Last but not least, we have VPN. By comparison, PeerBlock is child’s play. Tor Browser is just an add-on. VPN (or Virtual Private Network), is the equivalent of duct taping your windows and wearing tin foil on your head. Except that it works. VPNs reroute all of your information through servers hosted in hundreds of countries around the world, effectively making it appear as though you are based far from home no matter what you’re doing. Some are slower than others, however, and even the fastest VPNs are going to slow you down somewhat. I used VPNbook, which is free, and it routed me through some place in unnamed place in Europe that was so slow that I eventually just uninstalled it.
But with a little searching, you can find what suits you best. I happened upon CyberGhost 5, which has a free option along with premium service. CyberGhost doesn’t keep logs of what you do, which is what you want in a good VPN, only costs about $7.00 per month for premium service, and has a very usable free service that hardly slowed down my connection at all. The only real downfall that I could find with the free service is that you have to wait 60 seconds to connect while staring at an ad for their premium service, but that’s something I can deal with. CyberGhost also protects iOS devices and works with OSX as well.
Five years ago I would have said that PeerBlock along with private browsing and some common sense was more than enough to protect your identity and personal information, and that using something like Tor Browser was a little Conspiracy Theory, but things have changed. Unless you protect yourself, everything you do online is tracked and logged, and each time you put your credit card information into a field to buy something you’re taking a risk. Your bank account could be cleaned out by this time tomorrow, and your identity stolen in minutes. And on top of those worries, there is the ever present watchful eye of the NSA, who have nothing better to do than spy on its own citizens, it would seem.
As George Orwell put it; “It’s a cautionary tale.”
