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VPN protects your online data from hackers and government surveillance by encrypting your online traffic and hiding your reap IP address. VPN allows you to browse the internet without worrying about monitoring. What are the disadvantages of using a virtual private network, especially the free one.
In most cases, your network access is slower through a VPN than not. The exception would be if for some reason the route to the VPN server is faster than the route elsewhere (perhaps your network gives a priority to the VPN server, has a fast connection to the VPN server, and the VPN server has a faster connection to the rest of the Internet than your non-VPN access). That’s because of the additional time to encrypt and encode the traffic within the VPN protocol on both ends, and to pass traffic via the server instead of directly to the end point. Besides for securing your traffic from the being easily snooped by your immediate router/Internet service provider, a VPN is sometimes used to make your traffic to the remote server, appear to originate from the geographical location of the VPN server, instead of from your actual geographical location. This is sometimes desirable, if you want to access services that are blocked by the remote server to your geographical location, but sometimes it can be the other way round, i.e. you get served localized contents that are localised to the location of the VPN server instead of your own location. Up to you to see if that’s a disadvantage. In some cases, aggressive policies on your router/Internet service provider may block the use of a VPN, or limit its use by slowing down your service if a VPN is detected.
It will make everything you do online a little slower. If your VPN provider isn’t very good it make it a lot slower. It can cause you trouble with services like Netflix that try and determine what market you’re in based on your IP address. If you’re involved in questionable behavior, illegal content or anything else, it makes it appear that you we’re actively hiding your activity which can cause prosecution to be more harsh. The software you install on your device, especially from “free” VPNs can be just another vector to deliver viruses to your PC or devices.
The biggest issue is that VPNs give users a false sense security. People have developed mistrust of their ISPs over the years, not entirely without justification, but for some reason that same level of skepticism hasn’t yet developed for OTT VPN providers, which in my experience are _more_ likely to be a source of problems and (if in the US or a treaty nation) still going to hand over your information when a law enforcement agency sends them a subpoena. VPNs are great tools in our security arsenal, but they don’t protect people from most kinds of attacks and they don’t provide more security to the normal user than their standard connection from an ISP.