VPN is often synonymous with Internet privacy and censorship. If a person uses VPN, it’s usually they want to access a service that is not available in their country or they want to keep their identity hidden for privacy. Using VPN is like the most secure way to browse the Internet. But what is VPN? What does it do and how does it work?
VPN is short for Virtual Private Network. It’s a channel tailored to handle your web requests privately in a manner that can’t be traced. Every device be it phone or computer has an IP Address which is basically the address of that device when connected to the Internet. Without VPN, your IP address is exposed. Anyone can find it. If someone can view your device IP address, it means they can trace it to where you are, even worse, easily hack you and steal your data. Be careful while using free/open Wi-Fi hotspots. Don’t use any banking service while connected to them. With VPN, you needn’t worry.
Internet service providers we use often keep records of the IP addresses of the devices that use their services. Meaning, your location can’t be hidden if they decided to find you. How about if you decided to use VPN? It’s virtually impossible to locate you. We need to know how VPN does this.
There are privately owned companies, very many, that set up servers in different parts of the word that can handle web requests of their clients. These servers are basically powerful computers that will handle a client request keeping the client IP address private.
They then make the request on behalf of the client. Take for example if you are in Africa and want to access a service like Spotify which may not be available in your African country but is available in the USA. You would use a VPN service, connect via it’s USA servers, a request is made to Spotify and these servers will delivers Spotify to you. Spotify is able to be delivered to you because your request was made from the USA where Spotify is available to any IP address located in the USA, the VPN/Server IP address. This is how people are able to use blocked internet services in their area.
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VPN services got to be more popular because they’re used a lot in places like China. The Chinese government has for the past 8 year blocked many USA services like Google and Facebook in favor of their local competitors. China basically blocks any IP address from their land that is trying to access these services. The only way a person would access these services while in China is by requesting these services using an IP address that is not from China for example using a VPN while connected to a USA server. In so doing they can access any blocked site.
So, VPN can not only help with Internet security or privacy but can also help access all blocked Internet services in your area. If a website or app is blocked, be sure to installed a VPN app on your phone or computer to have unlimited uncensored private access.
