Following on from the article ‘How to torrent anonymously‘, Seedbox Guide will answer the question ‘What is a VPN?’. A VPN is a sure fire way to stay anonymous online and mask your activity online.

What is a VPN?

A VPN, simply put, is a tunnel from your computer to another. When you visit websites, you send a request to another computer. That computer sends out your request and sends back the information. This means, your computer is hidden away behind another computer. No one can see what you are doing online because you are masked behind a different computer.

Diagram time!

This is how you connect to the internet without a VPN.

As you can see, when you click on a website, download something or torrent; Your computer connects directly to the internet and then data is sent directly back to you. This is bad because your IP address is not protected. What is a VPN? It is an intermediary computer that will protect your IP address and therefore identity.

How does a VPN work?

As previously stated, a VPN acts as a gateway between your computer and the internet. You connect to the VPN using strong encryption. So all your communication with the VPN is secure. The VPN server then sends out your request to the internet, gets the response and sends it back to you through the encrypted connection. Therefore, all your internet activity is protected and can’t be snooped on.

Diagram time!

This diagram shows how a VPN protects your internet activity from being snooped upon.

Your IP address is masked behind the VPNs. You will not be able to be identified by your IP address because no one will be able to see it.

Why do I need a VPN?

There are several cases where you would need a VPN:

Downloading torrents

This is the most obvious one and we covered this in ‘How to torrent anonymously‘. If you are downloading torrents without a seedbox, you need to be using a VPN. Copyright agencies seed torrents in order to collect peoples IP addresses. They then send lists of IP addresses to ISPs in order to fine the infringers. This can be avoided if you are downloading torrents from behind a VPN. There are many torrent friendly VPN providers such as Private Internet Access or BTGuard.

Circumventing censorship or filters

A lot of people, for example in China, are behind massive firewalls that filter websites deemed unsuitable. To get around this, a VPN can be used. A VPN routes your encrypted data to a ‘clean’ server which isn’t filtered or censored.

Appearing as if you are in another country

Want to watch Netflix but they don’t support your country? Want to watch the BBC but you aren’t in the UK? Many VPN providers allow you to choose which country you appear to be coming from. This means, you just click a button and are magically in the UK. Click another button, you are in the USA. Private Internet Access is a great VPN provider that offers a multitude of countries. Check it out.

How to get a VPN

As we mentioned earlier there are some things to consider when choosing a provider. Firstly, if you will be downloading torrents, you want a VPN provider that allows torrents and does not log. If you want to watch foreign TV then you will need a VPN provider that allows you to choose your country.

Seedbox Guide did the research for you, we have listed and shared valuable information that will help you find the most fitting VPN for your requirements.

Click below to get started:

Let us know which VPN provider you have chosen and why in the comments below.