Is VPN required on a mac - if so which one is recommended
Is VPN required on a mac - if so which one is recommended
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A VPN can be useful, but it is not required.
Some of use have to use a VPN in order to access work from a remote location or from home. It establishes an encrypted tunnel that all of our network traffic goes over until it is inside the company's network.
Consumer VPN provide the same encrypted tunnel for all your network traffic between you and the VPN server. But from the VPN server to the destination the traffic travels the same as it would if you did not have a VPN. The advantage for a consumer is that if you are in a public location using their free WiFi, no one also sharing that WiFi can see any of your traffic. They cannot see what webpages you browse, and other things.
But many things you connect to use a secure http connections, such as financial institutions, mail order sites where you give your credit card, so the others in the public WiFi may be able to see you went to one of those sites, but they cannot see what you did at that site because of the https (secure http cconnection).
Another use of a VPN is to tunnel your traffic into another country so that you can region restricted services, such as streaming videos that are region restricted, or you may be traveling and you want to stream something you would normally have at home.
Keep in mind that the VPN service may monitor what you are doing, and depending on the VPN supplier they may sell that data to advertisers, or other 3 letter agencies. For example if Facebook offers you a free VPN, you should strongly suspect they are harvesting all your traffic 😀 So if you are really worried about someone looking at what you do, make sure you choose your VPN service very carefully.
NOTE: When you are at home, it is not a public WiFi, but your internet service provided does get to see what you surf. Someone can always see what you are accessing. The question is who do you trust to see that traffic.
Also the sites you visit, especially those you have to sign into, know who you are as well.
