Staying Secure: VPNs For Travel

During your travels you’ll be connected to public internet connections, such as those found in hotels, airports and shops. They are not secure like your home or work networks and someone can easily swoop in and take your unencrypted data as it travels over this unsecure network. Data such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, browser cookies as well as other identifying information are all at risk. A Virtual Private Network protects you from such possible intrusions on your privacy. This article will tell you everything you want to know about VPNs for Travel. They also allow you to get past annoying filters which block certain sites in certain countries.

Something Fishy

First let’s briefly discuss what VPNs do. As an analogy consider releasing a fish into a river – it’s there for everyone to see and can be attacked by other fish (or humans on the shore) during its course downriver. Now consider a pipe in the river, through which your fish can easily swim to its destination without being noticed by anything due to the pipe. It’s safe, invisible from prey. The river is the unsecure network (public Wi-Fi etc.) and the pipe is the VPN.

How To Install And Use A VPN

It is very simple and can be done in a few minutes. Download and install a VPN application for your laptop, tablet or phone. Start it up, making sure you’re connected to the internet. The VPN will let you choose the server (endpoint) from a choice of several different locations. When it is connected – usually takes a few seconds – all your data is encrypted and passing through the virtual network. VPNs are designed so that they can protect your internet traffic in its entirety, regardless of the data type and this includes streaming video, music, voice calls, email and anything else that is being sent. Thus VPNs for Travel are a must if you want to avoid privacy grief.

How To Choose The Best VPN

There are a ton of VPN providers and it can be confusing which one to choose. Here is a list of stuff that you should look before choosing a particular VPN.

First make sure that all your devices are supported, that is if you download it on Windows, that VPN has an app for your phone – iOS or Android. Also see if it allows simultaneous connections without charging extra – restricting the number of devices that can use your VPN account simultaneously can be very irksome. Look for the VPN which works in the most countries – as a rule see if it works in China (they’re the best at blocking websites), if it works there, you can assume it works anywhere. The VPN should not slow down your connection to a large degree, it will slow it down by some degree and that is acceptable but connections which reduce speed by more than half are not worth it. And while this next point may seem trivial, it’s easy to overlook it – the VPN should connect automatically and start protecting your data the moment you turn on your device.

The best VPNs for Travel include TunnelBear, CyberGhost, proXPN and Hotspot Shield. THey usually require a subscription for better service and continued use.