Unlike any other technology, VPN tunneling is less restrictive and allows protecting of almost any aspect of your Internet life. Simple to setup and straightforward for daily use, it provides protection for web browsing, emailing, instant messaging, Skype, etc.
Use Cases
Below you can see a brief list of solutions where offshore VPN proxy is an essential part of data security and privacy protection strategy. Cases will cover the most common scenarios where the VPN is most useful. You can find some tips and tricks as well.
Enhance the security – protect your data
Securing your Internet connection when connecting to our VPN servers cannot be underestimated if you work from an insecure place with public Wi-Fi network (hot spots in a hotel, restaurant, airport, etc.). “Insecure” means that such places do not use any unique means to protect the data sent by users. Free hot spots are exposing your data. Paid hot spots are no better, unfortunately. The insecure connection can lead to identity theft and capturing sensitive company or personal information.
The VPN connection establishes a snoop-proof tunnel between your computer and the VPN server – an end-to-end connection. All data sent will be encrypted. Sniffers cannot capture your login details and monitor private information.
VPN solution is the most preferred technology for secure networking today. Almost all corporate, government, many of educational networks are protected with VPN. Major manufacturers of contemporary network gadgets (smartphones, tablets, etc.) integrate VPN with their devices.
Protect your identity
Every internet user has a specific internet ID called an IP address. The IP is what your ISP (Internet Service Provider) assigns you when you use their network (i.e. when you connect to the Internet). This IP bears the information about the ISP location (which is your location also) and the contact details. You can see it here. Most of the sites you visit capture these details for their statistics and store them for a long (all search engines and many commercial sites use them for planning their marketing activities also).
Once you connect to VPN, you will get a new IP address. Your previous IP will be hidden, not available for recording, and invulnerable for direct attacks during your VPN session.
Sometimes, when you travel and connect from a country with a high internet fraud level, you will have fewer problems in reaching your goal using a neutral IP in Canada (than, say, in Nigeria).
VPN may bring you a little bonus if you use VOIP (e.g., Skype) frequently for calls in Northern America. You will save on every call as the VOIP operator will bill your calls as made within the +1 dialing code zone, i.e. much cheaper than they bill overseas calls.
Reach the blocked web sites
“This Site is Blocked” – internet users in some countries (not only in China, but dozens of countries also filter Internet content) may have seen this warning while trying to reach Youtube, Google. Wikipedia or some news sites.
The governments censor their internet and block websites or even whole blocks of IP addresses for the users in these countries. When you connect via a VPN server in a different country, you become a user from a different country where there is no site blocking and censorship. You surf and browse with no restrictions. Decide on your own what to see and where to go.
VPN as a business tool for teleworker
Businesses have been using VPN for securing their corporate networks for decades. Access to corporate data bases requires the highest security level as compromising of the stored data may cause severe financial loses.
Strong encryption and a secure internet tunnel at your fingertips can be important if you are a businessman operating internationally from various locations and need to protect your business data traffic wherever you get connected to your office, corporate mail server, data base application, to your bank, etc. VPN allows you to work from home, on the road, from a hotel room, or at public spaces safely using high-security encryption and at a low cost.
Enjoy your privacy
Do you really need to protect yourself and your Internet traffic? Monitoring of the Internet is spreading around the world every year. It is performed by governments and by hackers. In both cases, your privacy will be infringed on if you do not protect it.
In some cases, this infringement may cause loss of important and crucial data: logins, passwords, credit cards and bank account details, social security numbers, etc. VPN can bring you peace of mind allowing surfing the Internet, browsing websites, chatting, downloading files securely and anonymously, bypassing all blocked websites and programs. Everyone has the right to protect their privacy.
Sending emails over VPN – will it work?
People send email messages using either a web based mail, e.g. Hotmail, AOL, or through email software, they have on their computers, e.g. Thunderbird or Outlook (using IMAP, SMTP). In both cases, the email messages travel insecurely from the sender’s computer to the mail server somewhere in the Internet, where they stay in simple .txt format until delivered to the recipient.
Receiving messages is done in the same insecure way (using POP, IMAP, and web mail) with no protection for the senders’ details or messages content. This may lead to the invasion of privacy, resulting in identity theft (fabrication the sender’s details) and message content compromising (altering the message).
Connecting over the VPN tunnel, the sender/receiver secures the email message on the way to and from the VPN server only. This means that email will travel openly when it leaves the VPN server.
To ensure full security for email messages, a special email service should be used, e.g., Mutemail. This service allows sending secure and anonymous emails both through clients’ email software Thunderbird, Outlook, or similar and via a web-based mail interface. Mutemail processes the received messages removing the message headers containing clients’ information, and routes all mail over a secure SSL-encrypted connection, thus ensuring complete privacy and anonymity for the email message senders.
How usable are free VPN servers?
Usually, they have a number of limitations: on bandwidth, on traffic sent and received. The connection is not reliable and can be interrupted for no reason.
There is no support at all or poor support, as a rule. They are usable, of course, if you need a VPN connection for a simple and short time task, e.g., to unblock a site, send a message, or download a small file.
However, a free VPN server can hardly be used for day-to-day activities requiring permanent, stable connection with no bandwidth limits.