It’s time to stop paying for a VPN

0


[ad_1]

It sent me down a rabbit hole looking for alternatives to paying for a VPN. I ended up using web tools to build my own private network for free which wasn’t easy. But I’ve also learned that many casual users may not even need a VPN anymore.

Here’s what you need to know.

Not that long ago, many websites lacked security mechanisms to prevent bad actors from listening to what people were doing when they were browsing their sites, opening the door to their data being hacked. It has helped VPN services become a must-have security product. VPN providers have offered to help hide browsing information from users by creating an encrypted tunnel on their servers, through which all of your web traffic passes.

But over the past five years, the internet has undergone immense changes. Many privacy advocates and tech companies have pushed website builders to rewrite their sites to supports HTTPS, a security protocol that encrypts traffic and resolves most of the aforementioned issues.

You have probably noticed the padlock symbol on your web browser. A locked padlock indicates that a site is using HTTPS; an unlocked means it is not and is therefore more likely to be attacked. These days it is rare to come across a site with an unlocked padlock – 95 percent of the first 1,000 websites are now encrypted with HTTPS, according to W3Techs, a site that compiles data on web technologies.

This means VPNs are no longer an essential tool when most people browse the web on public Wi-Fi, said Dan Guido, CEO of Bit trail, a cybersecurity company.

“It is very difficult to find cases where people have been injured by connecting to the airport, cafe or hotel Wi-Fi,” he said. Nowadays, he added, the people who benefit from a VPN are those who work in high-risk areas and who could be targets, such as journalists who correspond with sensitive sources and chief executives. company holding trade secrets while traveling abroad.

So what to do? Fortunately, most of us can stay secure online with some basic protections that, unlike VPN services, are free, Guido said.

[ad_2]

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.