“Worried about your ISP? Is someone on your coffee shop’s Wi-Fi? Or is Joe A Hacker bugging your internet?” Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports for ZDNet. “A virtual private network (VPN) can help protect your privacy.”
“A VPN uses encryption technologies, such as IP security (IPSec), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)/IPSec, and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), to create a virtual encrypted “tunnel” between your device and a VPN server. While your traffic is in this tunnel between you and a VPN server, no one can see where you’re going or what you’re doing,” Vaughan-Nichols reports. “For most people the answer is to use a VPN service. These companies enable you to create a VPN between your gadgets and their internet connection. Once your connection is on the other side of their VPN server, your traffic emerges without signs of who you are or where you’re connecting from.”
“As for the paid services, what you want is one with lots of bandwidth and multiple sites. Before subscribing to any of these services, try them out first. Many of them offer free trials, and it’s worth taking them up on this,” Vaughan-Nichols reports. “Their prices vary. Generally speaking, the longer term you sign up for, such as a year paid in advance, the cheaper the subscription fee. This typically drops the price below $10 a month. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We use TunnelBear’s VPN service (especially while using public Wi-Fi) which lets you choose from servers located around the world in 20+ countries. TunnelBear offers unlimited data for less than $4.17/month. Importantly, TunnelBear explicitly states, “No logging. TunnelBear does NOT log any activity of users connected to our service. Period.”
SEE ALSO:
Apple should offer their own VPN service to iOS and Mac users for security and privacy – April 5, 2017
Protecting against possible ISP snooping by using a VPN and https – April 3, 2017
Privacy 101: Why you need a VPN – March 31, 2017
Why Congress’s rejection of proposed FCC data rules will not affect your privacy in the slightest – March 31, 2017
Congress to US citizens: Online privacy isn’t dead, those who want it will just have to pay for it – March 30, 2017
U.S. Congress sends repeal of FCC broadband privacy rules to President Trump for signature – March 29, 2017
Congress votes to repeal FCC Internet privacy rules – March 28, 2017
U.S. Senate votes to overturn Internet privacy rules – March 23, 2017
Can Apple create/start a VPN and make it part of iOS and Mac OS?
Apple should.
Yes.
Hmm. It’s more typical of Apple to allow third parties to be able to run their businesses in conjunction with Apple tech. That would certainly apply to VPN services, of which there are well over a hundred available on the net.
Any decent VPN offers software that works with both macOS and iOS.
Not sure that making Apple do VPN is a good idea. It could make Apple a bigger target in having the government try to control it. While smaller out of country VPN sites might be too small to go after.
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Really? Considering all that the Feds have been doing (mass snooping-wise), I doubt they think there is any such thing as a target that’s too small to go after.
Apple could spin off a VPN division to separate it from the core company.
Decent VPN software can be simple to use, once it’s installed.
Understanding how the VPN service works is a bit more complicated.
How would a user know if the VPN service they buy actually works? (Or how well it works?) Seems like a bit of a “black box”. How would I know if the VPN is doing what it is supposed to do and is not “vaporware”. How do I know I am not getting scammed? Seriously.
Does anyone know how one can tell if a VPN service really does what it is supposed to?
… Read Read Read Reviews Review Reviews.
I may have pointed out in another post my bad experience with a scam VPN called ‘VPN Forever’. They’re still around! They still attempt to sell memberships. They are 100% (in my personal experience) inert. I never got them to work. They never offered any help to get their crap to work. I got my money back from I believe Stack Commerce, without my even asking I may add, because I told them the situation. Meanwhile, the VPN Forever website has been revised twice, promises ‘the moon’ and provides nothing-at-all (again, from my personal experience). I didn’t research them as I already had a decent VPN contract and their crap came in a software bundle. If Grannie had received their crap service, she’d be ranting to the hills for help, which of course would be entirely fruitless as their service is crap. What-A-Nightmare.
*Sigh* I gave a talk about VPNs and DNSCrypt on Monday. It was a group of high end amateur computer users. It took awhile for them to understand how VPNs work. I’d written up a condensed article of resources for them to read and despite my receiving complements, they also said it was a lot to digest.
Now that I am 10 years in to writing about and teaching networking, I’m apparently forgetting what a frazzled, haphazard mess it can all seem when first attempting to understand it all. But I do point out to people that these days we are learning the hard way, via an endless deluge of security problems, that current networking technology really is frazzled and haphazard.
Then there are those with no techno skills. They just want an ON and OFF switch.
Yep. I love working on their computers and deleting the 15 copies of that flash installer they have in the downloads folder and looking at the 9 copies of that PDF. 2000 files and if you cleaned it up, there would be 350 for example.