Why You Need to Invest in a VPN

Remember when the scariest thing that could happen to you when you went online was your mom picking up the home phone, booting you off your connection to AOL? Or the concern that the other person in the private chat room might not be completely truthful in her reply to your A/S/L request? Times have changed and it's not just about ensuring that you only enter your banking information on verifiable and secure websites either.

Big data is everywhere. And realistically, the scariest aspect about it all is that it is mostly invisible. As you weave your way around Reddit and Facebook, as you fall down the bottomless pit of Wikipedia and jump from blog to online shop, you're being tracked. Even if you never enter any of your personally identifiable information on any of these sites and you're simply perusing the articles, you're being tracked.

Many people assume that they can make their way around the web in a completely anonymous fashion if they simply use the "private" or "incognito" mode in their web browser of choice. Maybe they're so diligent as to clear out their cookies with every session that they're not in "incognito."

But did you know that your Internet service provider (ISP) can still tell what websites you're checking out and what web services you're using? Your request is still be routed through their series of tubes and these requests are not completely anonymous. Your IP address can reveal a lot about you and it also prevents you from accessing certain parts of the web.

If you want to bolster your online security, you really should be protecting your privacy with a VPN. A virtual private network effectively masks your IP address. When you visit a website, it will appear as if you are accessing that site from the IP address of the VPN and not your own. VPN connections are remarkably secure and all activity is full encrypted.

That means your ISP won't know what sites you're visiting, and hackers won't know where you are located based on your IP address. However you choose to use the web is up to you, and no one will know what you're doing except for you. As an added bonus, a VPN can also effectively remove any region locks. If you're in Canada and want to access Hulu? Go for it. If you're traveling in Cambodia and want to log into your Canadian online banking? Rest assured you're that much safer.

You can set up a VPN in a matter of minutes and then all it takes is a simple flip of a digital switch to pipe your Internet activity through it. It's simple, effective, and way more affordable than you might think. A few of the best in the business include NordVPN, TunnelBear and CyberGhost VPN, but do your research and pick the one that works best for you.