We live in a world where systems designed to be perfect, fail. And that’s whether it’s airplanes or things that are far simpler. But what about being safe on the internet? Can a VPN truly keep you safe? And what’s needed for that to happen?
The weakest point of a VPN service from the perspective of a VPN truly keeping you safe? It’s often the VPN service that is meant to keep you safe in the first place.
Some (not all) VPN companies store logs. Some do it for advertising purposes, while others do it to be able to track your usage if using a service with limited bandwidth.
The issue with any data that is stored is that if it’s there, it can be used to expose you. Whether that’s if you are torrenting in a country that takes torrenting very seriously, or are accessing a site that isn’t allowed in a certain country.
No data stored is the only way that you can stay safe when it comes to VPN services.
But it’s easy to say that you don’t collect logs. There have been events in the past (you can find with a quick search on Google) where VPN companies have stated that don’t store logs, for users to later find out that a hacker has been arrested due to the VPN giving away logs to the authorities.
If you go to our privacy policy section, you will be able to find that we do not store any logs, and you’ll also see us explain what kind of information we do store, explained in simple language that’s understandable. (Facebook could learn from us!)
Should you just trust us because we seem trustworthy? We’d like you to, but you probably shouldn’t trust any company right away. And that’s where the location of a VPN service comes in. PrivateVPN? It’s Swedish, with Sweden having some of the best privacy laws out there. Even if we wanted to store logs of your usage, we can’t. And due to that, we can’t give any data about you, away, whether that’s to any government or internet provider. We can’t even see it ourselves. Not that we would want to see your searches in the first place.
If you look at how our registration works, there’s no space for your name there. And you can even pay with Bitcoin. Can a VPN truly keep you safe often doesn’t depend on the type of encryption that the service has, but on what a VPN service does to protect your privacy.
Just like cars have systems that designed to make you safer, VPN services offer safety measures that can prevent your exposure, in an event when something goes wrong.
Should it go wrong with a great VPN service? In most cases, not. Can a VPN truly keep you safe without the right measures, though? Absolutely not.
The first thing to look at is the IPv6 and DNS Leak Protection. IP leaks can happen from time to time, and when they do, all the encryption and no logs is for nothing. That’s why it’s crucial to have these features with the VPN that you use.
Apart from that, you might also want certain apps to close if your VPN connection was to terminate, for instance, a torrenting client. That’s where the Application Guard and the Kill Switch come in.
Application Guard will terminate any apps that you don’t want open when a VPN stops working. For instance, any torrenting clients you might have open. Meanwhile, Kill Switch will kill your internet connection in an event in which a VPN stops working if enabled.
Not every VPN service comes with all of these features mentioned, PrivateVPN does because the truth is that while the first aspect we mentioned is the most important, all play an equally important role in keeping you safe. Can a VPN truly keep you safe? Yes. But only if you are protected on all fronts. That’s the key to staying truly safe with a VPN.
And that’s where the final piece of the puzzle comes in.
This is the final piece of the puzzle. The one that almost all VPN services do a great job at, because that’s ultimately what they are meant to do.
VPN = Virtual Private Network.
A VPN service is meant to create a network that’s private, and that’s virtual.
The virtual aspect of it means that it can be anywhere you desire around the world. Private? It means that the information that you are receiving and sending is encrypted.
When it comes to the virtual aspect, when it comes “be anywhere you desire around the world,” PrivateVPN isn’t the best option out there. We repeatedly mention that we focus on quality over quantity. Therefore you won’t find 3,000+ servers if you choose to use us. We know that most people are using a VPN to either do torrenting, or to change their Netflix location to unlock more content, or to watch Hulu in Canada. And that’s why we focus on making servers that work with entertainment platforms that you want to access, at speeds that don’t make you wait for your show or live match on DAZN to buffer. While keeping you safe.
Investing in quality over quantity is the reason behind why we support the most Netflix regions while having significantly fewer servers than the competition.
As far as the private section goes, PrivateVPN comes with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 256-bit encryption code with 2048-bit DH key, which is the highest level of encryption on the market. That combined with what we already mentioned, will make you as safe as it can get when using a VPN service.
We wrote about whether free VPN services are worth it and at what cost prior, but we’ll briefly dive into this topic here too.
VPN services aren’t a charity. People work there. Companies need to make money.
How does a free VPN make money?
Mostly by selling your data to advertisers.
We say repeatedly in our guides that when something is free, you often pay with the currency of privacy.
PrivateVPN? It’s not free. But it was chosen as the best value VPN by bestVPN in 2018. A service that is now known as ProPrivacy.
Not only are free VPN services terrible at unblocking content, but they are even worse at keeping you safe. Nevermind at keeping you fully safe.
But the question of can a VPN truly keep you safe also depends on what you are doing.
Can a VPN truly keep you safe when it comes to internet browsing and torrenting? Yes. But if the file you download while torrenting is a virus, or you write something on Facebook, that’s where a VPN won’t protect you. A VPN will encrypt an initial message on Facebook from being seen, in, for instance, a cafe, if you are using public Wi-Fi, but there’s still a possibility of Facebook leaking data as it often does. And no VPN can prevent that.
PrivateVPN is a Swedish provider giving you far more safety than most other countries out there. It also has all the safety features needed in its client, while providing everything you would expect from a VPN such as encryption. And incredible for unblocking streaming services such as Hulu, DAZN, and Netflix, which you can read about more, on our blog, or by asking our customer service. But at the end of the day, the questions of can a VPN truly keep you safe isn’t as simple as anyone would like. To be 100% safe on the internet would require you not to do anything at all, on the internet.
Written by Michael Smolski.