The internet is as much a part of modern life as food or water. It’s where we connect, work and play. Because it is so important, you don’t want it limited. You don’t want to miss out on services, or worry that what you’re doing online is being watched. That’s why it’s essential you get a VPN. It can improve the internet drastically by removing restrictions that are placed on your internet because of where you live and can let you browse safely in the knowledge that no one is monitoring what you do online.
1) Remove Geoblocks For Free International TV
A lot of countries have free-to-air TV.
These free channels come with web applications so you can watch them online for free. The thing is, that this is restricted to the country they are based in.
The reason they do this is that they might not hold the rights to broadcast everywhere. The world runs on outdated laws that have failed to keep up with the reality of fiber optic cables connecting continents.
If you have a VPN with multiple servers, and this will work much better with paid VPNs than it will with free ones, then you can treat these services like channels and essentially get access to a range of content for only the price of a VPN.
BBC iPlayer in the UK, CityTV and CBC in Canada, Australia has the ABC, and 7 and 9 have online streaming for free too. Directv is another really good option. It costs money, but you can get all the major US channels.
Beyond free services, even subscriptions like Netflix and Amazon Prime are different in other countries.
US Netflix, Japanese Netflix, Korean Netflix, Australian Netflix, and Thai Netflix are all different. Why? Left over rules from the age of the living room televisions. If you get a VPN you can select your location at will and watch whatever you want. This is an amazing bit of functionality for film buffs. It’s easier to connect to US Netflix and watch a movie than it is to download it, and why should you have to pay for it, if it’s already included in a Netflix subscription, and just not available to you.
It’s not just Netflix either. Hulu is limited to the US, and SkySports is limited to the UK. In some countries, you can’t get Disney Plus. It’s an ongoing thing.
2) Get Cheaper Courses and Subscriptions
Pricing isn’t universal. You can buy online courses, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube premium, and more all for a discount if you connect your VPN to a region where goods and services are less expensive. This discount is to adjust for local purchasing power but if you can get these same discounts why not? Next time you’re about to buy something online, be it software, a subscription, or an online course, just turn on your VPN, and clear the cookies and browser history. You could save yourself a decent amount of money.
3) Browse Without Worrying That Your ISP Is Looking Over Your Shoulder
Online privacy is dying a slow and painful death. In the US, recent laws have permitted ISPs to sell user data to advertisers and limit speeds to competitors. This was the end of net neutrality. You might remember the protests. In Europe, the situation is better, but there’s still a growing move towards tracking everything that we do online. There are a few problems with this. If you don’t really care about online privacy, because you think “I don’t do anything bad online, why would I care?” this still affects you.
If you’re ISP is keep a record of what you do online then you are trusting them to keep that record safe. Data is a precious commodity, and it can be used for identity theft and ofter nefarious purposes. It’s much better if it doesn’t exist. A VPN encrypts all the communication leaving your computer so there’s no chance that this sensitive information can be stolen from your ISP.
4 Surf Safely On Public WiFi
Any unencrypted communication that’s sent over public WiFi or other shared networks can be intercepted by anyone else on the network. This is really easy to do there are free and open-source tools that anyone can download and YouTube videos that will teach you how to do it. Luckily, most of the internet is already encrypted with HTTPS. Unless the hacker is stripping HTTPS and downgrading it to HTTP or they trick you into pressing proceed when Chrome or another web browser tells you not to, you are safe. Still, a VPN is an additional layer of security on public WiFi that forces encryption. If you accidentally type your password into an unencrypted site, it doesn’t matter. Better safe than sorry.
Let’s Wrap This Up
A VPN can unblock enough sites that you can essentially watch TV from all over the world for free. It can upgrade the subscriptions that you have like Netflix and Amazon Prime to get you content that’s not available in your regions. It can also get you cheaper subscriptions by making it look like you’re in an area with a lower cost of living and lower pricing. Finally, it’s an additional layer of security on public WiFi, that in many cases is redundant, but when you do need it, it’s there. If you’re looking for recommendations, get SurfShark. It’s a trusted provider with a free trial.