For years, I thought that having an office was a good investment… it provided my clients with a sense that my business was stable and successful, it provided my employees and contractors with a central location, and it was a source of pride for me.
The reality was that my clients didn’t visit the office and, as I downsized my client list and increased the throughput for each, I was onsite more and more and my office sat empty much of the time. That was quite an expense… office space is far more expensive than a mortgage.
I now work between coworking facilities, airports, hotels, coffee shops, and onsite with my clients. One of my clients even provided me my own station to work out of.
While my clients maintain a healthy network that’s closed to the public, that’s not the same with the coworking sites and coffee shops. The fact is that most of those shared networks are quite open to snooping. With the credentials and intellectual property I work on day to day, I simply can’t risk my communications being open to the public. That’s where Virtual Private Networking comes into play.
What is a VPN?
A VPN, or virtual private network, is a secure tunnel between your device and the internet. VPNs are used to protect your online traffic from snooping, interference, and censorship. VPNs can also act as a proxy, allowing you to mask or change your location and surf the web anonymously from wherever you want.
Source: ExpressVPN
Why Use a VPN?
By ensuring all of your Internet communications are both encrypted and tunneled through other destinations, there are multiple advantages to utilizing a Virtual Private Network:
- Hide your IP and location – Use a VPN to hide your IP address and location from destination sites and hackers.
- Encrypt your connection – Good VPNs uses strong 256-bit encryption to protect your data. Browse from Wi-Fi hotspots like airports and cafes knowing your passwords, emails, photos, bank data and other sensitive information can’t be intercepted.
- Watch content from anywhere – Stream all your shows and movies in blazing-fast HD on any device. We’ve optimized our network to provide the highest speeds with no bandwidth limits. Download anything in seconds, and video chat with minimal buffering.
- Unblock censored websites – Easily unblock sites and services like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, and Gmail. Get what you want, even if you’re told that it’s not available in your country, or if you’re on a school or office network that limits access.
- No surveillance – Stop snooping by governments, network administrators, and your ISP.
- No geolocated targeting – By hiding your IP address and location, ExpressVPN makes it harder for sites and services to charge higher prices or display targeted advertising based on location. Avoid getting overcharged for a vacation or an online order.
Because the VPN hides my IP address and location, it also provides me with a great way to test my clients’ sites to ensure anonymous visitors are getting the appropriate user experience.
How to Select a VPN
Not all Virtual Private Network services are created equal. There are several reasons to select one over another:
- Geographic Locations – the further you are from your VPN server, the greater the latency in your communications. Finding a VPN service with plenty of locations, especially central to your physical location is critical.
- Bandwidth – Most enterprise businesses offer an internal VPN. If they’ve got plenty of bandwidth, that’s fantastic. However, working with a VPN that doesn’t have capacity will slow everyone that’s connected to it to a crawl.
- Mobile Support – VPN configurations used to be a bit of a pain, but modern operating systems have integrated VPN capabilities. Make sure you’re working with a VPN service that has both desktop and mobile capabilities.
I chose ExpressVPN because it has 160 server locations across 94 countries, utilizes 256-bit encryption, has apps that optimize your location, and has great pricing and support. As soon as I open my Mac or connect to a network on my iPhone, I see the VPN connect and I’m up and running! I don’t have to do anything to configure or connect at any time… it’s all automated.
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Disclosure: I get 30 days free of ExpressVPN for each person that signs up.
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