A VPN, which stands for Virtual Private Network, is essentially a way that computers can be on the same network without being physically near to each other. If you have a job where you work from home a lot, you’re probably already using a VPN. Either way, there are many benefits to setting up a VPN at home or using one of the many available VPN service providers. Here are four of the most compelling reasons to use a VPN.
Understated Reasons To Use A VPN
1. Privacy
Setting up a private VPN can help to keep your activities private even when you’re not at home. If you’re at a coffee shop or even at work, everything you do is probably being logged somewhere. When you have a VPN set up, you can do all the things you want to keep private on your home network instead of letting everyone know what you’re up to. Even if what you’re doing is not particularly interesting, privacy is important.
If you’re really concerned about privacy, using your home network can also be irksome because your ISP is logging everything you do. Using a VPN set up by a company or private individual may be the solution here. This would essentially mean all your activity is happening on a completely different connection than your own, and nothing is traceable back to you. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that the privacy agreement for any VPN you’re using other than your own does indeed protect your privacy.
2. Access Your Files
Say you’re at work, and you accidentally saved the report you were working on last night to your desktop rather than the office network. If you have a VPN set up on your home computer, you can just pop on, grab the file and drop it on the network. This also means that certain private files, like lists of passwords or other sensitive items, can stay on your home network but still be accessed when you’re not at home. This reduces the risk of your files getting into the hands of someone who you might not want to see it.
3. Travelling Sports (Or Other TV) Fans
This doesn’t apply only to sports, but it’s the easiest example to point to. Many sports fans who travel often will lament that, while a game is available in their home country, they can’t get to it from their hotel network in France. With a VPN, you can log into things using your home computer, and it’ll look like you’re doing it from your home country. This can avoid many of the restrictions that plague travelers who want to watch football, American or otherwise, or the latest episode of their favorite show from outside the country.
4. Downloading
Did you know that World of Warcraft distributes all of their patches using BitTorrent? In fact, much of the traffic on Torrents is 100% legal. However, that doesn’t stop your boss from flipping out because you downloaded a torrent client onto your work computer, and perhaps rightfully so. Using a VPN, you can start torrents at home from any location, including your work desktop or your laptop. This also avoids the issue of using up somebody else’s bandwidth for your own personal downloads.
VPNs A Smart Choice
Even if you’re just a casual user, the uses for VPNs are obvious. You can choose to set up your own, or you can go with a provider that does all the heavy lifting for you and further protects your privacy. No matter what your situation is, it’s quite probable that a good VPN can improve your life and time on the Internet.
Author Bio: Dorian Travers is freelance writer and blogger and keeps his readers up to date on all things technology.
Number 4 is definitely true. When people hear the word torrent they automatically associate it with copyright infringement but they are actually also being used legally like for example in sharing files like ISOs of Linux distributions.