Before the internet bubble burst, a unique service came in that offered online anonymity to people. The service, named Tor, soon gained immense fame. Major organizations, such as the EFF started supporting the service. It became the only tool that offered online privacy to people.
What was considered the best thing about Tor was the fact that it’s not owned by any individual or organization. Instead, thousands of people supported the service by allowing the online communications of people to travel through their systems.
As more and more people switched to Tor, the bubble started to grow until it eventually burst. While Tor exists to this day as a tool that offers online anonymity, it is no longer the anonymous tool it once was. The fact that the NSA has found many loopholes in Tor’s system is troubling for any Tor user. It’s a known fact that the law enforcement agencies have caught criminals working on Tor many a times.
It is also a fact that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have donated millions of dollars into Tor. But why would these agencies invest so much money into a product that offers complete online anonymity? There are chances that the service is being used by the agencies to gather their own intelligence and violate people’s privacy on the web.
As Tor’s privacy and reputation started to diminish, people started to search for a different platform that could ensure their online anonymity. They found this platform in the form of VPNs. But are they really anonymous? Let’s find out!
Are VPNs really private?
A question that has been asked many times is if VPNs are really private or not. We see a lot of VPNs claiming to offer complete online privacy. But are these claims correct? To find out, we have to dissect the features that these services have on offer.
VPNs exist in many forms. Some are cheap, or even free. Others offer online freedom. Some offer the best online security and privacy features. Therefore, it is easy to guess that to get complete online anonymity, you need to choose the right VPN service.
For a VPN service to be truly private, it has to offer the right privacy features to its users. So what features do private VPNs offer?
The best feature that private VPN services have on offer is online encryption. Online encryption exists in many forms. What kind of encryption you get depends on the VPN protocol that you are using.
What are VPN protocols?
In Layman terms, a protocol is a language that allows different systems to communicate with each other. They work as tunnels that transmit your data from one location to another on the internet.
The most secure VPN tunnels are the ones that stop outsiders from accessing the data passing through these tunnels. For this purpose, they need walls that can’t be accessed by any hacker or agency. Online encryptions acts as that wall that guarantees your privacy on the web.
The protocols that we use today have advanced a lot in the past many years. We now have a list of protocols to choose from whenever we connect to a VPN. Some protocols offer faster speeds. Others offer better privacy and security. Each protocol has its own pros and cons.
The most prominent protocols are these:
- IKEv2
- OpenVPN
- SSTP
- PPTP
- L2TP
Out of the above mentioned VPN protocols, the ones that are considered most secure are OpenVPN and SSTP VPN protocols.
Therefore, it is easy to guess that if you connect to the right VPN service, that your online communications shall truly remain private on the internet. But is encryption enough to guarantee your privacy on the web? We don’t think so.
Is Encryption Enough for Complete Privacy?
As mentioned above, there exist different types of VPN services. Some are really cheap or even free. How do these VPNs make enough money to survive? The answer: they keep logs of user’s browsing activities.
Your browsing activities can be important for advertising agencies because it allows them to create personalized ads which are then used to generate sales. What VPNs do is that they keep logs of your data and use these to create your own profile. This data is then sold on to these advertising agencies. Many a times, even surveillance agencies butt in to purchase the data that should be kept private.
This is why you need to choose a VPN service that keeps zero logs of user data.
Which VPN service is truly private?
If you’re searching for one such VPN service, than you don’t have to go much further because we already have the candidate for the most private VPN service. And that candidate is PureVPN.
If you check PureVPN privacy policy, then you would learn that PureVPN keeps no logs of user data. Other than that, the service also offers the best encryption standards on top of its extensive feature set.
Therefore, it is easy to claim that PureVPN is the most private VPN service!
Author Bio: John B Vergara is Technology enthusiast, and cyber security analyst from Beaverton, he writes & contribute blogs in his spare time.
