VPN services provide a way to protect your privacy. The interesting thing about how these networks work is that the privacy protection does more than you might think at first. Most people would expect privacy protection to simply obscure or mask their IP address. VPN services, in fact, do provide that form of privacy. There are other ways that this privacy affects your Internet experience, however, and some of the make VPN services more interesting.

Restrictions

There are many nations in the world and some particular locations within otherwise free nations where access to information on the Internet is severely restricted. This is usually done via sophisticated firewalls and other technologies that are used to prevent people from accessing information that is inconvenient to one interest or another. To defeat this, a VPN network is a valuable tool.

The VPN network can masquerade as a computer from anywhere. If computers from a particular nation, for example, are restricted from accessing certain websites, the VPN provides a cover, allowing them to access those websites. The VPN simply provides an IP address from a nation that is allowed to view that site and, through the technology involved in making the VPN networks function, sends that information onto the user.

Information freedom is possible with the VPN network, even in an environment where it is severely restricted technologically.

Anonymity

The anonymizing service of VPN providers is the main reason that people sign up for these services as far as privacy is concerned. These services mean that, when you visit a website address, an IP other than your own shows up as the originating address for the request to view whatever material you want to see. This means that, for example, a site that logs IP addresses and uses them to sell to marketing companies wouldn’t be able to get yours. It also means that any malicious attacks launched against the IP address that you seem to come from wouldn’t have any effect.

The anonymity advantages of VPN service aren’t always used for simple privacy needs, however. Internet security professionals oftentimes need to obscure the address that they are working from to test their own security systems. For example, a security professional may want to try launching attacks from a particular nation or from a range of IP addresses to see how well a security system they have installed does at filtering out unwanted traffic. There are reasons people use VPN service that have nothing to do with anonymity but where the anonymizing features of the VPN service are still beneficial.

Protecting your privacy online is a major concern for anybody who uses the Internet a great deal. Using a VPN service is one way that you can keep your personal information protected. You always have to give an IP address to get access to any resource on the Internet. With a VPN service, you don’t actually have to give the server that you’re requesting information from your real IP address and for some people that makes all the difference in the world.