- Bob works in an office.<\/li>
- The office has a network.<\/li>
- The network, for security purposes, DOES NOT have access to the Internet.<\/li>
- Bob is outside of the office and needs to access the office network. He uses a VPN.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190120085514im_\/http:\/\/www.iheinrich.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/vpn-1.gif\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nIn\n this case, Bob connects to the office from home thru a VPN network \nappliance that sits in his office. He calls that network appliance and \nit provides a secure connection between Bob and the office. Bob is VIRTUALLY<\/strong> in the office and Bob has a PRIVATE<\/strong> encrypted connection and Bob can use the NETWORK<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DO I need a VPN?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
You might be thinking, \u201cWait, I work in a flower shop, not an office, do I need a VPN?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, you do my florist friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a hard day of floristing, you come home and connect to the \nInternet. You go to all your favorite websites and do all your favorite \nthings. But there is a log of all those activities that resides with \nyour internet provider. They can sell that log, sell your information to\n third parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe you visited a website like, \u201cRevolutionary Florists\u201d by \naccident, or just out of curiosity. These guys advocate that only \nflorists should be in power. Guess what? You just got your name on a \nwatchlist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe you, in a moment of weakness, downloaded via Bittorrent that \nJapanese animation about that girl in high school who saves the world \nfrom alien demons by yelling at them? (ok, I just described every \nJapanese animation of these last 20 years). Well, the company and the \nlawyers of that Japanese animation can come after you. It\u2019s really \nhappened and people have had to cough up serious money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe you live in a country where all Internet access is very closely watched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe you work at a company who monitors your internet usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The simple fact is, if you want to look at the Internet without care of concern of who is watching you, you need a VPN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you value your privacy, you need a VPN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
VPN the nitty gritty.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
How to get a VPN? Does it come in a box in the store? No. You need to\n find a VPN provider, and yes that is going to require some research and\n yes, you should pay for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A word on \u201cFree VPN\u201d providers<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Nothing is \u201cfree\u201d. Having a VPN company requires expensive software and hardware, so why would it be free? It\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They sell your data to third parties, include adverts and basically \ndo anything to monetize your account. Further, imagine the VPN server as\n a door. If only a dozen people an hour use that door, traffic flows \nsmoothly. But what if 10,000 people an hour tried to use that door? \nNobody is going anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190120085514im_\/http:\/\/www.iheinrich.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/black-friday.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nWhat to look for in a VPN provider<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Nearly all paid VPN providers charge about the same price, so ignore the cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Logs<\/strong>. If the VPN provider keeps logs of your \nactivity, that\u2019s NOT GOOD. Why keep a record of my browsing activity? \nGood VPN providers DO NOT keep logs so when someone shows up asking, \nthey can honestly say, \u201csorry, we have no records\u201d.<\/li>
- Customer Support<\/strong>. VPNs can be tricky things to \nconfigure and get right. And when you run out of answers, usually a good\n tech support agent can help out.<\/li>
- Speed<\/strong>. Good VPN providers have plenty of servers and plenty of bandwidth, so they won\u2019t be slowing you down.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
Not a review per se<\/em>, but my experience with VPN providers.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
I worked for a company that used to never monitor our internet \nbrowsing habits. Then, a few people abused this by watching porn in the \noffice where EVERYBODY could see it and then a new IT director came in. \nSoon, our browsing became monitored and filtered. Bizarrely, the filter \nwould often block tech sites that developers referenced and we really \ngot annoyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I signed up for StrongVPN<\/strong><\/a>.\n It\u2019s a great VPN company and used to have great tech support. I used \nfor them for years. But I had to ditch them for two reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Logs<\/strong>. They kept logs. However, looking at the site now, they claim they do not keep logs anymore.<\/li>
- Tech Support<\/strong>. When I started, it was awesome, after a while it went downhill.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
I MIGHT re-consider joining StrongVPN, however, I am very content with my current VPN provider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Astrill<\/strong> is an awesome VPN provider<\/a>. This is not a paid endorsement. Some cool things about Astrill:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- No logs! Ever!<\/li>
- Unlimited switching of servers. Want to use a server in New York, or\n Florida or St Louis and see which works best for you? Knock yourself \nout.<\/li>
- Tech Support is very good. It\u2019s not great, but the people you speak with are usually very sharp.<\/li>
- Custom Protocols. They have their own OpenVPN protocol called \nRouterPro, which prevents you from being blocked in countries that block\n the OpenVPN protocol.<\/li>
- Custom tools. I have my VPN configured on my router. This way, \ntraffic from my router is protected. They offer a special JFF file you \ncan install on your router. It\u2019s very handy.<\/a><\/li>
- They offer VPN apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS\u2026 you name it.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s all for now. Next time I\u2019ll discuss VPN protocols and why you shouldn\u2019t use the default Blowfish encryption your VPN provider offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UPDATE<\/strong>: I no longer use Astrill, but I still highly recommend them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
VPNs are making the news and being advertised everywhere on the internet. If you are wondering WHAT a VPN is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- They offer VPN apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS\u2026 you name it.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
- Tech Support<\/strong>. When I started, it was awesome, after a while it went downhill.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
- Customer Support<\/strong>. VPNs can be tricky things to \nconfigure and get right. And when you run out of answers, usually a good\n tech support agent can help out.<\/li>
- Logs<\/strong>. If the VPN provider keeps logs of your \nactivity, that\u2019s NOT GOOD. Why keep a record of my browsing activity? \nGood VPN providers DO NOT keep logs so when someone shows up asking, \nthey can honestly say, \u201csorry, we have no records\u201d.<\/li>
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190120085514\/http:\/\/www.iheinrich.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/vpn-1.gif\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![<\/a><\/li>They offer VPN apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS\u2026 you name it.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s all for now. Next time I\u2019ll discuss VPN protocols and why you shouldn\u2019t use the default Blowfish encryption your VPN provider offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUPDATE<\/strong>: I no longer use Astrill, but I still highly recommend them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VPNs are making the news and being advertised everywhere on the internet. If you are wondering WHAT a VPN is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iheinrich.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190120085514\/http:\/\/www.iheinrich.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Astril2.jpg\"){kind=link}