You’ve probably heard of a VPN, a way to pretend you’re surfing from another country, allowing you to watch content from a streaming service in the United States, for example. But there are more ways to make a Virtual Private Network work for you. This is how.
VPN
A VPN lets you fully encrypt your connection, which makes internet banking, for example, somewhat safer. A VPN ensures that you can surf more safely. While you normally unknowingly share your address when you go to a website, you can prevent this with a VPN. We do not mean your home address, but your IP address. And that IP address says a lot about your location. If you don’t want that, use a VPN that ensures you get an IP address from another location. For example, it is advisable to do this when you surf on public WiFi: this makes it easier to keep hackers out.
There are also people who like to watch the Eurovision Song Contest or F1 with a VPN, for example. For example, you can supposedly watch from another country. In the past – now Netflix has closed it down a bit more – you could, for example, watch things that were on American Netflix, but not yet in the Netherlands. It is sometimes difficult for you to watch content in other countries via a VPN, but in many cases it just works and you can imagine yourself in another country for a while.
Gaming with a VPN
Another interesting application of VPN is in gaming. You may not think about it quickly, because many people associate VPNs with the browser, but a VPN can also change your location when you game. For example, do you want to play your favorite online multiplayer shooter, but you don’t want to be so busy? Then you simply log in with your VPN to a country like Peru, for example, where people are sitting in the middle of the night at that time and it is therefore a bit quieter on the servers. This way you have a better chance of winning.
There are many different VPN providers to choose from and they often offer extensions in the browser that allow you to easily switch between countries in addition to your address bar. This way, for example, you can still watch Wie is de Mol on the NPO from abroad. A ‘network’ sounds very complicated, but it has now all been made so accessible that it feels more like a kind of software that you just switch on. And of course anyone can do that. It is up to you to see which VPN provider you trust the most and enjoy working with.
Look online to see which ones are recommended, but also ask friends, for example. VPNs won’t be a topic you often discuss with them, but eventually you will notice that many people have an answer to the question of which VPN provider they use. It’s also fun to ask what they use it for: always fun to discover.
