How to Enjoy Internet Freedom From Unwanted Surveillance and Data Throttling

Niloy Chakrabarti, Tech Times 29 December 2021, 09:12 am

Have you ever noticed your Internet speed slow down when streaming a high-definition video online or trying to download a large file? Internet service providers (ISPs) often monitor your Internet traffic and activity to gauge if your bandwidth usage is too high so they can cap your Internet speed and offer an average Internet experience to all of their users. This process is also called bandwidth shaping or throttling, and it requires your ISP to monitor all of the inbound and outbound traffic from your devices.

Aside from that, the demand for employee surveillance has grown by 50 percent since the work-from-home culture boomed in 2020. Employers might install third-party surveillance software on company laptops or workstations to gauge your productivity. This software might log your keystrokes, monitor your private social media messages and emails, track your physical location, and even take control of your webcam. While it may be legal to do this, you might not know the complete details of how your home workstation is being tracked.

How Can a VPN Help?

When you install and activate a virtual private network (VPN) on your system, all inbound and outbound Internet traffic from your system will be encoded and rerouted through VPN servers in different locations. So, if anyone tries to trace your online behavior, they will think that the data is being exchanged with your VPN server and not your system. In a nutshell, a VPN can mask your IP address and identity so that any activity outside of your work terminal window cannot be tracked by ISPs or employers.

In addition, a VPN can easily outfox targeted advertising and even content censorship so you can watch your favorite TV shows from anywhere in the world. This could be particularly useful for digital nomads and frequent travellers who might find it difficult accessing content on-the-go due to the different Internet censorship regulations in each country. Furthermore, a VPN could make you less susceptible to data hacks when you use public Wi-Fi hotspots at a coffee shop or the airport.

With so many VPN service providers out there, though, you need to understand how they can protect your data on their servers, what are encryption standards they use, their global outreach and bandwidth capabilities, and whether they store your personal information.

A VPN Service Provider With 3,000 Servers in 94 Countries

ExpressVPN is a VPN that has been growing for more than a decade now, and what makes them unique is that their VPN servers directly run on RAMs (volatile memory) rather than ROMs (hard drives). The key advantage to this is that it needs to be switched on to store data; and every time a RAM-based system is rebooted, all data gets erased. VPN servers running on ROMs, on the other hand, need to be overwritten or file manually deleted in order to wipe user data. This might buy hackers enough time to place a backdoor and siphon off personal data until noticed.

Basically, ExpressVPN's RAM-based servers significantly reduce the chances of data leaks or hacks since all of the data on their servers get erased during server reboots or configuration updates. They don't track your IP address, search history, metadata and other details, either. Moreover, their military-grade 256-bit AES encryption protocol adds an extra layer of security to their 3,000 superfast servers in 160 locations around the globe.

ExpressVPN also has developed their own VPN protocol called Lightway. It employs wolfSSL encryption that dynamically changes the encryption and decryption keys used for data exchange, almost rendering data hack attempts void.

Since rerouting your Internet traffic through VPN servers may introduce lag depending on your chosen location and server load, you can take advantage of the split tunneling feature. It allows you to choose the online activities or data exchange you want to conduct through the VPN server and only use it when you shop or bank online.

To check out ExpressVPN's plans and pricing details, click here. They also offer 30-day money back guarantee, as well as 24/7 live customer support for any VPN-related queries.