If you live in the US and tunnel to a VPN server in London, you could watch Netflix content otherwise only available in the UK. This same property of a VPN can be used for far more mundane purposes, like accessing streaming content that's available in other countries. It's a vitally important role, but we don't evaluate VPNs on their ability to bypass censorship, since our getting it wrong could have catastrophic consequences for our readers. Journalists and activists have used this property of VPNs to bypass the restrictions put in place by repressive governments. If you connect to a VPN server in Canada, you'll appear to be browsing the web from somewhere in the great white north. You can also use a VPN to spoof your location by connecting to a distant VPN server. Advertisers and anyone else interested in monitoring online activities have a harder time tracking you while the VPN is active. That's handy since an IP address can be used to track your movements across the web and to discern your approximate location. Because your traffic appears to originate from the VPN server (not your Mac), an outside observer can only see the IP address of the VPN server. VPNs help protect your privacy in other ways, too.

VPNs do hide more of your data, however, and protect your DNS requests, denying ISPs even that insight into your activities.

It's true HTTPS does prevent observers from intercepting your information. There's a strong argument that the widespread adoption of HTTPS already protects your data, and VPNs are overkill. Most of us already fork over a hefty chunk of change to our ISPs, but now those same companies are trying to profit off their customers by selling anonymized user data. A VPN shields your online activity from internet service providers (ISPs). That's handy for anyone who needs to make use of public Wi-Fi networks since it's not always clear who owns those networks and even whether it's safe to connect. The encrypted connection prevents anyone on the same local network as you-and even the person who runs the network-from getting any information about what you do online. All your web traffic is sent through this encrypted connection, exits the server, and then rejoins the internet as normal. When you switch on a VPN, it creates an encrypted connection between your Mac and a remote server operated by the VPN company.

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