What does VPN stand for, and what is it?

VPN stands for 'Virtual Private Network', and it creates a connection between your computer and one of our servers so you may obtain an anonymous IP address located anywhere our servers are located. We also encrypt data transmitted when connected to our VPN.

Who are common VPN users?

People who use VPN vary in many ways and do so for a variety of reasons. A company may use a VPN to secure any communications within their offices and with employees working outside the office. Employees blocked from certain websites by their company's filter may choose VPN to get around it, while regular users who use Wi-Fi hotspots on a regular basis turn to VPN for its added security. VPN service has applicable commercial and residential uses.

What do I need a VPN for?

Normally the privacy of internet surfers is almost unprotected. The IP address identifies each user uniquely for website owners, providers, and everyone who sniffs data on the internet. Also, there are data-mining companies that try to get a lot more information about you.

You either give them the information on free will – or they get the data from your behavior on various websites with trackings installed or data you send unprotected, via free wifi spots. From this data, they can see a lot of things like your favorite products, websites, chats, people on Facebook, etc. as well as emails, hobbies, personal data like birth date, address, travel behavior, and a lot more.

With a VPN connection, you can mask your real IP address by using the ones your VPN provider allocates. This is because you are first connecting to one of the VPN providers' servers and after that, every request you send through the internet is lead through the VPN server which has its own IP address. And most of the VPN providers have thousands of different IP addresses from many different countries.

This makes it possible to connect to blocked websites by using an IP address from a country that isn’t blocked on the desired site. You can now pretend that you are from the US, Russia, or Germany and get access to different online streams that are blocked outside their homeland and much more.

Also, you can make your sensitive data from your online activities anonymous, this is especially useful for journalists that are researching delicate information. But VPN can do more than that. If you’re using public WiFi networks, your data traffic – such as your E-Mails, account information, etc. – is open for everyone who knows how to sniff it. By using a VPN connection, your private stuff will be hidden even if you’re surfing “in public”.

Of course, there is the question of what data do VPN providers collect. Can you really trust such a provider? Some of the providers listed on this website are maintaining so-called provider logs or minimal logs such as the time of the connect, the time of disconnect, the used bandwidth, and the used IP address.

But not every provider is logging, for example, NordVPN has a zero logs policy and they are also based out in Panama, which is a very favorable jurisdiction when it comes to online privacy. What really matters is, that those pieces of information should not be handed out to third parties and, that none of the providers is maintaining a traffic log: None of the providers keeps records of the websites you visited.

How to surf anonymously through the internet?

The use of a VPN service allows you to surf anonymously. This means you are no longer clearly identifiable for others on the web. By surfing the internet via a standard connection, everyone is easily identified by website operators and providers by the IP address.

In addition, people leave a lot more personal information about themselves when they use an unencrypted connection, such as shopping preferences, hobbies, opinions, information about themselves, and more, that can be collected by powerful computers and be compiled into extensive personality profiles.

This can be prevented by the use of a VPN: With a VPN service, people are surfing via the server of a VPN service, while they are using an anonymous, untraceable IP address from the provider.