As with most things in life, the world of VPNs is not as black-and-white as it may seem to see. This article addresses five of the most common facts people have about VPNs.
Here are five facts that nobody told you about VPNs:
1) You do not need an ISP to use a VPN. Many people assume that their ISP does not support VPN connections. There are multiple ways to use a VPN without the assistance of your ISP. Many corporate types who work from home use a VPN on their home Internet connection to connect back to work. You would only need the ISP for its broadband connection, not for its VPN support.
2) You cannot always assume your data will be secure. Many people think that if they are connected to a VPN then all of their data is automatically secure, this is not always true. A study from earlier this year by Professor Tom Chothia at the University of Birmingham found that as many as one in four Android VPN apps contained “fragmentation threats” that could potentially allow malicious parties to break into someone’s system and access banking information, personal messages, and so on.
3) It is possible to use a VPN without slowing down your Internet connection. Many people assume that if they connect to a VPN, their Internet speed will slow but this is not the actual case. The reason for this misconception has much to do with how data packets are sent over an encrypted connection.
As you will learn momentarily, when data is transferred using OpenVPN or IPSec, each packet is assigned an identifying number that keeps track of its place in the queue inside your computer’s memory. If you are connected directly to the Internet, these packets will simply receive “Best Efforts” priority; if they arrive too quickly, they may not be assigned a Priority ID and your computer may ignore them until it has time to process them.
4) You do not need to use an OpenVPN client. Just about every VPN provider offers their custom VPN software and some offer multiple clients. Since most providers license this software from the same company that developed the protocol.
It is safe to assume that all of these clients are roughly equivalent in terms of security. The one major exception here is PPTP, which should never be used under any circumstances due to its basic flaws. People know that only OpenVPN-based clients can take full advantage of what a VPN has to offer.
5) VPNs will not avoid a web filter or content block if you access it from a non-approved location. If you try to log on to Facebook from an Internet café, then you will be immediately blocked by the web site’s security system because you just used an unknown Wi-Fi network during your stay.
There have even been reports of some colleges blocking their students’ VPN connections as soon as they try to connect, just because they are using one at all, even though it is being used entirely legitimately.
Most websites are migrating towards SSL certificates to establish an encrypted connection. SSL certificates are designed to ensure that the data being sent between your computer and a website is secure, so there is no reason for them to block you based on where you are trying to access it from. You can gain more knowledge about the best VPNs through the following website https://vpntesting.com/best-vpn
