Could You Benefit From An iPhone VPN?

If you need a secure connection on your iPhone, then you may find an  need an iPhone VPN.

It is important that you sign up with a trusted VPN provider. With a trusted iPhone VPN provider, you will get the best service and most reliable connections. The best VPN providers write all of their own software and can therefore offer the fastest service worldwide.

What Does an iPhone VPN Do?

Simply put, an iPhone VPN protects your privacy. When you have a VPN for your smartphone, you have access to four primary advantages over standard internet browsing:

  • Stop ISP Inspections. Prevent your internet service provider from throttling, prioritizing, and inspecting the data that goes in and out of your iPhone.
  • Protect the Activities That You Do Online. A VPN is a secure “tunnel” that takes you to the internet. With a VPN, you get to cruise the internet your way, not someone else’s way.
  • Protect Your IP Address. With an iPhone VPN, the only thing websites will see is the server’s communications.
  • Prevent Location Identification. With a VPN, your IP address is substituted for one that is not based on your location. This prevents location-based ads from affecting your internet experience.

An iPhone VPN Allows Access to Country Specific Sites

Some people feel that an iPhone VPN is actually very limiting. With a VPN tunnel, you can access country specific sites, but not sites outside that country.

If you have a US VPN, for example, you would be able to visit US sites, but not Canadian sites. The same rules apply for every country’s VPN connections.

Though limiting, this type of connection provides the greatest amount of security for the end user. That is why you should use a global VPN provider for your iPhone VPN needs. Global VPN providers have servers located around the world and allow you to access your favorite websites from anywhere. If you need to access a secure site in France, but you live in Canada, you can log into the French VPN and have a high speed connection.

An iPhone VPN Provider Should Provide You Many IP Addresses

One of the difficulties that VPN providers face is limited resources and a reliance on third parties. If you are choosing an iPhone VPN provider, you should look for one that can provide you with many IP addresses. For the most reliable connections the provider should write their own server software, own their own hardware, and manage their own network.

Why Is A 256 Bit Encryption Better?

A 128 bit encryption module is not as secure as it used to be. That’s why the best iPhone VPN providers utilize 256 bit encryption to provide highest level of security possible. You should have access to multiple protocols like PPTP, OpenVPN, and L2TP/IPsec to secure all of your devices.

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VPN can offer safer surfing, thanks to network encryption

Summary of Benefits

An iPhone VPN is not a substitute for your mobile provider, as you need internet in order to access the VPN server. Once you have logged into your secure tunnel, however, you get the added security benefits that a VPN provides.

When you want a secure solution to browse the internet from your iPhone, then a VPN is often safer. Bypass location based IP blocking, avoid geographical restrictions, and access your favorite websites from home or abroad.

Steps to Take Before Throwing Away Your Old PC

In 2010, the FTC recorded over 250,000 complaints of identity theft in the United States. While many identity thieves still get their information from your paper mail, a stolen purse or wallet, or hacked files online, more and more are starting to glean sensitive information from the hard drives of old computers. If you’re getting ready to toss out your desktop or laptop in favor of a newer model, take these steps to protect yourself from identity theft.

What information might be stored?

Not sure it’s worth all that work to wipe your hard drive? After all, you don’t keep a ton of important information on your computer, so what could a hacker possibly find anyway; and if you’re just donating your computer or selling it for cheap, what are the odds that an identity thief is going to get his hands on it?

The problem with this line of thinking is that often times, your computer has stored information that you don’t even know it has stored.

Common information stored on computers includes account numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, registration keys for software programs that you use, medical information, addresses, and even tax returns – which contain pretty much all the personal information necessary for a someone to apply for a credit card or bank loan in your name!

Keep in mind that many identity thieves will actually buy a used computer – or even steal a donated one – in the hope of gleaning such personal information. This information can be worth thousands of dollars to them and can create a huge headache – and financial problems – for you.

How to get rid of the data

So, before you sell your computer or donate it to your local school system, take these steps to get rid of the data for good:

1. Don’t count of just deleting the files. While you’ll want to delete the files from your computer, this is just the first step to take. Identity thieves are often experts at getting deleted information from hard drives by using specialized software.

2. Save any files you want to keep. Before you wipe your hard drive, you will, of course, want to save any files you want to keep. You can transfer your data to a new computer, burn it to a CD, put it on a USB drive, or put it on an external hard drive – a particularly good option if you need to store a ton of files or information.

3. Use a utility program specifically meant to wipe your hard drive. Local tech stores will sell utility programs meant for this purpose that match up with your specific operating system. The best idea is to get a program that will overwrite or wipe the hard drive several times instead of just once, and you’ll definitely want a program that wipes the entire drive.

If you know your computer has particularly sensitive information on it and you don’t trust a utility program to get rid of the information, you can always destroy the hard drive physically.

Businesses in particular, often use hard drive shredding services, as their computers tend to have lots of personal information on both employees and customers of the business.

A hard disk shredder

A hard drive being shredded

Once you shred the hard drive, you can simply sell or donate the rest of the computer without it, and the new owner can then completely replace the hard drive.

Watching for identity theft

Even if you are careful to destroy information on your computer before you sell or donate it, it’s a good idea to be wary of potential identity theft.

Check your credit reports regularly to ensure that everything is accurate. Credit reports are normally the first place you’ll see evidence of identity theft when new accounts pop up that you didn’t open. If you do think you’ve been a victim of identity theft, get identity theft assistance as soon as possible.

Report the problem to the credit reporting bureaus, who will place a fraud alert on your account. Then close the new, fraudulent accounts. Finally, report the fraud to the Federal Trade Commission and your local police department.

If you’ve taken steps to protect your personal information from being stolen, you may never have to deal with the problem of identity theft, but it’s always a good idea to be aware of what you should do if your identity should be stolen.

Does Security Have to be Technical?

I had been a software engineer for at least 3 years specializing in digital security. A month ago, I attended a small workshop which talked about IT Security for corporate and the speaker said this somewhere in the middle of the workshop:

“Security is a process. It does not have to be really technical and the most important part is the process.”

I stunned for a while and suddenly my mind wondered away from the workshop deeply thinking, what is the speaker trying to deliver? I started this serious thinking simply because it is not said by some non-technical or sales person. Instead, the person speaking in front of me is a Certified Ethical Hacker.

A padlock key on a keyboardAt the end of the workshop, I begin to understand what he is trying to deliver. After 3 years of writing programs for the benefit of security, I turned out saying that security is a process. Why would I say that? Look around us. All the tech that you need to protect yourself from cyber crime is there. Anti-virus, firewall, anti keylogger, parental control, password manager and many more are all available in the software market. There is no reason for us to say in terms of technology, we are not good enough in security.

What makes so many of us a victim of computer or internet threat is the lack of proper process in computer and internet security. Security is not a short process where you only apply if you need it. For instance, you don’t only apply security when you had just downloaded a file from an unknown site which required a security scan.

Security is an end to end process. This means that the moment your computer boots up, security should be applied until the time your computer shuts down. People usually failed to stay secure simply because they don’t apply security from the very start. Agree?

So what’s your view? Do you still think that security has to be something technical?