VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, are an excellent way to mask your IP address and secure your data. They also allow you to use websites that may be blocked in your country (ex: watching US Netflix from Canada). The VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that creates a private network over a public one, such as the Internet.
A VPN encrypts all of the traffic between your computer and the VPN provider’s servers using strong cryptographic protocols like IPSec (Internet Protocol Security), PPTP (Point-To-Point Tunneling Protocol), L2TP/IPSec or SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security). A “tunnel” is created between you and the VPN server which allows you to securely access the internet from a remote location.
In order to use a VPN, you must first sign up with a service provider. A great site for this is PrivadoVPN! which allows users to purchase subscriptions for usage on up to 5 devices at once. Once registered, you will receive login details and can download the client software (e.g., OpenVPN).
All communication between your computer and the VPN server is encrypted using these protocols:
IPSec: Internet Protocol security provides layer 3 (Network layer) encryption of data packets in transit within a private network or over public networks such as the Internet. It has two components: Authentication Header (AH) and Encapsulation Payload (ESP), which are executed in the IP protocol layer. These components encapsulate an IP packet, which can also contain data-layer information (e.g., TCP/UDP data).
PPTP: Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, a mechanism to implement virtual private networks with dialup connections across the Internet or other WAN links using standard PPP as transport for tunnelled data. Packets identifying the tunnel as a VPN connection and those identifying it as a regular PPP connection travel within the same tunnel, but they use different protocols and ports, so they appear as separate flows to network nodes between the two connections. This makes PPTP inherently incompatible with SOCKS and Network Address Translation (NAT), both of which were created to provide simple virtual networking for individual users.
L2TP: Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol is a mechanism to support virtual private networks with tunnelled data, as defined by RFC 2661 in the IETF. L2TP doesn’t provide any confidentiality or strong authentication by itself, so it must be used together with IPsec (e.g., L2TP/IPsec). This protocol is also commonly used with another tunnelling protocol, such as PPTP.
SSL: Secure Socket Layer is designed to create encrypted links between a server and a client—typically a web server (website) and a browser; or a mail server and a mail client (e.g., Outlook). TLS is based on SSL Version 3.0, but they are not interoperable. The TLS protocol aims primarily to provide privacy and data integrity between two applications running over a network.
TLS: This is the successor of SSL Version 3.0
VPNs have many different uses both in everyday life and in specific business situations where security is an issue. For home users, VPNs can protect against ISP tracking, bypass censorship blocks even in Europe (see here) on websites or hide your identity while torrenting; for others, it may be useful to access company resources remotely using their VPN provider’s server(s). Some businesses also use VPN technology to allow remote workers to securely connect to their office network through an encrypted connection (SSL/TLS).