It makes the whole experience of protecting ourselves less scary.
There’s many VPNs to choose from and the more tech-savvy people out there might choose a different VPN service. There’s free ones out there too, but to be honest, I’d rather pay for this service and get something easy and fun to use. If you want to learn more about the technical side of VPNs, read this Medium article by
: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-set-up-a-vpn-in-5-minutes-for-free-and-why-you-urgently-need-one-d5cdba361907 That article woke me up.As I mentioned before, I do not work for Tunnelbear, nor do I receive any commissions. I’m only a user.
VPN.
It’s here to stay.
ps- Safe online habits are essential to using digital currencies.
About the author:
Leah Stephens is the editor of Dash For Newbies and a full stack artist. She has written one book, Un-Crap Your Life which is now available on Amazon. She wrote for Interesting Engineering before discovering the blockchain. She runs a zany YouTube channel and is now working within the Dash decentralized autonomous organization. Most days she can be found lurking on Twitter and in the Women of Dash Slack channel. She’s also a top writer in Steemit. Her favorite quote is by Rimbaud:
“I have researched the magic shapes of the happiness no one escapes.”
