Are VPNs really necessary? If so, why?

VPN
1

Are VPNs really necessary? If so, why?

2

I use one every day to connect to my work’s shared server drive from home.

3

My abusive ex-wife stalks me online. She mostly does it by tracing my ISP. With a VPN, that’s harder to do.

4

I’m gonna find the location you posted this

That’s why

Edit: I was offering an example

5

To be clear you are referring to a virtual private network. No, they are not usually necessary. That said, they can protect you from hacking by allowing you to encrypt your data stream while using a public network. They can be necessary if you want to access data which is blocked in your country, for example you cannot access Facebook in China but a VPN allows you to connect to a computer/server in another part of the world where Facebook is not blocked, that connection should be encrypted. That computer/server will then unencrypt your data and send it to Facebook or whatever site you are trying to contact. So if the site is blocked in your country then a VPN would be necessary.

6

Legit use of VPN allow access to private networks over public networks. The laptop at your home or coffee shop can use a VPN to access company network resources as if your laptop was connected to the company network in the office. There are nefarious uses like this, too, such as getting into the dark web, which is part obscure DNS, and also private networks of dubious content.

It can also be legit used for obscuring traffic through public networks to get to other public networks and resources where they may not be otherwise encrypted or accessible. This can be just to make your traffic safe, or to do bad things. Using a VPN from a coffee house to your house, and then back to the open internet can prevent coffee house snoops from seeing your traffic on the coffee house WiFi.

There are less legit uses, like making it seem like your traffic is coming from an allowed location instead of your actual location. There’s a lot of grey area thinking here, but often some agreement or rule is being broken. MLB.tv blocks my use of their service to watch my home team because of agreements with local broadcasters, but a VPN can make my traffic seem to find from another location, bypassing the restrictions. Netflix offers different content in different areas because of distribution and license agreements, but you can see them with a VPN that makes it seem like you’re elsewhere. Some governments limit access to resources on the internet, and a VPN can bypass those restrictions.

Whether those rules are fair or right isn’t the point of this commentary, but just that the use is possible.

7

Does she have access to your devices? How does it work?

8

This is very helpful! Thank you!!

9

I honestly wish I knew. The thing that stopped it was using a VPN. As far as I know.

I only knew because my child knew things about me via the mom that I didn’t tell either. And that has stopped with the VPN.

10

Thanks for sharing. Keep strong.