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The Internet has been all over you, but is VPN being oversold?

Stop it with VPN.

VPN is everywhere now, a vital part of cybersecurity, internet safety. It's suddenly become time for everyone to get a private untracked connection which speeds up your online connection, improves your internet security, and reduces advertising and hide what you do online. VPN adverts are everywhere. Here's a breakdown of what you need. The first thing you don't need is a free VPN. You need the right provider, not the first one to appear on an internet search. You want to search the internet, not let the internet search you. 

Big data, the Internet of things, and advertising is now at the core of the Internet. The internet is force-feeding you its selections, recommendations, would it be nice to make your own choices for once. 

VPN, virtual private networks,

VPN tilts the game in your favour, so the promoters claim. They say it will allow you secured internet access the Internet without being tracked, they say that you'll be able to select from where you access the Internet. For example, if you live in Miami you can access the Internet in London. This enables a VPNs most popular and useful feature which is content searching, for example, being able to watch BBC iPlayer when you're not in the UK and be able to watch Hulu or US Netflix when outside the United States. This feature on its own possibly drives 75% of all VPN business.

To pay or not to pay.

Many VPN providers track and resell your online data to their marketing partners. If you don't care about this then just go ahead and sign up for a free VPN service but note that most of these VPN providers are based in China. China is a serious Internet rogue that has no respect for privacy, they have switched off the internet several in parts of Chine in 2019. On December 14th, China State TV blocked an Arsenal match as Arsenal player, a German Muslim Mesut Ozil of Turkish descent spoke in support of rebel Chinese Muslims. Some of the less well-known paid Internet services also track and sell internet activity to cellular data to partners. We strongly recommend that you research this before selecting a provider.

China is not the only one.

Providers like AVG now owned by AVAST, have the reputation,  facilities, and cash to build proper secure VPN environments. This is an excellent option for people looking to enjoy BBC iPlayer worldwide. 

One of the leading providers, Nord VPN was recently breached by hackers and did not admit this breach for several years. There is now a serious question as to why anyone would buy their services. VPN is about privacy and why would you buy services from a company that lied about having been breached. 

Buying a VPN service

Here some things to check! Only Read this if you are serious about VPN. We repeat, Don't get your VPN from China, here's why.

  1. Does the company own its Servers, if they do, they will say so and provide as much evidence as possible? This is an important point so be very careful to check into this as this is where they will be storing and routing the data. You have to be able to trust the VPN provider if they don't own their servers they are renting unsecured capacity from somebody else.
     
  2. Read the company statement on logging your data. They should be logging in as little data as possible. There should be a very clear statement about their login. It should be clear concise and easy to understand. In the event, they suffer a breach you want as little data about you as possible on their servers.
     
  3. Where is the company based on who owns it? If this isn't out immediately obvious that is a problem. Preferably you want your provider to based outside Russia, USA, China and the EU. This might seem strange but the US is the world's biggest internet spy, Europe complies with GDPR. Russia, China, well enough said. Ideally, your provider is based in Switzerland, Panama.
     
  4. What's sort VPN encryption technology is the company using, for example, does it include services like SSH tunnelling. Again this demonstrates your VPN provider is commitment to your privacy. This is why it's worth paying for a good VPN service. Provided that they make money from their subscription base and not reselling your data for advertising purposes.
     
  5. Does the company offer a reliable money-back guarantee or a free five-day trial? This will allow you to check can you watch BBC iPlayer, Hulu or US Netflix. This will also allow you to check if you are happy with the privacy aspects including whether your IP address if fluid. Expect to have to close your browsers, and or reboot your machine on occasion.
     
  6. Lastly Brexit, Britain remains in all legal agreements regardless of Brexit and will continue to enforce GDPR, therefore you do not want your VPN Co. to be based in the UK.
     

If you want to find a reliable service the way to do it is to research properly. Googling ‘best VPN’ is not good enough. It's a good idea to look for reliable service providers like AVG, F-Secure, Norton. Nord VPN has a trust issue in 2019 having hidden a serious data breach for several years.

All VPN providers say that their services are faster than regular Internet speeds. We have a location found this to be as much as 40% faster and we put it down to the fact that there is less traffic on VPN Servers. 

Build your own VPN!

The good news is you can build your own VPN Service. The 'Outline' project from Alphabet, Google Zona allows you to quickly build your VPN service. Drawbacks are change country and becomes quite difficult for a long period. However, it is incredibly cheap and if you have a serious one time project very very effective. Review of Freedome VPN

It doesn't take longer than an hour to set this up, he found it quite easy to set up using the outline guidelines. We did find after a day or so to keep establishing it and could change country locations. There is plenty of guidance online for setting this up quickly for your self, we did so in 35 minutes scratch including reading the instructions. It worked great for 3 days but you need to be a patient IT enthusiast. 

For the rest of us, the 99%, we recommend buying a trusted reliable service based in a country like Switzerland or Panama.

Here are BeSecureOnline, we are VPN specialists, we have brought 3 of the best VPN providers on the net. We have the best-priced VPN offers for Christmas. AVG Secure from €19, Freedome VPN from €19 also and the extended deal from VYPR VPN of $2.50 per month for 2 years. Links below. Its time to get on VPN, select your best VPN option now.

AVG Secure from AVG now owned by Avast

Freedome VPN from F-Secure

Vypr VPN 

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