5 critical reasons you need VPN protection

5 critical reasons you need VPN protection
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Do you consider yourself a privacy-conscious person? Are you concerned about your online safety? Well, you’re certainly not alone. The hard truth is by surfing the web or making any transactions online while connected to a network that’s not secure, you’re exposing private info and buying habits for anyone to see.

Thankfully, a virtual private network is a great tool for maintaining your privacy online. If you’re ever out and about, you should definitely use one.

Here are five ways a VPN can keep your online presence concealed, private and, most of all, safe. Plus, we’ll tell you all about Kim’s personal favorite and most trusted VPN service: ExpressVPN. Get three months free when you sign up for one year at ExpressVPN.com/Kim.

1. VPNs hide your IP address

As you may already know, your IP address is your computer’s own unique address on the web. Think of it as a digital house number for your computer. Nice, right? Well, maybe not so much. The troubling part is all your online browsing activity can be traced back to your IP address.

Hiding your IP address allows you to stay anonymous online, protects your identity, works around IP bans and allows access to otherwise blocked websites. There are numerous ways for you to conceal your IP address while you’re online, but your best option would be to use a VPN.

Why?

Once connected to Wi-Fi, your device receives a new IP address from the VPN provider. From here, all the traffic to and from your computer is re-routed through the VPN servers. This leaves your real IP address concealed and protected from prying eyes.

2. Hide your social media identity

Let’s be honest, everyone loves social media. Unfortunately, so do hackers — but not for the same reasons you do. In this digital age, information is the number one currency for hackers, and social media may as well be a goldmine. Tap or click here to learn how to adjust your privacy settings on Facebook.

This problem was basically non-existent in the early days of social media, simply because not as many people were using these platforms. Naturally, as soon as more platforms emerged, more people started joining them.

Nowadays, you’d have to search far and wide to find someone who doesn’t have multiple accounts spread across social network sites. This is the perfect landscape for hackers to prowl and eventually pounce on their victims. The best thing users can do for themselves is get a VPN.

3. Keep your location hidden

If you’re a regular consumer of online content, no doubt you’ve come across a few restrictions due to your location. An example would be services like Netflix, Spotify and YouTube, which have geo-restricted content. Luckily, VPNs offer something called IP or Geo-spoofing.

Geo-spoofing does just what name suggests — it hides your geographical location based on the IP address you use while you’re online.

The VPN accomplishes two important goals here. First, it filters your internet data through its own server, which then changes your IP address so it appears you’re in a different location. Second, it encrypts your signal, making whatever you’re doing online virtually impossible for anyone else to access.

You can also use IP or Geo-spoofing to your advantage if you’re planning on taking a vacation. That’s right, use IP spoofing to shop the best available prices on airline tickets, hotels and more. See the prices and airfares change as you access a variety of VPN servers based out of different countries.

4. Don’t give away your online shopping habits

Buying stuff online is easy, and often necessary to get the specific items you want. Unfortunately, buying online can be quite revealing as well. Online shopping habits can say a lot about a person. Heck, it may as well be an open book to a person’s life. This is why you may want to keep your online purchases more private from now on.

How? You guessed it — a VPN.

Acting as a tunnel between your computer and the websites you shop on, a VPN has the ability to conceal what you purchase and who you purchase from. This prevents annoying e-commerce sites from tracking your location and connecting it to your purchasing habits.

Using a VPN is also great for preventing companies from annoying you with unwanted ads. If they can’t find you and can’t track your activity, they can’t use you as a target.

5. Protect your personal data

This may sound familiar, as we’ve covered this base quite a bit in the past, but it’s an important point to reiterate. Accessing public Wi-Fi, regardless of its source, is convenient and useful for users who want to go online and save data. Unfortunately, there are some rather serious security threats that may be lurking while you surf the web.

Public Wi-Fi hotspots are a breeding ground for hackers and cyber attacks. These attackers use, or more accurately, abuse public Wi-Fi connections to steal private information and release harmful malware.

If someone checks their bank accounts on an unsecured network, a hacker on the same network can steal the login/password info and instantly gain access to the account.

By accessing the internet through a VPN, you can keep all of your most sensitive and personal information private and protected. The VPN encapsulates and encrypts all of your data by acting as a private and hidden bridge, which grants you safe passage over unsecured networks and potentially dangerous public Wi-Fi networks.

Kim highly recommends ExpressVPN

Kim endorses ExpressVPN and she highly rates its service and commitment to its many users. She used it the entire time she was on her European Vacation recently and hasn’t stopped raving about it.

The service is fully capable of accomplishing every task listed above, and a whole lot more. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with ExpressVPN, here’s a little insight:

With over 3,000 servers spread across 94 cities in 160 countries, ExpressVPN guarantees each of its users across the globe private and safe travels as they navigate the digital world. One of our favorite features of ExpressVPN is its ability to protect and direct internet traffic by utilizing its own DNS (Domain Name Service) server.

This means its high-end encryption protocols can stop even the most sophisticated forms of attack or snoop.

ExpressVPN has earned some much-deserved praise from the online community for its lightning-fast speed as well.

Users can also download at a speed of 83.15 Mbps — that’s fast! This kind of speed is great for giving you quick access to services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and much more. From personal protection to entertainment, ExpressVPN truly is the whole package.

So what are you waiting for?

Protect your privacy. Get three months free when you sign up for one year at ExpressVPN.com/Kim.

Tags: digital world, encryption, IP address, malware, online safety, online shopping, privacy, public Wi-Fi, social media, virtual private network, VPN

Sponsored by ExpressVPN

Protect your privacy. Get three months free when you sign up for a year at ExpressVPN.com/Kim.