Internet

5 risks you should avoid

Virtual Private Networks (VPN) are widely used by Internet users, with the aim of making their web browsing a little more anonymous, and also to bypass regional blocks, add an extra layer of security to their communications, and even to download with P2P programs it is highly recommended to use VPN to avoid privacy issues. However, when using the services of a VPN you must also take into account certain risks that we are going to detail below.

These are the risks you should avoid

When we use a vpn service, you must bear in mind that all network traffic goes from the VPN client to the server where it goes to the Internet. This means that the service itself could spy on its users’ communications, so you should choose a service that provides certain guarantees to users.

Be careful when using free VPNs

This is one of the most important parts when choosing a VPN service. If you are looking for a free VPN service, our recommendation is that you use Cloudflare WARPs, one of the giants of the Internet. This service will allow you to browse the Internet very quickly and safely, but logically it has its limitations, and that is that we cannot select the server to which the client will connect. We have a paid version with improvements in the speed and amount of data downloaded.

There are free VPN services but of doubtful origin, if you are not going to surf the Internet or have services running that may be affected, then you could try them because they also work quite well, but we cannot know if they are collecting browsing data or other information.

When not to use VPN

Always activate the Kill Switch

It is essential that we use the Kill Switch functionality of the different programs to keep our connection protected. This functionality allows you to block all network traffic in the event that the VPN connection drops. In this way, if the VPN goes down we will know immediately because we will not be able to surf the Internet. If we do not have this functionality enabled, we can continue browsing the Internet but without the protection of the VPN, with all that this implies.

Today, most paid VPN services have programs and apps to avoid leaking our data to the Internet, however, our recommendation is that you do a data leak test to make sure that all traffic will be protected.

Use VPN services without logs

A VPN service should not keep any type of record of our connections, in order to preserve our privacy it is highly recommended to choose services that guarantee that they do not store any type of record in their databases.

In the past, some services that promised not to store logs later revealed all the data of their users in judicial investigations, which could put our privacy as Internet users at risk.

Make sure you are using VPN by looking at the public IP

When you connect to a VPN server, all network traffic goes out to the Internet through the public IP of the server itself. To verify that we are using the service correctly, we recommend using any tool that checks which public IP address you are currently using. For example, one of the main services that we can use are the following:

There are many other tools to do this, the important thing is that it does not match your current public IP.

Configure additional privacy measures

Paid VPN services generally incorporate very interesting additional features to improve your security and also privacy. Below, you can see some of the most common:

  • Built-in antimalware.
  • Tracking cookie blocker.
  • Blocker of malicious advertising and pop-up windows while we browse the Internet.

They may also provide you with an antivirus as an add-on to the VPN service, plus they may also provide you with a password manager to keep all your digital identities safe.

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