Have you ever tried entering a webpage and got denied ? Have you ever tried watching a video on Youtube and get the message "This content is not available in your country" ?

VPN can potentially help you solve all the problems above.

What is VPN ?

To understand what is VPN first we must understand some of these jargons:

Networks: A group of devices (computers, laptops, tablet, printer) which communicate with one another through medium such as: fiber, cables, wireless using the same protocols known as TCP/IP. You don't need to know specifically what TCP/IP is, you just need to know it is like a language like English for devices to communicate (obviously to communicate you and your partner have to speak the same language).

Internet: Can be observed as a networks of networks that span the globe, Internet hence can provide a variety of applications such as File sharing, sending mail, webpage surfing. When using the term Internet, people mostly refer to webpage surfing (or World Wide Web) application and when you visit a webpage what happens is your host directly connect to a server (which is just a powerful computer) that serve the webpage.

Now we get enough jargons, let's understand what is VPN exactly ?

Instead of connecting directly to a webpage, VPN stands for Virtual Private Network is a service that allows you to establish an encrypted tunnel to the internet, you are now "tunnelly" connected to a VPN server and the VPN server has the responsibility to retrieve a webpage for you instead of you retrieving the webpage directly from a remote server yourself. Here is a nice picture which explains VPN concepts really well:

So what's the implication of an encrypted tunnel and not connecting to internet directly ?

The implication is that you can improve your internet surfing activity significantly, since you are using an encrypted tunnel, you can avoid middleman attack. Since you avoid directly connecting to the internet, you can hide your identity from the web server on the internet that you connect to as many malicious people can establish a server to pry your personal data.

What are some of the important applications of VPN service ?

1. You can connect to restricted contents in your country by tunnelling to a VPN server in a different country.

2. You can enhance your online security significantly, VPN can help you lower the threat when checking private data while on public WIFI (note that I use the word "lower" and not "remove" as hackers are pretty smart and they will find a way to get around the system eventually).

My favourite VPN application:

I'm a movie-savvy, I love movies and Netflix is my go-to site when I want to relax myself, yet, any Netflix users know that films on Netflix shows up in different regions, specifically, people in the US may see different Netflix content from people in Australia. VPN service can help you overcome this issue, if you do not turn on VPN you essentially connect directly to Netflix server in you country, hence it will only serve content customized for your country. With VPN turned on, you can create a "tunnel" to other VPN servers in different country and that VPN server will connect to Netflix on your behalf, ultimately you can see Netflix contents in different regions.

Some popular VPN services:

1. ExpressVPN

2. TunnelBear