VPN Consultant

Anything you do on the internet goes through an encrypted VPN tunnel, meaning your browsing activity belongs only to you. Your ISP, the websites you visit, and hackers monitoring public networks cannot access your now-encrypted data.
Your real IP address is hidden, and you get a new one. This way, no one can trace it back to you or your actual location. You get secure and private access to geo-blocked websites. That includes unfair censorship or network blocks (e.g., social media and news sites).

The simple answer is – plenty. At least against conventional cyberthreats.
A VPN reroutes your data through its servers, encrypts the data that passes them, and gives you a new IP (among other things, which I will mention later in the article). All of this is done via a single click on an app. It seems too good to be true. But it isn’t.
It’s a rocket in your pocket designed to fight online cyberthreats. Most hacks only happen once the criminal has access to your network or has their hands on your info. A VPN protects your network and mitigates the risk of leaking your data by default – you access the internet via its servers with a newly given IP.
This simple internet traffic rerouting defends your data from external access as well as attacks such as these three:

• Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS)
• Doxing
• Man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM)

The oh-so-much more elaborate answer to ‘’How secure is a VPN’’ is – still plenty, but there’s more to explain. There are different levels of security offered by various VPN providers. The difference in safety usually depends on the features of a specific VPN.
VPN features that keep your connection secure
This is what you should expect from your VPN provider:

• Up-to-date encryption standards. The industry-leading encryption algorithm is AES-256. It would take at least several lifetimes to decrypt a message encoded with this algorithm. This encryption standard also supports Perfect Forward Secrecy, meaning it frequently changes encryption keys to avoid security breaches;
• Robust RAM-only servers. When all VPN servers run on volatile memory, any information that would usually be stored on a hard drive is immediately wiped when the server is no longer on. That means much better security for the end user;
• Strict no-logs policy. When a VPN provider says they adhere to a strict no-logs policy, that means they don’t collect your IP address, browsing history, used bandwidth, session information, network traffic, and connection timestamps;
• Advanced VPN protocols. Make sure your VPN provider uses modern protocols to secure your internet traffic. The most secure VPN protocol is either WireGuard, IKEv2 or OpenVPN. You can choose which one fits your needs better.
• Private DNS & leak protection. Most likely, your DNS provider is your internet service provider. When they operate your DNS, ISPs can access your browsing history and sell that information to third parties. Choose a VPN that offers private DNS on each server, thus ensuring better security;
• Two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA is an extra step in the log-in process that protects the users from such common hacking attacks as credential stuffing and brute forcing.

To determine if a VPN is safe, we should understand its operating principles first. What happens when you click Connect? Let’s see.
Many moving parts go into the inner workings of A VPN, all happening in the blink of an eye, like:

1. A DNS request is made
2. The secret keys are made
3. A secure channel is created
4. VPN protocols encrypt your data

Some people also wonder if VPNs can be tracked, and the answer is no. There’s no way to monitor live VPN traffic. However, there are many ways you could be tracked online, and a VPN cannot cover all of them (e.g., doxxing). VPNs minimize your chances of being tracked by a mile, but no software will help if you’re not careful.
In short, a VPN secures your internet connection, making the information you send out unreadable – it literally looks like gibberish to any onlooker.

While, theoretically, it is possible to break VPN encryption, it’s such a technologically demanding and time-consuming task that, in practice, it’s illogical even to attempt it. Even for the strongest and fastest computers, it would take years upon years to hack an encrypted VPN tunnel.
Besides breaking encryption, there’s another method of hacking into a VPN, usually referred to as stealing the key. This happens when a hacker finds a piece of information that can encode or decode data. In practice, this theft is more realistic than finding cracks in encryption. By saying realistic, I don’t mean easy, but it makes sense that this tactic is far more attractive to hackers than spending years on decryption.

Technically yes, but VPN hacks are rare and not easy to accomplish. If you use a good premium VPN, there’s almost no chance your security will be compromised. The hoops that the hackers have to jump through to accomplish it make it not worth the hassle. And at the end of the day, you’ll always be far more secure online with a VPN than without it.

Incognito or Private browsing are modes designed for local privacy. When you ‘’go for a private browse,’’ your device doesn’t store any cookies or record any browsing history. That means once you finish your browsing session, another person using your device isn’t going to know what you browsed for.
However, sites that use trackers are still going to recognize you. For example, if you’re going to shop online, the website you’re visiting will still recognize that it’s you who’s entering the site, with or without private browsing.
The bottom line is that private browsing doesn’t provide you with online anonymity and doesn’t offer you private internet access. Data trackers, online snoopers, and your internet service provider can still see you doing what you’re doing. Not what I would call privacy.